Learning To Teach Science Overall Experience🤓🧪

 Hello, and welcome back to my blog! 

Due to the end of the semester, this is my final blog entry! I'd like to express my gratitude for reading and following along with me for the past 4 months! It was a lot of fun, and I want to continue blogging in the future! I learned a lot about science, how to teach science, how to be creative, and how to improve as educators. 

Our fieldwork taught us about science inquiry, planning, life science, physical science, earth/space science, science and technology, and energy throughout the semester. I now realize how critical it is for me to include science in my future classroom. Through talks and activities, I want my students to explore, explain, elaborate, assess, and interact. It is critical to allow pupils to think about and solve problems on their own before providing answers. I'm going to let pupils explore all of the many science topics on their own.

I now understand the importance of putting effort into each and every presentation. "The amount of work you put in will demonstrate how much you gain out of it," Dr. Smirnova said, and that is exactly what I tried to accomplish this semester throughout this course. I put forth a lot of effort on all my assignments for the course. I became more creative and willing to experiment with new tools like Canva and Nearpod.

I had a great time in this class, especially with all of my classmates. I gained a lot of insight from each person, as well as from fieldwork lessons and final book trailers. Everyone was quite inventive, demonstrating how much we all care about succeeding. I'm glad I took this Science and Tech course. I learned to love technology tools so much and I will carry it on with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you Dr. Smirnova for everything! :)

This is me signing off thank you all for reading (:

Chapters 11 + 12 Reflection: Matter & Technology 📱

 Hello everyone and welcome to my last blog about the textbook!

In chapter 11, I learned about matter and motion. Matter is anything that occupies space and has mass. Matter consists of elements, compounds, and mixtures, and it is neither created or destroyed. Newton's law of motion describes how the motion of an object will change as a result of the application of forces. 

In chapter 12, I learned all about energy, technology, and engineering. Earth's systems are all about energy flow. Energy is the capacity to do work or effect change. Energy transfer allows us to harass the energy to sustain life or to even run our computers. 

Thank you for reading my blog everyone!

Chapters 9 + 10 Reflection: Living Things & The Human Body🌿🫁

 Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. I am here to reflect on chapters 9 and 10 of our textbook.

In Chapter 9, I learned all about living things. Living things do and have many things such as, a compose of cells, they use energy that they produce, they grow, inherit traits, respond to stimuli, are able to reproduce, maintain a state of internal balance which is homeostasis, and they adapt to their environment. One thing the textbook made me understand about life was to acknowledge the basic needs of all living organisms. 

In chapter 10, I learned all about the human body. I learned that energy transfer is inherent in all the life support systems. We have our digestive system which converts food into energy or cell-building material. We have our skeletal- muscular system which transfers the energy into mechanical energy that provides our body with its shape and structure, and it also gives us the ability to move. Our respiratory system secures the oxygen necessary for the conversion of food to energy and it eliminates carbon dioxide. The nervous system receives stimuli and carries them to the brain. This whole chapter discusses the different functions of our human body. If you ever get a chance read this chapter to learn so much more about the body.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Chapter 5 + 6 Reflection : Assessment + Integration🎍

 Welcome back to my blog everyone! I will be discussing chapters 5 and 6 of Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach  by DeRosa and Abruscato.

Chapter 5 talks about assessments. There are two forms of assessment, formal and informal. Informal assessments are used more than formal assessments. Informal assessments are quick and easier to figure out where students thinking is at while the teacher is giving the lesson. Some types of informal assessments include exit tickets, checklists, and games. Formal assessments are given at the end of a lesson to see what the students learned overall. Some types of informal assessments include tests, quizzes, and projects. 

Chapter 6 talks about the subjects science is connected too, such as math, social studies, language arts, music, art, and so on. The one subject science was integrated with in this chapter was social studies.  DeRosa and Abruscato states," social studies and science/engineering can easily be integrated because societal problems, in many cases, lend themselves to real-life-inquiry-based experiences for children". This was interesting to read because I never realized how you can integrate a subject within another subject. 

These two chapters gave me new insights that I plan to carry with me in my future career.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 3 + 4 Reflection: Lesson Plans + Classroom Environment Oh My!📚🗂

Hello everyone welcome back to my blog!

I'm back and I'm going to share with you all what I learned from chapters 3 and 4 in Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach  by DeRosa and Abruscato.

Chapter 3 really dove into lesson planning, and I learned the difference between unit and lesson plans. Unit plans are long and they focus on specific topics, and lesson plans are created from the unit plan and they are shorter. There a 6 components in developing good lesson plans, and they are :identify prior knowledge, identify what you want the students to learn, objectives, development, assessments, and accommodations. These key components will help in creating a good lesson.

Chapter 4 focused on classroom environment. Classroom environment does not just refer to what decorations you have in the room, but the workspace you create for yourself and your students. Some good techniques to create good classroom environment include posters with words of encouragement, a class pet, having students take charge and assigning different roles in the classroom. All the things can help promote a fun and engaging learning environment. Collaboration is another big component of a good classroom environment. We want our students to work together, and modeling this in the classroom will go a long way.

These two chapters helped me to learn what it is I want my classroom to be like in the future. I want a positive classroom environment, and one my students feel comfortable in. All the steps I learned form these chapters will help me have a good classroom environment.

Thank you for reading talk to you all soon!

 

Chapter 1 + 2 Reflection: Inquiry 💡+ Discovery 🌎 Learning

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog about my chapter 1+ 2 reflection.

Chapter 1 of our book Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach by DeRosa and Abruscato. Chapter one talks about what science is. We all know what science is and we have learned it in school, whether we took Earth Science or Chemistry. Unfortunately, science is often the forgotten about subject in school. Science is one of the most crucial subjects in school. It is beneficial for students to learn what science is. Students should be able to explore new concepts through experiments or discover ideas through inquiry based learning.  It is important to build students' prior knowledge about science. This will allow students to make learning meaningful and relevant. This is how we spark inquiry in students. Student participation is crucial in inquiry based learning. Chapter one definitely gave me insight into the beginning steps to inquiry and discovery, and those are some things I knew very little about

Chapter 2 dives deeper into the idea of discovery learning. Discovery learning is a way of teaching and learning that helps students make connections to the real world. It helps students create new discoveries when learning new topics to help them understand it more. Promoting this kind of learning in the classroom can help students gain more knowledge about their own world, while also gaining insights about the topic they are being taught.

Chapters 1 and 2 were very informative. I will take this new knowledge and use it in my own classroom to motivate my students to wonder and discover! 

Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach, Donald A. DeRosa & Joseph Abruscato 2019

Thank you for reading my blog. I will speak to all of you very soon!

Pandemic Pedagogy Conference 🌿

 Hello everyone welcome back to my blog!

I attended all three sessions of the Pandemic Pedagogy Conference beginning Friday November 12th through Sunday November 14th. I attended Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson 11/12, Dr. Nilay Yajnik 11/13, Joy Blake 11/13 , Jodie Fahey 11/13, Ramesh Sharma 11/14, Megan Jackson+Lindsay Byer 11/14, Sara Mursic 11/14, and Dr. Joshua Patterson's (both) 11/14 workshops. Throughout all these workshops I learned many different and new things that I can bring with me as a future educator into my own classroom. One speaker that really resonated with me was Joy Blake. Blake's presentation was titled, "42 F's: Motivating the Remote Student", and this title was used to describe the 42 students out of the 54 who received an F in her class. I thought that was very clever! This presentation really allowed me to gain an understanding of different techniques I can use in my own virtual classrooms to motivate the remote students. Blake focused on 5 main concepts that will help to motivate a remote student and they were: focus shift, forget the past, feel for the student, find what works, and forge a bond. During the workshop, we discussed how COVID has shifted the way we learn in an immense way, and we are now unable to do the things we used to do, like having everyone present in the classroom instead, now if the class is on a Zoom meet a student can forget about it or just sleep through class, which would not happen if we were completely in person. Before we were all used to going to school in person, but then we had to adjust to online learning. Everyone had to learn how to use technology tools such as Zoom or even something as simple as Nearpod, and some of us may have never even heard of these tools, I know I did not until online learning became our new "normal". Another thing discussed was how we should think like the student and take into account how they feel during online learning. For example, we all know technology is a hassle sometimes especially when trying to get a good internet connection to be able to join the class, and we have to try and resonate with the student and understand that things do happen, we are all human. Blake also discussed how we should forge a bond with our students. We want to keep students engaged with what we're teaching, and the best way to do that is to add things to our lessons that are enjoyed by the students. For example, we can make Fridays, "Fun Fridays" and have a day of fun activities that relate to the topic we are teaching. The lesson I learned during this workshop was to expect the unexpected. COVID happened unexpectedly and we all had to learn to adjust to this "new normal" by learning to use new technology tools or even something as simple as learning to create an interactive Google slides presentation. From this presentation moving forward I will definitely take a look at all the technology resources Joy provided us with to see what I like and learn to use it to incorporate it into my classroom someday. Hopefully in the future learning is not the way it is now, but we have to expect the unexpected and just always be prepared for what's next. Joy Blake did an amazing job getting her message across to me. This Pandemic Pedagogy Conference was really a great way to hear insights from people all around the world and I enjoyed it!

Thank you for reading my blog!