End of semester wrap up

This semester has been a short one, but one that was full of excitement and projects. There were a lot of opportunities to teach and collaborate with my peers. I felt confident and nervous about this semester, because it is my last semesters before student teaching and I know that I feeling the pressure. I was excited about the field work and going to work in the school in Newburgh. This is a school that I have never had the pleasure of working in, so I was excited for the new experience.

I have learned a lot about lesson planning this semester and different ways to go about it.I have witnessed groups teach in front of the sixth grade class and in front of their peers. I have gotten to teach in front of a sixth grade class and to my peers, and I find the less stressful teaching is to the sixth grade class. I had the experience of working with four other teacher candidates that were just as dedicated and excited to teach as myself. I really liked the group I got and I liked that we all seemed to get a long well. I had a lot of fun working with these girls and creating lesson plans. I liked that we were able to collaborate with each other and bounce ideas off of each other. 

This semester we were able to look at ourselves in the beginning of school year to see how science effects us and if we liked it. The majority of class said that they did not enjoy science growing up and that they were not a fan, but I have a feeling now that the semester is over a lot of my peers have changed their mind about science. I know that I have. I thought that science was going to be hard, and uninteresting and difficult, but I actually found it a lot of fun and engaging. I have enjoyed this class so much and learning about science that I have started to do a Science Experiment night at home. Every week one night I do some kind of experiment to keep my love for science alive and my knowledge flowing. 

I am going to be sad to say good-bye to this semester and to this class. I have met some really great people and have worked closely with some of the greatest people. I am glad that I was able to share this experience with them, and I wish them all the best of luck in the future!

Working on a practice EdTPA...

This semester the biggest thing I have accomplished is my practice edTPA. This experience is one that I am going to remember for when I do my real edTPA this Spring. I know that it is not an document that you can do within a few hours, but it is something that should take time and a real look at. I know through this class that starting early as possible is the way to accomplish everything and do it with less stress. edTPA is a three task (four for elementary education) document that teacher candidates have to complete and fill out. I have heard so much bad stuff about edTPA and lots of rumors about it, but I have not hear many positive things. I hope that this practice will help me succeed in passing the real edTPA.

Working through the edTPA section by section and task by task has really helped me understand the questions that they are asking. I was able to work with my group on this and that was great for bouncing ideas off of each other and creating our documents that fit us. I like that this was an assignment, because it gave us a chance before it is the final document to work with others and to understand the questions better. I think that the hardest part is the assessment. It is not hard to assess yourself teaching or lesson planning, but it is hard to assess in a positive light. There are always things that I see that I can do better or different that may work much better. It is hard to find the one or two things that you've done well while you are watching yourself giving a lesson on video tape. I have found that assessing myself is very hard and a skill that I will have to work on so I can do it properly for the real edTPA. I think that the hardest part of the entire assessment is that someone else will be reading it, and there is always that feeling of what if I missed something in my own assessment. Although, there is a lot of dread when it comes to the edTPA there is some valid points in it. I like that they make you assess your teaching and I feel like this is a big part of teaching. I like that it makes you assess how you did on planning the lesson and how the lesson really panned out. One teacher gave me great advice, He told me to make a chart of what will go wrong, what may go wrong and what it is that I am going to do to solve that problem. I found this very helpful when planning for the lesson for the sixth grade science class. The hardest problem to solve was not having enough time to finish the lesson.  

Learning through groups

Learning to teach through cooperative learning lessons was an interesting thing. I was confused at first about how this would work, but after participating in it, I feel like this is a great way to teach. I thought the concept of having a group but working with another group to teach the first group was confusing, but after going through the process it was a lot of fun. I really liked that I was able to learn with others about the prosita kingdom. I thought it was great to work with a few other people to create a power point to teach my first group all about the kingdom. I thought that the small group teaching was great and it kept everyone on track and focused. I feel like sometimes students get zoned out when it is presentation after presentation. The pressure is "off" for those who don't like to talk in front of the class, because they get to teach in small groups. I think that its a different way to teach, but its an effective way. I thought that it was a lot of fun to learn about the other kingdoms and I forgot a lot of the information that I learned in middle school. I really can't wait to use this type of lesson in the classroom. I could see using this in my unit plan on rocks. Having groups of 3 with the topic of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. The groups would meet with their peers who have the same topic and research their rock. Then the groups would meet and teach each other about the other rocks. I think that this would work in a school that has the proper technology to support it. The students having the internet at their fingertips would make this project better, because they get to use resources outside of their book and thus coming up with more interesting facts or discoveries about rocks. 

I really like this type of lesson because every group member has a job and a task that they have to complete. I like that it is hands on and engaging to students. It is something different and I like the idea of having the students work on their social skills. Working together is a skill that students will have to learn how to do to get a job, so I support getting them used to it at a young age. I think that this is a great way to get students to work collaborative and to get them to engage with each other. This would be great for students who have trouble engaging with other students. It would be great for beginning of the year ice breakers as well, because the students will get to know each other quicker. Having a classroom where students are able to work collaboratively would be idea for me. 

Key assessment 7: Direct lesson

Working with a sixth grade science class has given me some great experience and some not so great experiences. I have seen the mistakes that could happen if just one thing has gone wrong or if time runs out before your lesson is over. I think that this experience has taught me a lot and I will use it to help myself prepare and write lessons for the future.

Over all I believe that the lessons went well, and with only the time managing an issue during the Inquiry lesson. During the direct lesson the students seemed to be engaged and able to follow along. Although, I would change a few things on the hand out that was given out. I did not like how we used the word magma when it should have been lava. I thought that the hand out looked like it was easy to follow until the students were having trouble following it. There were certain parts during the lesson that the students didn't realize that a fill in the blank word was needed, and I think that was because we didn't think to underline or bold them. This would have been helpful to the students who were having trouble following along. There were two students with learning disabilities and I thought that the lesson would accommodate them, but the fill in the blank did not suite the students as I thought that they would. I thought it would be easier then writing a full sentence, but it was confusing to the class. I would change this for next time so that it was a combination of both, and I would explain that to the class before starting the organizer. For the guided practice part of the lesson due to time I had to cut out a slide, and looking back this was a bad choice. This slide would have assisted the students in answering the questions for guided practice. I thought that the students would have understood the cycle, but this was not the case. This was something that I knew that I had to review in the next lesson.

During the introduction of teaching I asked a lot of questions about the last lesson, and I tied it into what the students would be learning about today. This gave me some great feedback to see what the students understood and what needed to be gone over again and again. During the one slide I had a back up plan to have the class say the words together, and to say the definition, but when I taught this information and asked a question almost the entire class could answer the questions, so I decided that it wasn't needed, but I was happy to have it as a back up. I put in my teaching some checking up on understanding to see where the students were at after teaching certain things, and this was great because we did have to go over a few things, but other things the students got. I noticed that the class didn't understand the rock cycle and so the next lesson was all about the rock cycle so the students had a clearer understanding of how it worked. I also ended the lesson with asking the students to write how they feel about what they have learned so far and write a few things they learned or a few things they were confused about so I could go back over them. It was overwhelmingly a high score for me because only a handful of students were having trouble, and the next lesson was designed to help answer and support those learners.

Some of the lesson was adapted to engage and support all of the learners in the classroom. I used fill in the blank for the students who had learning disabilities so they didn't have as much to write, but wrote the key words. More text was on the power point for the students who need that to learn rather then just hearing it.

The students were given homework that was designed to make them think and problem solve. The students were given a blank document and asked to fill it out according to what they had learned today. This came back with a positive result.

While teaching the students I used a stoplight system to get feedback from the class. The students did well with this and It helped me figure out where the students stood on content knowledge. During direct lesson there was not much interaction between each student during the direct instruction. I believe that the lesson went over well and that the students really understood the ideas and concepts that were discussed.

Science fairs worth it or not?

Science Fairs are they worth it?

There is a lot of controversial about science fairs and if they do in fact help students or not. Now this picture above is a typical picture of what you think of when you think of a science fair. This is what I always thought of as a science fair. I never participated in a science fair because my school did not have science fairs. My school district started to do more science fairs after I was out of the elementary building so my brothers were able to participate in them. I always loved watching them make their project and their poster about their project. I never got to attend one because they were during school hours and I was not allowed to miss class to see one in action. 

There are many different reasons for why science fairs are all the rage and great for students to participate in and compete in. First of all it makes the student think about science and wonder about science. Once the student has a wonder they can use the scientific method to develop it into a project. 

 The Science as Inquiry Standard in NSES includes the abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry and understanding about scientific inquiry. This can be done through a science fair project. It is essential an science inquiry and so it make sense that science fairs would be used for this.

Science fair projects are projects that students have gone through each step in the Scientific method and have thought of a wonder, a question, a hypothesis, an experiment (to determiner if the hypothesis is correct or or not), and lots of research to present to a person. This is not so different from students writing research papers, but it is physical instead of just paper and most students are required to have their data which is all on paper. The data is what backs up the students hypothesis and it is the basis of their project.Science fair projects are a part of the inquiry process. It is a hands on step by step project students do to collect, and analyze data.

Science fairs in elementary schools are for more than just the students who participate in the projects. Science fairs are designed to get other students interested in science and to help spread knowledge. Some students do better with the hands on work over the classroom work so this gives the students a chance to do both, because research is required. The operational stages according to Piaget's theory of Cognitive development influence the types of science fair projects that students should be doing. He says that there are five appropriate projects for elementary students : 1. Demonstrations of practical products. 2. Models of cycles such as the water cycle or the rock cycle. 3. Illustrations of science concepts (magnetism) and how it relates to a phenomena. 4.Collections that display compare variety (insects). 5. Investigations that show changes on a system (plant growth).

I think where the big problems comes in is when students have their parents help them because they are too competitive to lose. These are the science projects that are outside of that five that Piaget's theory suggests. This is where it should be clear that an outside source was involved in the students project.

I read an article that said that "It's hard for them (the kids) to really figure out what is realistically doable, and what projects will give you good hard data, what projects won't make the kids and parents crazy!" (paragraph 4). Parents do have a challenging role in these science fair projects because they want to help their child succeed. This is where the line gets crossed by parents and some will go from guiding and helping their child to doing it for their child and that is where it is believed that Science fair projects become unhelpful to students.

Origins of Science fairs!

Science fairs can be traced back to William Emerson Ritter and Edward W. Scripps. These two men created a  Science Services news service in 1921 to keep the public informed of the latest science advancements. In 1942 with Westinghouse they established The Science Talent Search for high school students a competition to get students to pursue careers in science or engineering. Science Services is still around today,but they are better known as Society for Science and the Public. (The link is live) They have renamed their contest in 1998 to Intel Science Talent Search. About 10 million students from grades k-12 participate in science fairs every year according to ScienceBuddies.org. 

I read some good stuff about science fairs, but I think the best thing for teachers to do is to assign the students a science fair project in steps. Every student will have due dates for each part of the Scientific method that way the teacher can grade that and not the end product that a parent may have been helping with (or doing). This would also help support those students who need a due date and steps to projects. This also gives teachers some assessment of how well the student understand each step of the scientific method, and isn't that the point of the whole thing? 

Science Fair project ideas!

As I am researching about science fairs and their effectiveness I keep coming across pages that give you millions of ideas for science fair projects. I think that this would be helpful to students who are unsure of what to do, but at the same time it has to be overwhelming to look at all these projects and pick one that makes you want to do it. I would like to think that every child has one wonder and that wonder can become a science fair project, but I know that is not always the case. I believe however that these sites are good for students who may need help with the creativity flow. I could also see these sites being good for students who are stuck on their project, either it's not working out like it should or they came to a dead end for suggestions and ideas of how to make it work or to see that it just doesn't work.

Conclusion on Science fair projects.

I think that science fairs are great, but I also think that they should be done in steps with due dates for the students. This not only keeps the students on track but it gives the teacher a better understanding and idea of how well the student understands each concept. I think that doing it this way will help the parents with the overwhelming anxiety of the project it's self. I believe that Science fairs are great ways to have the students really understand the concepts of the scientific method and go through the inquiry process for themselves. Students learn better by doing so why not let the students experiment with their wonders. I think that this is a wonderful thing to do and can be adopted in classrooms in a smaller sense. Students could come up with wonders and try to research them, and this could be used in science stations.

Here is a link to help you plan your Science fair for an elementary class!

Choi, J. (2015). Science fairs aren’t actually preparing your kids to do anything. Retrieved November 22, 2016, from http://qz.com/367007/science-fairs-arent-actually-preparing-your-kids-to-do-anything/