Sweater Article

I loved this reading this article and it is very interesting.  The main point is misconceptions that children have and then how to get past their barriers.  I thought the phrase, "children's mind are still under construction and must be treated with care where conceptual change is concerned."  This has to do with the experiment the teacher did and let them create their own experiments, formulate hypothesis, solutions, and redo experiments.  Students will get the most out of finding the answer themselves, instead of reading them in a textbook.  In my classroom I will stress the relevancy of the lesson or experiment, allow children to come up with their own experiments, and stress consistency.

Keeley

The main idea of the article is formative assessment probes.  They give many examples for diagnostic and monitoring purposes.  I like how it gives ideas of how to know the students preconceptions that they get from experiences.  This then helps you know what to teach.  I think this ties into science journals in which students could write or draw their preconceptions.  This gives them an opportunity to express their opinions, instead of raising their hand in a classroom setting.  I would like to use the science journals in my class room to see what misconceptions students children have and then create my lesson plans about their responses.

Private Universe

How the phases of moon occur? How the sunlight hits the moon and our view of it. Cause of seasons? The tilt of the earth towards the sun, when the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun then it is summer. Cause of lunar eclipse? Not in the same plane of the earth. It has to be in the plane of the earth behind the earth to be a lunar eclipse.

Peters

The article discusses the work of Piaget and Vygotsky and how it relates to children and teaching.  Understanding how children learn and process will help us as teachers.  Through Piaget and Vygotsky we understand the stages children are in and what is hard for them to learn and what is easy for them learn.  I'm glad I read this article, it was a refresher to my previous psychology classes but applied to teaching.  After reading this article I am going to have goals for the children from the standards and look at the child as an individual.

Misconceptions Die Hard

I like the basic message of the article about the misconceptions and our focus on terminology in schools.  I like the idea of breaking those misconceptions by doing labs.  While in my courses these seem like they could be interesting topics for making lesson plans.  Another thing I got from this article was to incorporate terminology into lessons and labs.  It is not easy to memorize a term, but by learning and using it in a lab it will be easier to remember.  I also think it is important for the students to hypothesize before experiments to learn their misconceptions and prove them wrong through the experiment.

Krajcik

I love the Chinese proverb that starts out the article.  That is something that I would love to have hanging in my classroom.  I like all the strategies of how a teacher needs to succeed using a constructivist approach.  When I think back of the teachers I remember and loved, they used the constructivist approach.  Students do not learn well by just reading and lecturing.  Hands on is what children can learn the most from.  Some teachers just do the bare minimum and constructivism involves more thinking from the teacher.  I will always remeber my AP Chemistry where we had to think of our own experiments and procedure.  This made sure we understand everything in the lesson and could incorporate it without the teacher giving us all the answers.  I also think scaffolding and modeling is important.  Some teachers struggle with teaching students of all academic abilities and this allows students to help each other learn.  I want to incorporate constructivism into science and math.  These are two subjects that usually trouble students and they would be able to get the most out of it from a constructivist approach.

Diffendoofer Day

1. What does it mean when someone knows how to think? Be able to think is answering questions, problems, or even talking without anyones help. 2. How does a teacher teach a student how to think? Asking for their opinion and be able to come up with their own answer and not getting the answer from anyone or anything else. 3. Have you ever been in a class where you really had to think? In AP chem we had to come up with our own experiments for our labs every week. It really made us learn a lot in which we were not just spoon fed the experiment and no thinking was involved. We had to think of how to get a possible solution and then the experiment to do that.

Rising to Greatness

Reading the article, two topics stuck out in my mind and they were the topics of math scores not changing and the performance gaps for students by race, poverty, and disabilities.  I was surprised and happy to hear that Iowa had some of the highest math scores in the 1990’s, but we have not improved since then.  I am a math specialization so this affects me greatly.  I find math fun and interesting, but that is not the case for most students. I hope to bring this into the classroom.  Math will be what I am most passionate in the classroom and I plan on increasing my student’s math scores.  The next important topic in the article was that of performance gaps.  Lowering these gaps would help Iowa and the nation.  I hope to do this in my individual classroom by learning each child’s strengths and weaknesses.  I think every child should have the same opportunity to learn and will do whatever I can to give children an even chance to learn.

5 Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks

After reading the article I think science notebooks should be in every school.  Remembering my elementary, a science notebook would have been a great way to make science more fun and not the usual dreaded subject.  I thought the article made a great point in that it is a great way for students of mixed abilities to learn.  Many children can lack writing skills, but I think the notebook is important in which they can use their visual skills.  Science can be difficult for students by making students think and a science notebook can make this process fun and easy.  This would help teachers who are frustrated by asking students to raise their hand and give an answer; instead the student can write in the notebook.  This seems perfect to me and can be great for any student in the classroom.  This is also gives me the idea to incorporate science notebooks while I am in my practicum or student teaching.

Line of Learning

1/18/12

Children learn science through observation, reading, and experimenting.  A classroom that challenges students to think and solve is a great environment for students to learn science.  Teachers should design a science classroom with the steps of thinking and solving, and then have projects for students to practice those ideas.

1/30/12

Children learn science through experiences.  They formulate hypothesis, experiments, and solutions in their everyday life.  They also do these while in school and add or change their existing knowledge to make room for their new knowledge.  Classroom environments that facilitate children's learning is one in which misconception are tested, children form their own hypothesis, experiments, and solutions.  A classroom that uses science journals is a way to facilitate learning by letting children express their thoughts no matter what kind of learner they are.  Teacher's should know that children have many misconceptions about science that are not easy to break.  Lessons that test these misconceptions should be constructed in a way to let children express their ideas and test them.

2/7/12
To maximize my students learning I will use the Iowa Core standards in my lesson planning and instruction.  It helps me narrow down what to teach in each field, including science.  It breaks down the standards to grade level and what subject of science. This will help me plan my benchmark lessons.  I like the lesson plan that krajcik discusses.  I like how it how you consider time required and also cautions.  I have not made many lesson plans so I would not take time to think about these things when creating a lesson plan.  Time and caution should be considered to facilitate children learning.  I think children should be familiar with the Iowa Core standards, incorporate the standards, and teach benchmark lessons.

2/14/12
To maximize my students learning I will discover my what my students know about science.  Formative assessments will be used at the beginning of a topic or unit, for me to learn what the students know or do not know.  The Paige Keeley probes will be a lot of help for me in doing this, as she has formative assessment probes on almost all science topics.  I also plan on incorporating the use of forms on google docs to do this. It is a lot easier than using a copying machine to create 25 paper forms of the probe, having the students fill them out, have me look at the information, and then have to organize the information. I can make one form that every student can take and then I can get immediate feedback with answers in statistics and charts.   I can then know where to start my lesson.  I will know what to focus more on and what they have previous knowledge about.  The Iowa Core website will help guide me then by what to teach the students and make sure the students will have knowledge on after the lessons.

2/21/12
Science is nature, being hands on, building things, guessing, testing, and thinking.  The best way to learn science would be through inquiry.  It creates a student-centered classroom.  They have to do the thinking to create an hypothesis and experiment.  They can make mistakes and then get it right it.  They will learn the most out of this type of learning instead of the typical science classroom where the teacher gives them step by step instruction.
2/28/12