My final reflections about Science Methods

As my last day of Science Methods came to an end, I finally started putting the puzzle pieces together and all the things that Dr. S introduced to us throughout the semester finally served some purpose to me. I was at first definitely scared and overwhelmed at everything that was thrown in front of me at once, from blogging, to pbworks, to using technology, this class opened up a whole new world for me. But as time went on, I was very thankful with the help of Dr. S to constantly be there all the times I needed help, whether it was through google chat, google docs, e-mail, or just simply stepping foot in her office.

Blogging was definitely an enjoyable experience for me. It was nice to post the things I saw in nature, or read about in my Science Stories book. I think that blogging is a fun and creative way that allows for me to share my thoughts and experiences, especially in the scientific world (because I myself am currently a science major.) It was a great idea to be able to share these things with my classmates throughout the semester.

We did many hands on activities in the class that I will definitely consider using in the classroom in the future. I would have liked more time to complete the activities in class, but it was just very hard because of our 55 minute class period. Science Circus was definitely a great experience in the classroom that I would love to use with my kids in the classroom. This allowed us to use inquiry to explore many scientific ideas: like buoyancy, floating and sinking activities, and collecting data and gaining results from the data. This was a great way to get students moving around the classroom (so they aren't sitting at their desks all the time) and to get them to try out different experiences to see what they really do enjoy compared to  what they don't enjoy as much. The kingdom Jigsaw activity was also great to use in the classroom because it allowed students to explore their own individual topic and then teach that topic to the class. This was important because students get to be creative and present their topic, rather than the teacher doing it for them the whole class. These two activities really were a great way to allow the students to use inquiry and to get a hands on experience using science in the classroom.

Regarding Fieldwork, I really did enjoy working in Mrs. Benfer's 5th grade classroom. I think it was definitely a great experience regarding the fact that we actually stood in front of the group and we were able to teach our own lesson to the class. Many fieldwork hours that I've done in the past have strictly been observing, and i think that this was a great fieldwork experience because we got to work with the class and teach them a lesson and allow them to do hands on activities, just as we would if we were teachers. The class was definitely a great class to work with because they were probably so used to college students coming into the class to observe. They were very welcoming to us when we came in and they were understanding of our goals to become teachers. This was overall definitely a great environment to work in and I really enjoyed observing and Bishop Dunn Memorial School and I really did gain a positive experience from this particular fieldwork session. Fieldwork has also helped me to grow as a person and it allowed me to see the areas that I need to improve in along with the other areas that I really grew in throughout the semester. I have a much better understanding of what it is like to work in front of the classroom and teach a lesson and that really did help me to prepare better for the future so now I can go into fieldwork with a much more positive aspect and feel much more confident about the goals I want to achieve in the future.

The E-folio project was definitely an interesting project to tackle...to say the least. I definitely don't mean this in a bad way, but because it was such a new experience for me it was a little overwhelming to me. But as soon as I opened up to the idea about completing it and started learning a little more about it, it really was an exciting thing to complete. The e-folio focused on every aspect of every topic that I completed this semester, and that is really what was the most important thing for me to do. I think that th E-folio was a great way to present my work in a creative way that allowed for me to express who I am and where my areas of interest really are. I particularly enjoyed Amy's E-folio because I felt that she presented all of her knowledge in a very sophisticated manner and she put a lot of time into perfecting her e-folio, which really makes me see that she wants to be a teacher and she is achieving her goal now in a very positive and successful manner.  I will definitely use this as a tool in my classroom, along with all of the other technology that I have come across throughout the semester.

Overall, this course was a great learning experience for me. I mostly say this not only with my classroom experience, but with my knowledge of technology as well. I grew so much in this course and my knowledge of technology in the classroom really has expanded. As a teacher, I have discovered so many ways to involve my students in the world around them and show them that I care by always putting them ahead of me and making their education my first priority. Keeping this in the back of my mind as I go through school will definitely motivate me and help me understand that all of this hard work is eventually going to pay off, and before I know it I am going to be just like Mrs. Benfer!

It's eel season!

For my nature observation this week, I decided to talk about something different than the weather, which is what I usually talk about. For my Biology lab we have been going to Quassaick Creek in Newburgh to observe the Herring that have been passing through, and this past week we set up an 'eel' experiment. Believe it or not: we literally went into the creek in wet suits, set up the net, and caught eels in the net. But don't worry, we let them go afterwards!

The whole purpose of this experiment was to understand how the eel population and how it is declining in certain areas. What we did with this information of the eels was we weighed and counted the eels, and we used this data just as a basic measurement of the eel population around the Hudson River area.

This experiment is the perfect example of something that I would love to do in the classroom with my students. I loved having this hands on experience with my professor, and I would want my students to have the same experience. I think that it is a great way to get students outside the classroom and it is a fun and exciting topic that still involves things in the scientific world. This really did make me understand how science is all around us all the time. We can see science in so many different things through observing, collecting data, using inquiry, and gathering results. This all leads to a comparison of other data and leads to new ideas being discovered, and understanding that science is constantly around us, and we can see this in something like studying eels!

21 things that will be obsolete by 2020

Reading the article about things that won't exist by 2020 is really a scary idea. It is so scary to know that the common things that we use today like desks, library books, homework, and even paper will be obsolete in less than ten years. It is even scarier to see how that is going to affect teachers in the classroom. Teachers in an elementary school classroom will soon be using blogging, online homework assignments, and e-mail to communicate with their students. It's scary to know that when I was elementary school, I barely used a computer and I really had no reason to use one. It is so interesting to see how technology is changing day by day and before I know it, I will be teaching my own students how to blog, just as I learned in my college class! I just hope that parent teacher conferences still happen and I think that face to face interaction is much more important than talking about things over the internet. The line has to be drawn somewhere and I have a strong belief in communicating with parents face-to-face, just as my mom and dad did with my teachers. I am very interested to see what life is going to be like in 2020 and how it is going to effect my classroom. I guess I won't be able to find out for another nine years. Until then....I have to get back to my desk to work, because that might not even be around in a few years.

From Powerpoint to Prezi?

I just used Prezi for the first time yesterday and I had a lot of mixed emotions about it. I am so used to using power point and creating slide after slide and using Prezi was like a whole new world to me. I think that Prezi is a great tool to use in the classroom for the students. It is a fun way to get students engaged in the classroom without asking them to stare at a powerpoint. It is fun and the students can even get involved with using it by going up to the board and sliding the text around and doing things themselves rather than the teacher doing anything to them. 

I created a Prezi about Chemical Reactions, which was the lesson that my group taught in fieldwork to the class. Once i figured out how to use this and I was more familiar with it, I really enjoyed doing it and I hope that I can use this experience in my future classroom! :)

http://prezi.com/ylv9iadpi-sb/edit/

Here's the link to my Prezi and I hope that you can enjoy this new use of technology and get a great experience from it! :)

What's the Big Idea? Matching Assessment to Instruction

It is very important to use multiple forms of assessment in the classroom. There are many different forms of assessment and those forms include:
Science Assessment- A process of collecting information that is used to determine the quality and character of a certain performance.
Formative Assessment- used to interest student's in a particular topic
Summative Assessment- used to document the student's achievement at the end of a course
Performance Assessment (also known as authentic assessment)- Student's demonstrate their understanding by solving a problem or performing a task in the real-life context of their classroom
      It is important to use all of these forms of assessment so that students can activate their knowledge in many different ways, and not just by taking tests. Taking tests actually isn't a good assessment to practice because many times it just shows that students can memorize an answer rather than showing that they learned about a specific concept. Assessment and Instruction are two things that have a strong correlation to one another because they are both used to successfully solve a problem and create a scientific idea. 
     Another important assessment tool that teachers use is writing. There are many ways for students to record a description of their science ideas and activities which they are engaged in. The use of science notebooks is encouraged because students here can describe their investigation in specific formats and they can engage in their findings and express their opinions about the experiment that they conducted. Students don't have to focus strictly on just writing but they can also do things like draw pictures, tell stories, and draw models about what they experienced in the classroom. This is a very creative way that allows students to express their feelings in many more fun and creative ways.  
In classrooms I have seen many different presentations and performance assessments. In my science classes today, I see many powerpoints. We have to create powerpoints when we finish our experiments in the lab and present them to the class. This is a great way to show the class and the professor what we learned and also to present it by using technology rather than handing in a written assignment. I think in my classroom, I will encourage students to use these kinds of things so that they can express their experimental design and creativity in many ways outside of using a pen and paper and turning in a written assignment. I also think that the students would enjoy those things much more and will give them more motivation to learn in the classroom.
       If I created a portfolio for my science methods course, I would be sure to include all my work from the semester in it. But one thing that I would focus on is my fieldwork experience. I think it is important to show how my fieldwork was a success along with my lesson plan that was written with it. I will include copies of things like my moon blog, website assignments, and other things that we did in this course throughout the semester so that I can show what I learned throughout the course. I think it is important to show all the hard work that was done throughout the course and I will also encourage my students to express their work so that they can feel proud of all of their accomplishments. 
       I personally think that it will be hard to get my students to blog at such a young age. I don't think that I would have them blog about their earthworm activity but instead, they can express their creativity in other ways like take pictures and bring them into class to discuss.
       Overall, this chapter stresses how important technology use is along with students publishing their work and I hope that I can give my students a successful experience in all of these aspects of teaching in the classroom! :)

Our Last Day of Fieldwork

We ended our last session of fieldwork the other day and I had many mixed emotions about it. Doing fieldwork in Mrs. Benfer's class was a great experience and she was very helpful and very willing to work with us throughout all the sessions we attended. Mrs. Benfer was very helpful in talking us through the sessions to successfully teach our lesson and make the children happy. Mrs. Benfer made me realize how important it is to have a positive attitude towards the students so that they can become enthusiastic about the subject and really enjoy science just as much as she does. I loved how she gave us the opportunity to work hands on with the entire class by teaching the class a lesson rather than just the normal one or two students we are usually assigned. She really opened up my mind to a whole new experience and I loved that I was able to have that experience hands on in the classroom in front of the class. I only have a couple wishes about the experience, and that is that I wish we got more time with the students so we were able to have a little more time to complete our lesson successfully. I know that it was very hard to coordinate us and that every second in the classroom helps, but if we had more time to complete our lesson I think that the students would have enjoyed it more and it would have been a little less stressful situation for the group teaching the class. Also, because it was our first time teaching it was hard to manage our time under pressure because we never really know what that was like or have had to experience that situation. Overall, I think fieldwork was a very successful period and it gets me more and more excited knowing that one day i'll be just like Mrs. Benfer! :)

Here's a picture of me working with the student I was assigned to in class, reading the chapter about chemical reactions.

Planning for science: Lesson Plans and Instructional Strategies

It is important to "let go" of your lesson plan in order to benefit the students. "Letting Go" means giving the students responsibility of the lesson in their own hands, while still continuing to guide them and lead them to successfully complete the lesson or experiment. As we saw back in chapter 8 in Mrs. Drescher's class; the students were supposed to be exploring all about liquids but instead they ended up turning what they discovered about liquids into a lesson about density. It is important to make an original lesson plan to begin with, but then the students shouldn't just complete the lesson because it was something they read on the paper. It is so important for the students to use their own techniques and explore what is around them and make new discoveries. Science is all about making discoveries and it is important that the student's start making discoveries at a young age because any discovery they can make about science while they are younger can help them so much year after year while they're in school, no matter what kind of science class they are taking. 


Allowing for the students to ask questions is a key element for students to successfully explore and "let go" on their own. Open ended questions are great kinds of questions to introduce to kids because it allows them to think critically and in a different way besides 'true false' or 'yes no.' (which are like questions for understanding) which don't inspire students to use their full potential in the classroom. These kinds of questions are also important because they can activate the prior knowledge of the student's and if they know something like that, then they are more likely to be interested in the topic because they are going to enjoy doing something they already know about. I have a teacher today, in my college biology class, who uses this technique of making me think. She teaches the material beyond the book and reading directly off the slides. She encourages us to participate in real class discussions that allow us to expand our mind and look at the material from many different perspectives. This has really helped me to understand how important it is for students to be introduced to this at a very early age. 


Regarding cooperative learning groups benefits students in many ways because it allows them to gain many social and educational situations. It also leads to constructivism so students can encourage other students opinions and ideas and they can defend or altar their thinking so that they can encourage each other to make new discoveries. Cultural diversity is also very important for teachers to understand because it allows the culturally diverse students to interact with the other students in the classroom and feel more welcome. Most importantly is that they can even share stories from their cultures to expand everyone else's knowledge in the group and allow for them to further investigate new questions about so many different topics that are around them. Assigning them group roles keeps them on tract to promote group efficiency and make sure everyone is participating in the group. In my classroom, I will definitely use all of these ideas to successfully complete group activities and promote unity in my classroom and make sure that everyone works successfully together! :)