Week 4

This week has been a more laid back week since today the school of education had teacher interviews our classes were cancelled. Even though we did not have class, I went and check on my ecocolumn and recorded data in my notebook! I get so excited going to see the growth that has occurred since I last saw my terrarium, so I can imagine what this experience would be like for an elementary student! On Tuesday in science methods, we started something new where Dr. Parker puts a question that could potentially be asked in your classroom by one of your students. We have 30 minutes to do research on these questions so we can know the answer when that one kid likes to ask a lot of question! This was a really cool growing experience for me because by having us do the research, we learn more about the topic for ourselves. This week in math methods, we wrote an edTPA style lesson plan with a partner and while working on it, I kept having to stop and look up some of the edTPA vocabulary that I didn't understand. Even though I struggled, I learned something by taking the time to stop and look up anything I didn't understand. This week, the thing that gave me the most satisfaction is creating a visual during our hurricane presentation that helps to visualize that warm, moist air is like fuel to a hurricane. This visual helps me to remember how hurricanes are formed,  and I know it would help an elementary student to understand too. The action steps that I want to complete over the next week include finalizing my overall concept of my unit and start moving forward with the rest of the unit plan! I contributed to the class this week by being involved in class discussions, and working with my classmates to maintain our ecocolumns! Next week, I can help my classmates by being more encouraging to everyone while we are all getting deeper into the semester! This week, I found a resource called Science for us and this is a great website for science education. There are projects, lesson plans, modules for learning, and the best part is that they're all based on the state standards. I will use this resource in my future classroom if there is a module that happens to line up with my standard because I think the kids will be engaged while using this resource. My first top tweet of the week is from David Carruthers and it says "what kind of teacher are you?" then there are 3 different types of teachers listed. A classroom teacher, a school teacher, and a global teacher. This tweet just reminded me how I need to not only strive to be a classroom and a school teacher, but I need to become a global teacher by going outside of my school and sharing ideas that can impact children largely. My second tweet of the week is by Alex Corbitt and it's a visual of "education then vs. education now." This tweet really brought into perspective that education has changed a lot since I was in elementary school and it will continue to change. Instead of having the students sit quietly in desks, the students learn best by being able to talk and discover things by themselves instead of having the teacher stand at the board. We must have our classrooms the way this tweet describes them. My third and final top tweet of the week is by Danny Steele and it is a tweet about building culture in your classroom every day with how you spend your time. This week, I have been following Hurricane Jose, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm for now. I read on The Weather Channel where it will re strengthen into a hurricane and the east coast is at risk for high surf and rip currents. I can connect this to my learning in science methods because we talked on Tuesday about how hurricanes form and we know that a hurricane cannot be present if there is no moist air to fuel it. I am relating my learning from this week to the NCTCS that says "teachers know the content they teach" This week I have learned about how hurricanes are formed and I can now help my students to better understand how they are formed. For chapter twos text facilitation- I really enjoyed the video of the middle school kids being engaged in their inquiry based science lesson. My biggest takeaway from the video is to start every lesson with a question that the students will explore and find answers to. This is much more effective than just telling them the answer the the question because they have to experiment for themselves to find the correct answer. This chapter was solely about scientific inquiry which we have been discussing in science methods. Now that I know all about scientific inquiry, I don't see why anyone wouldn't use this in their classroom because it is a great learning experience for the students to explore for learning.

Week 3

This week has been a great week! I was most proud of myself for collaborating with my science fair group and altering our plan to make a much better project that you can test and hypothesize about. My struggle this week was trying to learn to distinguish between the pieces to the knowledge dimension of blooms revised taxonomy. Having to place the small pieces of paper with the scenarios on them under the paper with the words "factual, procedural, conceptual, and meta cognitive" really helped me and the rest of the class to better understand what each of them means (Thanks Dr. Parker)! The thing that brought me the most satisfaction this week was the Inquiry self check. I really enjoyed reading this website with the eight pointers of how to create an inquiry based classroom and after completing the discussion board, I feel much more prepared to teach with an inquiry based approach! I contributed to the class this week by putting resources in my discussion boards that help with teaching science education and knowing the content since I didn't do so well on the 5th grade science EOG. Next week, I will also put resources for things in all of my discussion boards. Not only is it in the rubric, but because it really does help me and my classmates learn and grow from exploring all of the resources we all post! For my outside learning, I played around with a website (http://www.sciencefun.org) and this is a great resource and I highly recommend my classmates to put it in their resource kits. This website is great for kids to learn science by doing experiments that are safe to do, but also very engaging for the students, there is also a trivia tab as well and if you get a question wrong it tells you why it's wrong and why the correct answer is right. Another fun feature on this website is the science jokes tab. I think these jokes would be a great thing to do before you begin a lesson because the students will automatically lock in on you because you are doing something fun for them! I will use this website to help myself to better learn the science content. My first tweet of the week said "What happens when students own their learning?" and there is a infographic which has many different effects from students owning their learning. Everything listed on the infographic is very important for you students to develop! There is a picture below if you wanna see the infographic. My second tweet is by Tom Loud and in this tweet, he's giving us teachers a friendly reminder that our attitude effects all of the other teachers we work with. This is the same thing in SCED or any class, my attitude can effect all of my colleagues. My third tweet is by Amy Fast and she just reminded me that the goal of our teaching is to give our students a "passion to utilize the material for a greater purpose..."

  This week, I have been following hurricane Irma, and the thing that amazes me the most about weather is that you never know for sure what is going to happen. I can connect my research about Irma to science because hurricanes are science phenomena in action! The NCTCS that I focused on this week was "teachers know the content they teach" I missed some things on the science test and after reflecting on the discussion board, I found that resource I talked about before that can help me learn some of that content and even use some of it in my future classroom!