In my field classroom last week, my students were learning about weather in their social studies unit-which is directly related to science. As a teacher, I would take this opportunity to teach cross-curriculum, pointing out how many aspects of science can be seen in other subjects, especially in social studies, and I would go more in depth about the science aspect of this. The students listened as the teacher read from the class "big book", and they heard several different terms defined, including weather and various subtopics of this, and they read a story about storms-learning about hailstorms, thunderstorms, blizzards, floods, volcanoes (wind storms), etc. The students are rather familiar with the basic weather we see here in Michigan (snow, sun, wind, fog, rain) as they live it everyday, and additionally there is a "weather chart" in the class, of which the kids record their weather observations each day. The kids were given a homework assignment last Monday from my CT to watch the weather sometime that night or the next night and try to find out what the weather would be like the rest of the week. On Wednesday, when my teacher asked if anyone did the assignment, several kids responded that it was sunny, and much to my surprise (and I was VERY impressed!), one of our students raised his hand and said "On channel 55, the weather man, he's called the meteorologist, predicted, that's when you guess, that it would be sunny today and sunny tomorrow and sunny with clouds on Friday, and today its going to be 69 degrees"--VERY detailed and impressive for a six year old kid! This brought our class into discussions about the terms meteorologist (and his job) and measuring temperatures (degrees, etc).
In social studies, the kids learned through a big book reading about such things as: mountain, plain, lake, river, ocean, natural resource, and national parks. While they didn't go very in depth with this lesson today, in was a great introduction to a lesson about landforms and the earth--sounds very fun!
Later in the month, the kids will be planting flowers that butterflies are attracted to and creating a butterfly garden, which will be a great science lesson for them that will be so engaging and fun for them-I wish I would still be around so I could see them do this, I know they will just love it!

*FYI--I responded to your comment about the post from the in-class activity, but in case you didn't see the response from awhile back, that post is below aways in purple font. Thanks!

This week in field placement my class continued their science/social studies unit on the earth. They learned about earth day, and how we can celebrate our earth. The students reviewed the "3R's", which they have been learning about, and talked about how recyclying is taking items to be remade into new items, that reusing is to use something over again, and reducing is to use less of something. They talked about how their families and the school recycles cans, newspapers, and plastic bags as examples, and how they reused bags, boxes, scrap paper, wood, jars, etc. The class had a discussion about how they could reduce their use of certain items, and came up with several great ideas including-turning lights off when they aren't in a room, not letting water run unnecessarily, using less paper, etc. This was a great discussion because it really encouraged inquiry from the kids and they were engaged and actively contributed to the lesson, came up with their own ideas, activated prior knowledge, and connected the lesson to real world examples-and also showed how they could connect what they learned to their own life in such simple ways. They also talked about celebrating the earth by planting trees, picking up trash, and not polluting-which are all ways that they personally can help take care of the earth. The kids enjoyed this lesson greatly. There classroom is currently decorated with hanging "earth people"-the kids made portraits of themselves from construction paper with cut out globes as their tummies-cute! The kids are also currently working on constructing/writing their own earth books, titled "Earth First!". The kids fill in the blanks with their own ideas to responses such as "I will help the earth by________" and "I will save the earth by_________".

April 7 In-Class Activity

Scenario #8 from the vignettes we reviewed in class today is an activity I would not choose to use in my classroom. In this scenario, the teacher teaches a recycling unit by presenting important information about recycling to her students. Recycling is such a broad topic that can be presented in so many interesting, engaging, and applicable ways--to simply dictate the key information to the students seems like such a poor method to teach-- not to mention boring and a quick way to disinterest students in recycling (which can be made very fun and in turn, promote helping the environment if kids are positively influenced by this topic!)
This teaching method would not be meaningful for the students. Recycling is an everyday 'real life' activity-so it should be presented as such and connected to the student's lives. This lesson should be interactive and engaging, and well as inquiry-promoting. I would teach this lesson instead by asking students if they know what recycling is, and weather their families or anyone they know recycles, and if so what items do they recycle. I will then ask them how they think recycling works, and scaffold this to make sure the information is presented correctly. I would then share interesting statistics about recycling to draw interest from the class (i.e. how much money can be saved, what will happen if we don't recycle, percentage of people who do recycle, etc). I would let the students research recycling and allow them to make classroom posters to remind students to recycle things such as paper and pop cans- which we could then hang from our classroom and keep recycling bins there (or in the halls to encourage other classes to recycle), encouraging them to come up with their own recycling ideas. We could donate pop can money to a charity, which would promote giving as well. I may also do an activity where students bring in old material and recycle it to make something useful-which would be fun and allow the students to generate their own creations.
Another scenario that simply focused on rote learning and therefore I wouldn't choose to teach in my own classroom is scenario #1, which states that “You, as a teacher, are teaching a unit on space. Each day during the unit you read to the class from a chapter book about the solar system. After reading about a particular planet, you ask students to make a statement on the board for inclusions in a letter sent home to parents at the end of the day.” This is another boring, unengaging activity for students. Instead, I would allow kids to explore online individually to see what information they could find about our solar system, which we then could discuss as a whole class lesson and clear up any misconceptions. I would promote inquiry by asking them find ways in which scientists have discovered these truths about the solar system, then let them do a project where they build a model of some part of the solar system and explain how it works.

I have no blog entry for this week because my students have been on spring break!

At my placement last week, my first graders read a story during reading about a robot that a little girl made out of junk that she had saved up and of things she gathered from the junkyard. This story related to the concept of reusing, which ties well into science for the kids as they will soon be beginning a unit about "reducing, reusing, and recycling" during science lessons. The children discovered how a little girl could use old junk to make something new and useful, as well as ways that some materials/objects can be used for different purposes.

In class last week, my field partner (from another section of TE402) taught her science lesson to the class. She taught on living vs. nonliving things. She started by reviewing the five senses (the intro lesson I had taught prior to her lesson), then discussed living things as things that can move around on their own and that need food and water, and non-living things as those which cannot/do not. I thought that this lesson was okay, but would have been better if she described living things in another way. My CT had to let the kids know that living things could also be plants, which is a huge category of living things-the kids are only in first grade, so they don't necessarily understand completely that plants need "food" as we (people) or animals do. She had the kids circle which thing was living on a worksheet-there was a picture of a crayon and a picture of a person. The kids have already learned about living vs nonliving things by other MSU seniors in the classroom, so they grasped the material easily and the lesson did go smoothly, though I thought it should have been more detailed, and more complex for the kids as they are capable and ready to learn more about this topic.

Case Study: Science Video Response

Mallory Adamson
March 31st, 2008
TE 401-Science

Videos: Case Studies in Science Education

The first video I chose to watch was of Jennie, a kindergarten teacher. The video explored her teaching methods as she designed grade-level appropriate science activities. She has taught in a suburban school for the past twenty years, so she is experienced with teaching using inquiry. Experiences in science that will be rememberable and useful in the future for her students are how she wants to teach the subject to her class, so she uses a variety of meaningful, hands on activities when teaching science. She understands that each child comes to school with a vast variety of background knowledge, which she assesses by having her students make predictions when discussing new topics in the classroom. One activity I liked that Jennie used, and may use in the future myself, was in teaching about how leaves change color and how the leaves fall and how trees change between seasons was to have her students go on a nature walk outside and collect various leaf samples. The kids categorized a huge chart in which they made associations between the leaves and organized the samples into different categories and attempted to label the leaves by tree types. This was very engaging, active and meaningful for the kids as well as relative and appropriate for the kindergarten age group. Jennie explained why leaves change, When a child gives an inaccurate observation/research, she asks the rest of the class “do you agree?” to try to get the correct answer from the students. Though it is difficult to tell a child he or she is wrong, it is important to distinguish correct answers and this was a very ‘soft’ way of doing so, so it seemed to be an appropriate method for her to use. By allowing her students to get experience making close observations, she helped them prepare for the science they will use in the future. When she met with the principal and other teachers, she realized she was taking on a lot of information to teach. I think it is very important to address all of the meaning goals, but that quality of learning is more important than the quantity of information children receive, therefore I wouldn’t try to introduce as many new concepts and topics to children so quickly, especially at such a young age when every aspect of school is a developmental task to these children.
The second video I watched was of Jean, who is a third grade teacher. The video portrayed her teaching strategies as she explored ways to teach science to diverse learners as she has several special needs students in her classroom. As she avoided science when she was a student, she now tries to make science engaging for her students, so she tries to teach in methods other than in using a textbook. One thing she exemplified throughout her teaching that I liked and will use as a teacher is that she motivated her students to learn by creating meaningful and enjoyable science activities and she truly worked to make sure her students had a solid background understanding of new topics when they were introduced, so students wouldn’t be lost as the information developed, and she made sure at the end of a topic that her students had a solid understanding of the material as well. She did this through examples, demonstrations, inquiry-based questioning and discussions. She would have the kids explain their responses with reasoning and asking meaningful questions to fill in gaps in their understanding. Multi-sensory science activities are a strategy Jean uses, which helps students learn. Concepts are introduced in several ways, such as hands-on, pictures, text, videos, etc. to help students with different needs to learn best, which I think is beneficial even in classrooms that aren’t very special needs based and learning-ability diverse, as all students learn differently. Jean also teaches her students to collect data, and look at concepts from different views, and accept other students differences and varying responses, as science is experimental and students can come up with very different conclusions. She challenges students to use inquiry by having them experiment with unknown substances, which is engaging for kids as they loved the aspect of the “mystery”, and kids had to collect and record their data and closely observe and test their data, which I thought was structurally strong and very engaging for the kids too.
The last video I watched was of Sarah, a fifth grade teacher who works to ensure her students wholly grasp core science concepts. Her pendulum activities were engaging and inquiry-based, as students were exploring on their own and able to make a vast amount of discoveries through self-exploration, which upon completion, they discuss and connect to real-life examples and explain how pendulums work. I like that she gave the kids a chance to explore on their own, because they were capable of completing tasks on their own, came up with ideas and discoveries the teacher hadn’t realized, and ultimately were more active learners and gained more from the lesson because of their freedom to explore after the teacher scaffolded the direction of their learning, which I think is an awesome teaching method. She teaches her students that there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” in science, and explorations may need to be conducted several times and various results may come about, which is also beneficial for students so they feel in control and capable of their learning. By not modifying or correcting the students experiments, the kids were able to develop their own learning which was also beneficial.

Last week in class the only form of science I observed was during reading, when the class read a story entitled "Pelican was Hungry". This book was about a pelican, of course, and described his habitat near the ocean then went on to discuss various animals he thought he could eat but that turned out to be not the type of food a pelican eats. Dolphins, turtles, sharks, birds and a mouse were some of the animals introduced before the pelican finally finds a fish-exactly the food he likes to eat. The class discussed how the pelican looks and why his long bill and flying abilities helped him survive. The class made some great observations, such as "he has webbed feet so he can swim". Though it wasn't directly a science lesson, this story directly relates to science and introduced the class to a food chain and helped them make meaningful predictions through observations while incorporating science into the classroom.

In Class Small Group Presentation Reflections

Recently we did an activity in class that required us to come up with lessons to teach the rest of the class in a short time period. I thought this was one of the more effective class periods for us because we as students were all actively engaged and interested in what we were doing. It taught us about putting a presentation, or a lesson, together in a short time frame with limited materials, which is very important for us as teachers because we constantly run into situations like this where we need to be flexible and resourceful with the time and supplies given-no matter how little that is. This activity was beneficial because it proved that even lessons put in place at the last minute can still be meaningful and also engaging to the students-as well as showing the importance of centering your lessons on meaningful, engaging and inquiry-based information so as to captivate your learners and draw interest to the material being presented. I liked participating in other groups activities, as well as developing my own activity in relation to the article we were supposed to focus on for class. Because I had already read both articles, I knew a lot of the background information so the activities were quite simple to catch on to, but even for those who were encountering the information for the first time, these lessons would have been effective. I think you had us do this activity to help us realize how important it is to incorporate the 5 E’s into our lessons as they really do boost students learning. It also showed the importance of presenting only the main ideas when time is limited, and that we could create effective and meaningful presentations in short time periods, as well as showing us the importance of focusing your material to student needs- we were able to understand these presentations because we had read the articles prior to class so we knew what was going on-but sometimes, students will come to class with no prior knowledge, and we must be able to teach to their learning as well.

This week we read a story about plants in class. The kids learned about how plants start out as a seed then grow into a flowering plant. They then created "how a plant grows" charts which they individually wrote and illustrated-they had a lot of fun! This was the introduction to the plants unit that the kids will be learning about for the remainder of the year in science, which was originally introduced wholly by Ashley, Emily and I with the Five Senses and Living vs. Non-living lessons. The kids seem to understand and enjoy the plants unit so far a great deal and will enjoy the hand on and outdoor activities that will follow for the remainder of the semester.

This week I led my social studies lesson and the kids did projects for Easter and had their reading centered around St. Patrick's Day, so I didn't see much science in the classroom. However, on Monday the class finished up their Dinosaur lesson with putting the finishing touches on their dinosaur stories, so that bit relates to science to an extent. The kids loved their "dinosaur week" and had creative imaginations in creating their dinosaurs and dinosaur stories. I found this themed-week to be more centered on creativity than science. Science could have been better incorporated into some lessons this week by focusing a tad more on the history of actual dinosaurs rather than "cartoon stories" and creativity. Of course, these aspects are okay as well, but I felt that my CT should have also taught some factual information about dinosaurs. The kids would have loved this just as much as the non-fiction, they are fascinated by "real life" things that are unknown to them, and it would have been more meaningful and have taught the kids a lot more of science as well.

This week was “Dinosaur Week” in my field placement, which was very exciting and a lot of fun for the first graders! We read stories about specific dinosaurs and how they lived, wrote our own “If the dinosaurs came back…” stories, and made life-size dinosaurs of our very own! This was a great theme for the children because it was something they could all take part in and get creative with, and something they all had heard of and really loved learning about. During a discussion, my CT mentioned that the kids could create their dinosaurs however they want, and be as creative, silly or thoughtful as they wanted in doing so because we don’t really know exactly what the dinosaurs were like since they are all gone and have been gone so long before humans ever existed, so there were “no wrong answers” for this activity. One of my students related this and said “yeah, that’s cause the dinosaurs are all extinct”, which is an uncommon word for six and seven year old children to use. My CT asked the rest of the class if they knew what this word meant, and none of the 27 other children could explain, so she let the boy who first brought it up explain-for which he accurately stated “that means that they are all gone and not coming back cause there are no more left in the whole wide world”-very good description coming from a first grader!

Today I led my whole class lesson relating to the five senses. It was a lot of fun and it went very well! The kids seemed to enjoy it a lot and I got great positive feedback from my CT, so overall I would say it was a success. It went much more smoothly than I expected, though the kids were very talkative and energetic which resulted in a very loud classroom!
I began the lesson by asking my students if they knew anything about the five senses, which they didn't even after I told them that one was seeing. We discussed what they were, and I read aloud from the "big book" that went along with this lesson. The big book was interactive and allowed the kids to answer questions pertaining to the lesson. After the discussion, I read the book "My Five Senses" by Alkali, which explained clearly the five senses. After this, the kids were able to all tell me the five senses, the body parts correlating to them, and their uses, as well as how they help us observe things and figure out things in the world around us. One student contributed "when I brush my teeth, I am touching, smelling, tasting and seeing. And I can hear the brushing too", which I thought was a very good connection and real world application to the lesson!
After the discussion and story, we experimented with different instrument sounds, for which the kids hypothesized the sounds that would be produced. This was a quick and simple activity. Next, the kids all went back to their tables (4 kids at 7 different circular tables) and we did the "What's in the bag?" activity, where the kids had a numbered brown bag with something inside. They couldn't look inside the bag, but could use their senses of touch, smell, and hearing (by shaking the bag) to guess the contents and write what they thought was inside the bag next to the corresponding number on a sheet of paper. After every child at the table observed the bag, we would switch bags. There were 8 bags in all containing the following items: sugar, rice, pennies, popcorn, jelly beans, strawberries, marshmallows and raisins. The class did very well with this activity and followed directions quite well, I was impressed. Hardly any students peeked inside the bags, which I know is hard for kids.
After each child had observed every bag and written down their guesses, we met back at the carpet area to share ideas-kids came up with great ideas. Some "incorrect" ideas were: kitty litter, sprinkles, grain, and seeds for the rice; sand, dirt and flour for the sugar; and marbles, rocks, big M&M's, and nuts for the jelly beans. I loved hearing their ideas, a lot of them were quite relevant or possible and many kids did correctly guess the contents-they did very well and could tell me the senses they used and characteristics that determined their guesses. I brought extra marshmallows and jelly beans for the kids to enjoy at the end of the activity, which they of course loved!

This post is late arriving due to our spring break, but 2 weeks ago in my feild placement I led a science talk related to the five senses with five students in my first grade classroom. The discussion was led by me at the kidney table, and the kids seemed comfortable sharing their ideas-overall I felt it went very well.

In leading this science talk relating to the five senses, I realized before I even began that the students were unfamiliar with the word “senses” or understanding the concept of “the five senses” when I first selected a group of students for the talk and explained that we were going to do a quick talk about our five senses, and was received with a crowd of blank stares and questions such as “what’s that?”. I immediately adapted my plan by deciding to begin with a brief and basic intro by saying “our senses are what we use to observe and find out about things around us. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting are together the five senses”, and decided that since they weren’t familiar with the term “senses” to change my question a bit.

I asked the students “What are some ways you would use tasting, touching, your eyes, ears and nose to describe something?” I also added that they could use one or a few of these things to describe something, and that using all at once was not necessary, but also okay to do. At first, the responses were very basic, such as “I smell flowers” and “I taste food” and sometimes off track, like when one child said “I eat” or misunderstood when a child said “I use my mouth to sing” (for which, I scaffolded this to we use our mouth to taste, but we can also use our mouth to make sounds which we hear with our ears…” which then prompted better discussion. The responses also became more in depth. One child said “I hear sounds” and that led to things such as “I hear music, and I can make music” (for which I asked what would we do to make music, which led eventually to the sense of touching) and other responses like “I taste and smell and touch food” and another child adding “and I look at food and I can sometimes hear it like I can hear popcorn when its cooking”. The students were very talkative and engaged and ultimately came up with some great ideas, like “I can see clapping when I clap and I can hear it and feel it too”. I thought that, once adapted and with some prodding and some scaffolding, the discussion was successful.

DUE TO PRESIDENT'S DAY, WHICH THE STUDENTS HAD OFF, I WAS AGAIN ONLY IN THE FIELD ONCE THIS WEEK. TODAY THE KIDS WENT TO COMPUTER LAB, WHERE THEY DID A "GROUNDHOG'S DAY" ACTIVITY (BELATED TO THE ACTUAL 'HOLIDAY'), AND THE TOPIC OF SHADOWS WAS ONCE AGAIN ADDRESSED TO THE STUDENTS, WHO SEEMED TO REMEMBER QUITE A BIT ABOUT THE BASICS OF HOW SHADOWS ARE FORMED (LIGHT/BLOCKED LIGHT)...THIS WAS A VERY QUICK EXERCISE THAT WAS CONCISE AND NOT EMPHASIZED, BUT IT WAS THE ONLY BIT OF SCIENCE THAT WAS ADDRESSED TODAY. LAST WEEK SOMETIME, HOWEVER, THE KIDS WROTE 'SNOW' POEMS. I READ THROUGH THEM AS I HUNG THEM IN THE HALLS; MANY KIDS TALKED ABOUT THE COLD WEATHER AND WINTER SEASON AND FUN THEY HAVE IN THE SNOW. THIS WEATHER TOPIC OBVIOUSLY RELATES TO SCIENCE, AND THE TOPIC OF SEASONS COULD HAVE BEEN MENTIONED AND DISCUSSED, AND WHAT MAKES SEASONS COULD HAVE BEEN BRIEFLY TAUGHT AS WELL TO BETTER RELATE THE ACTIVITY TO SCIENCE AND TO INTERTWINE MORE OF A LESSON INTO THIS ACTIVITY.

Due to yet another snow day, I was only at my field placement once this week, and no science lesson was taught during this time. However, during story time, my teacher read a story called “What Makes a Rainbow”, in which a color of the rainbow was introduced progressively as the pages turned. While it wasn’t exactly “scientifically-oriented”, this would have been a good opportunity to share with the classroom how rainbows are formed, and why. Because this is a first-grade classroom, it wouldn’t need to be an in-depth or detailed discussion, but the kids could have raised their hands to share a color in the rainbow prior to reading the story, as well as given thoughts as to when or how rainbows form. After reading the story, the teacher (or I) could talk about how rainbows are actually light reflections (and can be seen through glass and other things, not just in the sky) and that is why the colors are always in the same order. We could explain that light travels in waves, and when the sun comes out after a rainfall and the sunlight hits the rainwater, these waves bend the light, which allows us to see all the colors and for rainbows to form. The kids probably won’t understand a much more detailed explanation than this, but they would at least know that rainbows are formed from light (or more correctly, rainbows are light), which is something I assume nearly all of my students are currently unaware of.

Providing or helping students develop meaningful questions that they can answer in the process of inquiry in the classroom is extremely important. If students are able to personally connect to the material, they will be more likely to learn, and in order for this connection to occur, they must be able to understand the material at a level that allows them to be able to question what they are learning then explore and discover their questions. Also, by presenting questions to students, they are becoming engaged in the learning process, and may become interested or excited about the topic through the pre-lesson questions. Questions, whether they are presented by the teacher or student-driven, are important because they engage the students for inquiry, which is to increase knowledge and understanding-a main focus in the learning process. Questions provide structure to the learning goal, they help develop the main ideas or direction for the students to follow and focus on.
Below are examples of inquiry-based questions for the following benchmark:
SCI.III.4.E.1-Explain how fossils provide evidence about the nature of ancient life
-What clues could have been deduced from a fossil to conclude that it came from a large, meat eating dinosaur?
-If you could interview a paleontologist who just pieced together an ancient whale, what questions would you ask him?

This week, my first graders heard a story during their science time about shadows, which relates to the first benchmark mentioned in the previous post. To assess prior knowledge, my CT asked the students if they knew what a shadow was and what had shadows (people, buildings, animals-everything!), which the kids were able to answer without difficulty. They began to struggle however when asked where shadows came from or how shadows formed. They also knew that shadows couldn't always be seen, only sometimes, but they were unsure as to why. We explained to them that light and in contrast, darkness to block the light, were necessary. I went on to explain briefly the phases of the moon, as well how day and night is related to shadows. The kids were shown the first page of the book, which portrayed several children and their shadows, and I asked them what came first, the shadow or the child. The story explained shadows at a surface level, and asked the question "whose shadow is this" and displayed a shadowed, which actively engaged the kids in guessing the shadow before turning the page to see what formed the shadow-they loved guessing and came up with such funny answers! In response to a shadow of what looked like a large bird, one boy said "its a bush or something cut out like a bird"! The kids liked this lesson because they could relate it to everyday life; they have all seen & created shadows before and know how to make shadows & make shadows move, but they didn't know WHY all of this occurred. This lesson helped them understand the relation between light & darkness and how shadows form from the contrast of both.

UNPACKING THE LEARNING GOALS: benchmarks

SCI.V.4.E.4- Explain how shadows are made. In order to assess understanding of this benchmark, I would like students to be able to answer questions relating to shadows, such as what is necessary for a shadow to form, how the shadow forms(light, reflections, etc.) and other related questions. To assess meaningful understanding, they should be able to explain what causes day and night on earth, explaining that the relation between the earth, sun, and earth's orbit is basically one big shadow. I would additionally like my students to be able to come up with and use their own real world examples of shadows, and be able to explain how & why the shadows are formed, and how they move.

SCI.II.1.E.1- Develop an awareness of the need for evidence in making decisions scientifically. To assess understanding, a student would be able to perform scientific tasks (such as measuring) and record data accurately as well as make observations and generate related questions. They would also be able to generate conclusions with support and reasoning to justify those conclusions. Students would also be able to explain why evidence is important and necessary and give examples of real world cases (i.e. law). If students were using this knowledge to accomplish the task of this benchmark, they would be able to use their senses and observations to explore, explain and back up their hypotheses in a lab or experiment and justify their conclusion.

Wednesday my school was closed due to a snow day, so I only went to my field teaching one day this week. The kids spent most of their time while I was there doing literacy & reading, so I didn't see much science. However, one instance of science that is an everyday occurrence in the classroom happens during their "afternoon message", when that week's chosen "weather person" reports on the weather to the rest of the class (weather it is snowing, raining, sunny, cloudy, or foggy), and records his or her observation on a chart. At the end of every month, the class counts up how many days each type of weather was observed and puts it on a larger chart that represents the entire school year. For such a young grade, this is a great way to get kids active and involved in science, and it is just one way to show how science is a part of everyday life. This everyday classroom happening could lead to a bigger unit covering the basics of weather for the class. Another idea could be to talk about snow and how it is formed, especially right after the snow day.

Yesterday in my field placement my first graders went to the school gymnasium to do a science experiment relating and comparing different attributes of balls. Each child has a science partner; one member of the pair is the recorder and wears a black bracelet while the other member wears a white bracelet and is the messenger. The kids are too young to do in-depth experiments or to record date while doing the activity, so the jobs are really more to build teamwork and give the kids a sense of responsibility rather than for actually dividing work-both members of each pair really observe and try to remember whatever they can individually. I like the idea of “science buddies” for such a young age level, I think getting children used to doing experiments as well as giving them opportunities for interaction and building teamwork are extremely important, but I would try and have the kids actually be held responsible for their given jobs, rather than just labeling the jobs but not actually letting the two jobs serve any significance.
Before the activity, we discussed weight. Yesterday was a perfect example of the importance of assessing prior knowledge from your students before doing a lesson. My CT and I found that most of the students just barely understood the concept of weight, and didn’t know at all HOW to compare the weight of two objects. My CT was trying to get the students to mention a scale as a tool to compare weight measurements; she ultimately asked the kids if they had been to the doctor before and found that the majority in fact hadn’t. This is just one example of how important it is for teachers to know & understand their students, and teach to their level and understandings rather than to a predetermined level that seems “normal” at a certain grade-level. We also discussed bounciness and how it was classified, as well as ability for balls to roll.
For the activity, each pair sat facing each other with their feet touching to form a diamond shape. They were first given a rubber bouncy ball and told to drop the ball a few times from eye level, without force, and to observe the bounciness of the ball. They were also told to roll the ball back and forth a few times, and observe the weight and size of the ball. They then traded the rubber balls for larger poly-Styrofoam ball and did the same thing with that ball. We then went back to the classroom to record data.
The students were given worksheets with the following categories labeled: size, weight, bounciness, and ability to roll. There were two boxes below each category labeled “bigger” and “smaller”, “weighs more” and “weighs less”, “more bouncy” and “less bouncy”, and “rolls better” and “rolls not as well”. The rubber bouncy ball was labeled “1” and the poly-Styrofoam ball was labeled as “2”, and they had to fill in the boxes accordingly. This was a bit difficult for the kids, they seemed confused by the labeling of the balls as “1” and “2”, and it was difficult for them to remember the weight and ability to roll of the balls from the activity, even though during the activity my CT and I walked around and discussed each of these characteristics with each pair. I think this would have worked better if the kids had brought their worksheets into the gym and filled them out as they experimented with the two balls, but it went okay and the kids enjoyed science, which is important, and some kids were able to accurately compare the two balls without simply guessing. I think if the activity were improved a bit it could be successful at this grade level.

I was really surprised by the video we watched in class relating to science-knowledge of various groups of people in relation to something so common as the difference in temperatures between summer and winter seasons. Strong incorrect beliefs relating to topics science are extremely common, even among well-educated individuals with prior science instruction. It was shocking to hear that only two out of twenty-three Harvard graduates could correctly explain the moon phases and seasons. It is not surprising that student’s personal theories and beliefs outlast instruction and can annihilate what is taught, but it is our job as educators to correct these misconceptions and meaningfully explain WHY things work as they do and WHY their misconceptions can be proved false. Heather, labled as the ‘best science student’ by her 9^th grade science teacher, had strong misconceptions of the earth’s orbit-yet 2 weeks later she was able to reverse her misconception, but she still remembered her prior (inaccurate) theory exactly as she described it earlier. Misconceptions relating to science can come from anywhere, but just as often they can originate in class. It is appalling to see that despite proper, thorough instruction, improper beliefs can remain. Additionally, it is unfortunate but not so shocking that despite several continuous years of science instruction, students do not retain their instruction-either because their knowledge is lost or they never learned it. Likely, it needs to be taught more meaningfully; clearly science isn’t taught well right now overall if it is so easily forgotten or misconstrued. It is so difficult for people to overcome their misconceptions because they are often believable and so “sunk in” to their knowledge-people convince themselves of something and it is difficult to change their beliefs, yet it is the job of the educator to overcome these misunderstandings relating to science, and to see that our students are learning the subject meaningfully and that their retention is long-term.

Due to lingering field placement and Martin Luther King Day, I have only been out to my classroom once this semester. I am assistant teaching in a first grade classroom in Lansing School District, and really enjoy the time I spend there and the experience I am acquiring. The kids I work with have taught me a ton last semester, and I have no doubts that they will continue to teach me more and more as I teach them as well over the course of the next semester. Because the district places a huge emphasis on literacy and language arts in the first grade curriculum, that and math are the two main subjects I see in the classroom, but my teacher has offered to implement science and social studies into her schedule for this semester. I haven’t seen anything relating to either of these two subjects as of yet, but my CT told me that she will work to schedule science into the daily plan every other Monday. For January and February, balls and ramps will be the focus for science, and for April and May, there will a unit covering plants. Last semester I saw a little science in the classroom, such as the daily weather charts and when the kids made “how a pumpkin grows” charts around Halloween. The goals for this semester relating to science according to my CT are to teach the subject in a manner that promotes quality understanding of the material presented with strong participation and enthusiasm from the students, with the intentions of keeping the kids interested and excited about science as a school subject. My CT likes to do a lot of presentations, hands-on work, and diagrams in teaching this subject, as well as using books and readings to cover subject matter. Each student is assigned a “science buddy”, and pairs work together on experiments and projects in order to promote interaction, team building skills, and group learning. In this classroom, the GLCE’s are not used; rather the “how-to science handbook” and district science curriculum implemented by Lansing is followed by all of the first grade teachers. The school that I volunteer at has a science supply closet with materials for each unit and grade level that teachers can take from to help teach different science lessons. Various things around the school, such as posters, fiction books, and the outdoor nature trail help reflect and promote science here. I am really excited to see how science is taught and how the students will respond to the subject matter over the course of the next semester!