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!