October 28, 2008

I guess what i have to say about today was that is was not a very productive day, due to technical difficulties. Once we got started Madddy and Kenzie discussed their presentation. They did they presentation called Elephant Toothpaste. It dealt with add certain materials to dry yeast and we were able to make predictions and observe what happened when we mixed the materials togehter. Nate and Ashley had a really good topic. They discussed what happened when something like feathers touches oil and what it does when it touches water afterwards. This would be a goood experiement to do with middle schoolers. Ellie and Lourie had us make Oublic. Brittany, Brianna, and Andrea also discussed bottle rockets and the safety precautions needed to make and experiment with bottle rockets.

October 23, 2008

Today we just observed different kinds of lesson plans from our Colleagues. The first group did a presentation on Mixtures. They first asked a couple of assessment questions, to activate our back ground knowledge about mixtures. For example, what is a mixture and from the four which one is not a mixture. We also had to name our own mixtures. The group also had us make a jello mixture and observe what happened and what was going to happen. The second group did an activity on habitats and explained how we can make habitat boxes with our students, along with the different safety measures. Angie and Kelli did an experiment on teaching students the differences between sinking and floating. We also make predictions and created our own hypothesis's. Brooke and Megan did an experiment with mixing oil and water together. Do you they mix together. No, they don't and if you add a couple drops of food coloring you will see that the water and oil are still separated, but the food coloring goes straight to the water part of the mixture. Whitney and Danielle did their presentation for Kindergarteners on living and non living things. They had us look through different magazines and make a collage of the different things that are livign and which are not living. All of these activites will great to use in our future classroom, especially in our science labs.

October 21st, 2008

In today's lecture, we started off by asking questions. Dr. Ezrailson made a statement that it is important for our students to answer questions and understand the material, which i also believe to be very important. We also discussed upcoming projects, quizzes, and the reading guide which are due within the next week or so. As a class, we spent alot of time discussing the reading guide and the questions it asked. For example, what our opinions were of our scientific learning was in our elementary years and in our internship placements. The reading guide also discusses questions from the reading of chapters 5 and 6. To end the class we did an experiement called "The Leaping Egg;" we used a ping pong ball. We take a plastic (never glass) cup and place a small funnel inside the cup. Within the small funnel we place our ping pong ball and try blowing at it at different angles to see how far the ball would go and what was causing the ball to shoot in those different directions. We found out that the ball shoots out of the glass and funnel because of the exerted force we are placing on the ball. But what happens if we blow on it in different ways? If we blow on the near side of the cup the ball will shoot forward, but if you blow on the far side of the cup the ball will shoot back at us, because of the air current and pressure we force on the ball.

October 14th and October 16

In these two class days, we basically had work days for our Video Midterm project. Carrie Dunn and I are doing an activity with the class on taste buds. We will be experimenting with the different taste buds on the tongue, whether it be salty, bitter, sour, or sweet. Then we will also be showing a video on things not to do with your students during a science experiment. When the we are closing with our hands-on activity we will be having the class chose their favorite flavors and intergrating math into our lesson by building a class graph, called "Which Jelly Belly is on the Tip of your Tongue." On Oct. 16th we also discussed the Science Fair Judging Day, and the requirements needed for that day.

Cyber Bee October 9th

For Thursday assignment we were asked to look around the "Cyber Bee" website. I thought it was very interesting, I really liked the different cirriculum ideas. It also has alot of different activities on the interent, like treasure hunts. I tried it out for a little bit, and it was really intersting. I didn't really see anything directed towards science. This program would be so helpful when i start out my own classroom, it has some great activities, articles, how to's, and treasure hunts.

October 7th, 2008 and Mirror Image activity

In today's lecture we learned alot about safety and how we need to use it in our classrooms. If we do not use safety in our classrooms, it could potentially be very dangerous. We need to teach our students how to protect their clothing, eyes, and make sure we have directions placed within the classroom. It is very important for the students to know those safety percautions, they can easily learn them by signs in the classroom or safety quizzes. We as teachers should always be ALERT, we should also have an organized and disciplined classroom, and know that not every activity will work. We also did an activity today in class, it was called Mirror Image. To begin the activity you should have students turn to the mirror and try to write names, phrases, or shapes in the mirror image. Each student would be given a notecard and a mirror. First they would poke a hole in their notecard and put their pen or pencil in that hole. Without looking at what you are writing, you should be looking in the mirror and try to write something in the mirror image. It is extremely hard. After experimenting students san share their results as a small group.

October 2nd, 2008 and Plato's Allegory of the Cave

In today's discussion we started off with questions as always. We then started with a powerpoint on how children's mind's develop over time and how we can use this to teach of future students. We also discussed how should we know how one can recognize the knowledge that a child has. We should base lessons and theories on how children learn, and take into account their culture and hertitage. For our class activity, which went along with the movie we watched, we did Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In this activity each group was given four black boxes, with a mystery object inside of it. We all had to make assumptions on what we thought was in the box and what we thought it was like. We then wrote our assumptions doen on a piece of paper, and then correlated all of our answers together to get a couple solid assumptions about what we thought was in the "mystery boxes." Our group guessed that the four boxes held marbles in them, because of the way they rolled within the boxes. But we were also asked to predict and guess what else was inside, but what we didn't know was that there were little square objects attached to the box, kind of like an obstacle course or something. As a class we discussed our predictions and found out the answers.

NSTA Web Seminar

Since I was unable to attend the web seminar on the announced day, I am doing a post seminar assignment for Dr. Cathy Ezrailson. Through this presentation, I learned that stars are made up of about 80 percent of Hydrogen, about 30 percent of Helium, and about 2 percent of a variety of different types of metals. By looking at the models presented through out the presentation, we can see that stars are a hot and glowing balls of gas. We are also trying to find an equilibrium between gravity and energy. As the pressure if trying to force its way out, the gravity is trying to force its way in hence we are trying to discover a balance or a state of equilibrium. As Dr. Ezrailson said during the presentation, when we are thinking about how stars are formed, we should consider the mass of the initial gas, the temperature, and the speed. I learned that the life and death of a star is dependent on whether how much gas life they have and how quickly they use their gas through out their life span. There are also different ways to classify stars. We can classify stars by their temperature, composition, and brightness (low or high). If we were wondering how to figure out the energy we can receive from light, we could use a formula to find out a photons energy and frequency. The formula is E=hv, which is very confusing to me. I do not understand the scientific terms that allow me to go further into that formula. It would be interesting to see how the formula plays out and how I could incorporate it into my classroom, and teach my students about light energy and how we can get it from the stars. I also found it very interesting how planets form around the stars, this would also be an interesting topic of discussion for an elementary classroom. We could eventually have the students make their own solar system, and as we slowly build we can talk about the f ormations and other aspects of planets and stars.

September 30th, 2008

We had our class online today! For our online assignment, we were asked to answer questions from chapter (modules) 3 and 4. We were asked to share our ideas on how educators harness young children's shared base of understanding and skill to help them learn science, how misconceptions help children learn science, and a couple other questions about the scenarios that are placed in each module. Through these questions we learned that children are natural learners/scientists, and they are always ready to learn at that young of an age. They also have a rich knowledge of how the world works and using cause and effect. By using hands on experiments we can help put science into a different perspective and help them build those great connections. By learning from their misconceptions, students are able to use those a stepping stones. Those misconceptions can lead to one big idea and they can build off of their ideas and also make more connections. We also to analyze a couple of class experiements and how they were effective and what we would change about them. For this assignment we also got to put ourselves in the shoes of parents, and how we would like to be incorporated into our children's learning. From reading the chapters (modules) we can learn alot and can get a lot of great ideas to use in our classroom instruction.

September 25th, 2008

Today we were to have an Online Seminar, I was unable to attend because of a conflict.. I will be making this assignment up later.