Private Universe

1. How the phases of the moon occur?
The positioning of the earth and the moon, where certain parts of the moon are shadowed and unseen.

2. What causes the seasons?
The orbit of the earth through out the year. When its summer in America we are getting more direct light and we are tilted towards the sun and in the winter we are tilted away from the sun and getting more indirect light.

3. What causes a lunar eclipse?
A lunar eclipse is when the moons orbit comes to a position where the moon covers the sun and the sky goes dark, and the sun shines from behind the moon.

Piaget and Vygotsky reading

This reading I found to be extremely helpful to me. It reminded me a lot of my Education Psychology and Measurement class because it talked about Vygotsky and Piaget which are always really interesting to read about. Every time I read about the two of them I always try to decide which I agree with more, but it’s hard because they do have some similarities between them. I liked that the article used vocabulary words and defined them along the sides. It helped me as I read to have the definitions, since it’s been a long time since I’ve used the terms. I also really liked how they gave real life situations and experiments, it put most of the concepts into a situation that jogged my memory and made it easier for me to understand better. Piaget’s stages were combined with Vygotsky’s social constructivism, I think that they would work well together.

Krajcik

There were many parts of this reading I fully agreed with. One is with the Scaffolding method of teaching, I wish my teachers taught me like that when I was in elementary school. The definition of this method is exactly what teaching should be like in the primary grades up until the students are able to be independent, which can be different depending on the student. Scaffolding seems to show a way for teachers to teach the students until they fully understand, and then back off so the students can explore the concepts themselves in a way that makes sense to them. The reading also mentions that students must relate to the concept in some way that is outside of school. I always asked my teachers, in every subject, why I had to learn it.  Especially when I didn't understand what I was supposed to learn. For example geometry, I to this day still don't understand why I needed to learn proofs when they have nothing to do with my life. When students don't understand concepts, connecting them to a real life experience that they may have had can help them understand. My physics teacher did that a lot and it helped our class understand why we were learning it. Another point the reading brought up, was visual learning and the importance of the student being able to look, feel and perform the experiment themselves. This point made me think of all the specific things I remember from science, and they were all the experiments that were hands on and visual. I like how in our class we are learning how to use new technologies with the iPads and Dropbox. The very last page of the reading it mentions technology in the classroom, which is something that as teachers we should expose our students to as much as we can. Technology is an important part of our lives and could definitely help our students succeed. 

Misconceptions

I actually found this article super interesting because it not only talked about the elementary students, but students at all levels. I think its sad that most college students don't really remember much about their elementary science education. In my personal experiences with science, I remember mostly from high school and how unhelpful my teachers were. Instead of focusing on teaching both the concepts and vocabulary, my teachers taught us as fast as they could and didn't really care if we remembered the information after we took the final. This article makes a great point when they say that we as students pretend to know what we are talking about by using the terminology, when in fact most of us are just using it to sound smart. The experiment that was done on the students shows that at all ages there is mostly partial understanding of concepts, which I didn't doubt at all. If I would be completely honest, there are many science concepts that I think I kind of know, but I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Teachers should be making sure that every year the students are remembering what they were taught the year before. The summer does a lot of damage to what we learn in school, and by pre-testing all of the students at the beginning of each lesson could help them remember or clarify their understanding of certain topics. Another way to get students to understand more is to make them use the text books and then have a visual of what they read in the text book. Repetition for students is key, well in my experience as a student it is. I really liked this article it brought up a great point, and made me think of ways to be a better teacher. 

Five Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks

While reading the article Five Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks, I found that I before I read it I thought of some of the reasons they gave, particularly the second reason. I found it funny that it was the first thing that popped into my head. Notebooks give us as teachers a way to learn the deepest thoughts of our students. It opens up a new world of ideas that even we may have never thought before. It helps us understand what the kids want to learn and what they are interested in, rather than the teacher leading the discussions.

The third reason I also found interesting. I remember when I was in elementary school and my teachers, not only in science, used notebooks to clarify our thoughts. When students talk out loud, sometimes their thoughts can get jumbled and not make much sense, but when they are told to write down their thoughts it helps clarify what they really mean. In many classes we used notebooks that every day at the end of class we turned in. I now understand why my teachers did that. Not only does it help them by giving then ideas about what the students wanted to learn, but it helps them understand all of the thoughts that we want to get out in a clear way. Writing also has the ability to help students who are shy open up and get their good ideas to the teacher.

I really enjoyed this article and the helpful tips that it gave for teachers. I plan on using notebooks in my classroom, but not just for science. I think that it is a great tool for teachers to use to get into the deepest thoughts of our students without them even realizing it. It’s extremely helpful and can teach not only the kids, but the teachers as well. 

Initial Vision Statement

            I may not have been very good at the math portion of the subject, but I loved learning about biology and the human body. I don’t really remember a lot of science from elementary school other than dissecting frogs, which in fourth grade I thought was the absolute coolest thing ever. Even in high school I loved dissecting in class, and learning about the body in a visual way. My senior year of high school we did the best dissection by far, a cat. Not only did we dissect the cat once, but the entire semester we dissected the same cat.  Knowing how much I loved dissecting, you would guess I was the main dissector in my group. We had to find bones and the organs, and we even had to look at the frontal lobe of the brain. I chiseled that cats skull for multiple class periods, until I finally got to the brain. The brain is probably the grossest looking, but the coolest to think about. It was a huge accomplishment for me that nobody in my group got to feel because they were too scared to dissect.

            I really believe that for science to be fun the students need to get involved in the experiments. The only part of science I remember was the few really cool experiments, that the teachers engaged all of the students in. the three I remember most were egg wars, hatching chicks and dissecting. I only remember those because they were the most fun and engaging. Of course students need to learn chemistry and physics, which aren’t my favorites, but when teachers are there to help and aren’t ignoring their students it makes learning those harder subjects a whole lot easier. I hope to teach science in the most fun way I can, since that was the way I remembered science. At times lectures are needed, but I hope to add as many visual aspects as I can to those lectures. To be most effective, I want to make sure that I am fully available to my students whenever they need help, which in elementary school that will most likely happen a lot.  By making myself available and making learning the subject as fun as I can, I’m hoping the students will love the subject just as much as I did.