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.