Dear Readers read Doe reads

Dear Readers,

Our semester has come to a close. It is time to reflect and be thankful. The leaves have fallen, the snow is here. Although this semester has only been four and half months long, it feels like a lifetime. I started my journey substituting this semester and the new skills I am learning, combined with the rigor of this class have helped me to grow into an 6 point buck.

6-Point buck

I have used this blog to check in with my classmates and let classmates know what assignments I have been keeping up with. I have made comments on classmates blogs, as you can see here, here and here. 

It's been a journey. Thank you for your readership.

Doe, Leaped. 

Fieldwork Reflection

Dear Readers,

I did it. I taught an inquiry lesson. It took two weeks of:

• planning
• writing
• calls back and forth
• Facetime
• Meetings
• Emails
• Trips to the dollar store
• Material prep
• Venting to my mom
• Strategizing
• Prioritizing
• Compromising

My head was spinning

I learned a lot, and sharpened some skills I know I had already. One thing I definitely took away from this experience is the necessity of flexibility and a keen handling of time management. There was so much my group wanted to include, so many new things we had learned that we wanted to display but the hard constraint of time was a huge issue. On top of the four minds coming together to create one lesson plan, Dr. Smornova also wanted to include a kahoot to give summative data for all the groups. We had to come up with a way to include everything we needed, and then allow time for the kahoot. This took some deep thinking, some strategy, and open communication.

I took the role of framing out the inquiry lesson. I had not written one before but I was up for the challenge. After I finished the frame of our lesson plan, my colleague Kyle went in and added necessarily elements and his ideas. From there we workshopped with the entire group and came up with something we were all proud of. The direct instruction required the same type of collaboration but that was headed by the other group mates, Leanna and Michelle.

Then, we prepped materials, printed, cut paper, and came in early to set up.

After all of this work, it was finally showtime. 

The direct lesson went well. This was such a relief. Our timing worked, we all knew our roles. Two things I would have changed

1: I attempted a fun check for understanding of having the kids stand up/sit down instead of thumbs up/down and it didn't go exactly as planned. If i attempt this one again, I will lay the expectations of the exercise more clearly. 

2: I would reframe the content being taught. The unit plan I have in mind takes this information in another direction than the one we taught. I think the lesson was a good lesson on its own but with the context of my larger goal, I would change the goal to be identifying what environments are best suited for renewable energies. I would focus more on where windmills work best and why they work best there and take a half step back from explaining energy and the mechanics of the machines.

Other than these tweaks, I would say the kids were very engaged in the lesson. We learned a lot form the groups that went before us and delivered the best lesson we could. I am truly proud of my colleagues successes.

Then came inquiry.

I know it was an hour long lesson but it felt like 10 minutes. I was so focused on this lesson, and timing, and getting everything done that I felt like time just flew by. 

Setting the expectation of this lesson before we transitioned was critical to the success of the objective. We had the kids attention and it was best to explain it as a group. I made a mental note of this success. When we broke off into groups, the kids knew exactly what to expect.

The group I had were enthusiastic about building and clearly took so much joy from building these pinwheels. They were happy to test and build and restest and build again. I was thrilled to see how our lesson was going. 

After our test, we had the kids face off and see who build the best pinwheel. There were two winners, and the kids seemed to really like this activity. Then we needed them to write their letters. This was a little more challenging, we didn't have enough time to properly support this task, some students told me they weren't finished but we had to move on to get to the end of the session. I could see their thought process and where they were going with their letter. We are still able to use this as data.

Finally, we herded the kids into the computer room and gave them the final kahoot. This was chaos. I wasn't expecting anything else. They were having fun, I was yelling to get them to hear me. Honestly, they seemed like they had a great time and we were able to see how much they had learned from the course of this program.

Meeting the crew

This was the first time we all got to meet the students we will be working with this semester. There were from familiar faces in the crowd, most had participated in the literacy program that I and most of my colleagues facilitated last fall.
The most striking thing I noticed  was how many boys there were compared to girls. There were two girls and thirteen boys. I also picked up on some group dynamics that will factor into how I approach grouping for my lesson. These kids have been in school together in small classes since kindergarten and likely are friends. I tried to take note of who worked well together and who was off task with their friends. 
The first thing we did with the group was make name tags! this was a good opportunity for us to circulate and hand out materials to the group, and ask them questions while they worked. Each name tag seemed to reflect a little piece of their personality and willingness to participate.
Then we preassessed their knowledge with a google form test that we all had contributed to. The most pressing thing I noticed was the range in reading and typing skill level. For some students, this was easy and not a problem. For others, we needed to step in and scribe for them in the interest of time.
The questions on the preassessment test were difficult, a lot of the second graders had never even heard of a lot of the vocabulary used and seemed to express frustration at the test. Nevertheless, they all took it and we are able to use the results.

How I think the students were feeling

Then we transitioned the group to the innovator lab where we had set up activities that relate to our subject area. Our area was engineering so we set up a marble maze game that is a fun way to flex some engineering muscles. I also got the change to observe how the students think logically about problems. At this point we had not come up with an idea for a lesson plan and I can use the information I learned about these students to guide in that process.

Physical Science and Engineering

Chapter 16

“Matter and Motion”

This chapter talked about mass and matter. It talked about the states of matter, atoms, molecules, and chemical changes. It also talked about Newtons laws of motion and the laws about gravity-- and how we defy gravity with airplanes and rockets.

Chapter 17

“Energies and Machines”

This chapter is about energy. It opens by talking about how energy cannot be created or destroyed. Electricity is the result of stored electrons and we can use this energy to power our homes and buildings. Sound and light are wave particles that travel through the air and bounce off of surfaces. This chapter also discusses simple machines and how they work. Something I took away from that topic was how the location of the fulcrum in a lever can change the amount of effort needed to maneuver the machine. An example they gave was the effort needed for a wheelbarrow as opposed to the effort needed to reel a fishing line. They are both level based machines but the energy needed is offset by the fulcrum and level of resistance. 

Chapter 18

“Physical Science Lesson Ideas”

The two previous chapters are rich with content that can be taught in fun and engaging ways. This chapter suggests some ways to bring this information into the classroom. One suggestion that resonated with me was the properties of water unit plan. This would be a very concrete example of matter change even for young students because it is something they can observe in their own life, ice in their water, steam when their caretaker is boiling water on the stove. There are lots of opportunities to build hands-on activities in this unit. One such example is having children build a working circuit board. They could use this lesson to better understand electricity and conduction. 

Life Science

Chapter 13

"Living Things"

Chapter 13 highlighted the differences between living and nonliving things and the classification of living things based on their kingdom, genus species, etc. Plant and Animal kingdom are the kingdoms most people would be familiar with because they interact with members of these kingdoms everyday. The animal kingdom is divided into vertebrates and invertebrates, most people would be familiar with jellyfish as an example of invertebrates and mammals are all vertebrates.

Chapter 14

"The Human Body"

Chapter 14 talked about the human body. It listed all the systems and their functions as well as how they interact and why it’s important to take care of our bodies. 

Chapter 15

"Life Science Lesson Ideas"

Chapter 15 brought both of these topics together to discuss how lessons could be implemented in the classroom. They also provided some preassessment questions to test for gaps in student knowledge. 

Some ideas that resonated with me are:

-Class plants, assign roles and responsibility to students to track the plants growth and take care of it as it grows.

-Class pets, same concept

-A unit plan about genetics and inherited traits that students use to discover who gave them their physical traits, mom, dad, grandma, aunt, etc. 

-A unit plan on the food chain

Earth/Space Science

Chapter 10

“The Earth’s Surface, Atmosphere and Weather”

This chapter introduced earth/ space science by starting with the crust of the earth. This chapter described the movement of the crust (plate tectonics) and the composition of the earth- various rock formations and fossils therein. Then the chapter moved on the oceans and currents and human dependency on the ocean. Finally, the chapter ended in the atmosphere. It discussed weather and the water cycle. This was an information dense chapter. As I read, I thought about the lessons that could be applied to this information with the knowledge of the previous 9 chapters. 

Crust of earth - Students could be given a multisensory hands on activity such as modeling the earth’s layers out of various play-doh colors, using different pieces to represent the different plates. 

Ocean and currents - Students could use google earth to make discoveries about the earth’s oceans. They could use the tool to go on a scavenger hunt looking for various landmarks and taking screen captures of their finds.

Atmosphere- An inquiry based weather lesson could involve students collecting data for a predetermined period of time and then being asked to make a prediction, and continue to record to see if their predictions came true. 

Chapter 11

"The Cosmos"

The Cosmos. This is an exciting chapter. I find space very interesting and I also find that kids agree with me. Did you know that scientists think it rains diamonds on neptune? There is so much to learn about this topic that can get students excited. This chapter is about matter, energy, the solar system and rockets. This would be a great time to use one of the resources we have discussed in previous chapters, worldwidetelescope.org . This tool allows anyone to become an astronomer and search the cosmos in real time. Teachers could prompt a solar system scavenger hunt using this resource. Students could apply what they know about the conditions on other planets and build a structure that could host human life. There are endless possibilities to teach space! 

Chapter 12

“Earth, Space Science Lesson Ideas”

This chapter was filled with a lot of ideas and resources for teaching earth and space science in the classroom. 

Some ideas and resources I loved were:

-Preassess, preassess, preassess. There can be a lot of misconceptions about space, from cartoons or other sources and it is important as an educator to teach children the facts, not reinforce the fiction.

-Draw and label different types of clouds in a cloud log

-Play with a flashlight and different sized spheres to show how the sun’s rays are moved around the planets

-Compare/ contrast planets

-Webquests that use online resources to take students on a journey

Strategies and Techniques, Cont.

Chapter 5

“Strategies and Quickchecks”

This chapter outlines how the space and atmosphere of a science classroom can influence a learner. Having life in the classroom by way of an aquarium or terrarium for children to observe stimulates their visual learning. I loved the idea of having critters in the classroom, children are naturally curious about animals and it could help frame their reference for their science learning. Encouraging scientific language and fostering collaboration are also good ways to create a scientific atmosphere. 

Chapter 6

“Assessment and Understand of Inquiry”

This chapter focused on how to assess inquiry based lessons. This involved a discussion on rubrics. Rubrics allow for a more flexible assessment that grades students on concepts rather than right and wrong answers. I like the idea of rubrics for a creative project or prompt because it alleviates the pressure of right and wrong. Another concept I took away from this chapter was the idea of science notebooks. Using children’s own ideas to informally assess their learning is a great tool. 

Chapter 7

“Integrating Science and Engineering”

This chapter was about how a teacher can integrate science into their curriculum. Many skills children learn in school can easily transfer over to a science lesson. Language skills and math skills are a logical bridge between science. However, social studies and the study of people can lead to questions about how to improve the lives of the people in their community and solve societal problems. Each way to integrate science involves the use of critical thinking and adaptive skills. Having science integrated in other parts of the curriculum will help children build a scientific framework that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives. 

Chapter 8

“Using Technology to Enhance Science Learning"

This chapter discusses how to integrate technology into science lessons. Some examples they provide is the interactive smart boards found in most classrooms and websites that allow you to look through a telescope in real time. I went to the website they suggested to view through a telescope and I was absolutely blown away. This is a free service provided by worldwidetelescope.org and I spent a while just viewing different things. This would be an amazing tool to bring into an earth science study or just as a resource available to kids.

Chapter 9

“Adapting the Science Curriculum”

Science class can be a troubling time for a student who is unable to express themselves in written language. There is a heavy language demand on communicating results and that can also be the factor you are graded on. In order to create a universal design for learning in science, a teacher must consider the unique needs of their students. Flexible grouping, grading on a rubric, and other methods will help students who are struggling to keep up with their peers. On the other end of the spectrum, high-achievers could be given the opportunity to go beyond and apply the information to more applications. Both groups of students would benefit from collaboration.