Sound Science

Sound Science is an article by Aaron J. Sickel, Michele H. Lee, and Enrique M. Pareja about the 5E learning cycle lesson. The article discusses the three important structures of science that teachers must keep in mind when teaching; science content, inquiry processes and skills, and the nature of science. View the visual I created based on this concept. It is crucial to use all three of these teaching methods because one or two is not enough to help students understand science as a human endeavor. The article is about developing a 5E lesson specifically set out to help students understand that sound is produced by vibrating objects. A group of fourth-grade students both in public school classrooms and at a summer science camp take part in this study.

The process begins with Engage. The students are introduced to everyday objects that make sounds, they are asked questions like "What do you think causes these things to make sounds?" This is crucial in revealing common misconceptions and knowledge gaps that the children may have. This is the time when teachers make observations about what the children know about the topic already. At this point the teacher can judge where s/he must start with the lesson, make sure all students have prior background knowledge on essential information and identify gaps in knowledge or misconceptions in order to correct and fill those gaps. The  students are made aware that observations can be collected not only by looking things up, but by using different senses.

Next students explore the topic. Students are equipped with their senses and a science notebook, they are instructed to investigate the cause of the sound. During this lesson the teacher set up different stations so students can observe all different types of sound. They suggested incorporating music and instruments from various cultures. At each station students use their 5 senses to collect data. At each station investigation prompts should be given to keep students on task.

After students create and observe various sounds the class comes together as a group to explain their findings. Students share and consider each others investigations in order to develop a clear explanation. During this time the teacher must prompt students asking how they came up with their findings. This will allow the teacher to assess if the students are understanding the task at hand. This also shows students the importance of collecting data and how their data serves as evidence to their explanation.

Students test their explanations and gather more information to add to their understanding of the topic. In this study, since the students had misconceptions that sound was produced by a force, the teacher introduced the students to sounds not produced by a visible force. The teachers stretched a balloon over a metal can and poured salt onto the balloons surface. They began to place music out of a speaker close to the metal can, the salt began to bounce up and down. The students were able to think back to their previous experiments and explain that the sound is cause by vibrations which is why the salt is "dancing". During the elaborate portion, students develop an understanding how scientist develop and construct explanations from collecting data and having supporting evidence to back up their claim.

Throughout the lesson the teacher should be informally assessing the students. At the end of the lesson, the evaluation portion, students should commit to an explanation about their topic. Teachers should be able to assess for mastery level understanding of the topic at this point.

The article describes a lesson following the 5E steps. The students in the article simultaneously learn science content and do inquiry while learning how scientist construct claims. Teachers must balance lesson goals in a higher attempt to form mastery skill levels for students.

Science Fairs

Science fairs are becoming considered one of the best learning experiences children can undertake. Conceptually, a science fair project is very straightforward. A student chooses a scientific question he or she would like to answer. Then the student conducts research in the library and on the Internet on the question to give the student the background information he or she needs to formulate a hypothesis and design an experiment. After writing a report to summarize this research, the student performs the experiment, draws his or her conclusions, and presents the results to teachers and classmates. What makes a science fair project such a great learning experience is that it involves so much more than science.

Science fairs stimulate student interest in science and provide students with opportunities for research and active inquiry. Fairs give students the opportunity to publicly recognize other students' completed projects and provide students with opportunities to share their work. Learning some scientific facts or principles is a valuable benefit for students doing the science fair projects, but the primary objective is to teach students to think. Students participating in science fairs are doing more than learning something new; they are using and extending knowledge gained previously through other experiences. Science fair work plans help students organize and review background information gained through previous library research on topics of interest. Past experiences will also help students make decisions on the importance of information to their topics. 

Science fair projects provide students the opportunity of learning more about topics of personal interest, while also demonstrating both factual knowledge in written reports and procedural knowledge through the research process itself. The more a student knows about a topic, the easier it is to learn more about the topic. Together, prior knowledge and newly acquired knowledge enable students to generate, analyze, and assess the impact of their findings, as well as connect what they learn to experiences beyond the science fair project.

I participated in a science fair when I was in third grade. My topic of interest was volcanoes so I decided to create a model volcano as my experiment. The science fair was very important to me and thirteen years later I still remember it very vividly. I began by researching and going to Barnes and Noble with my dad to purchase many books all about volcanoes. I purchased books that were above my reading level, this introduced me to new vocabulary and terms. The project advanced my scientific knowledge about volcanoes but also gave me the opportunity to work on literacy skills while researching. I worked with both my parents as well as my teacher on the project. This allowed for parent-teacher contact and cooperative learning between the home and school. I had the opportunity to use my artistic talents to create a paper mache volcano. Through trial and error I found a way to make the volcano erupt. 

My experience in a science fair is one of my oldest memories pertaining to science. It was a wonderful experience and should be viewed as a unique learning opportunity. Students have an opportunity to go beyond the planned science curriculum to pursue individual interests and talents, and to examine practical problems with hands-on activities that link science with other parts of the curriculum. Science fairs provide students with opportunities to reflect and make sense of their total educational experience.

Check out this short video about the steps of preparing for a science fair!

Reflecting on Field Work

Teaching Science and Technology allows teacher candidates to explore and teach science through the use of technology inside the classroom. The candidates work in a group of six and collaborate idea's to form a lessons to teach the class. As a group they explore technology based options that will assist in the expansion of their lesson. Collaboratively with my group, I created an inquiry and cooperative lesson plan on Rocks and Minerals to teach a 6th grade class.

During my first experience teaching the class, I taught an inquiry lesson about Rocks and Minerals. This lesson was designed for the student to explore the properties of minerals by performing tests and experiments on various specimens by following the steps of the inquiry process.

The students explored the characteristics of minerals through visual observations and performing experiments. The students discovered which minerals were in their bag based on the evidence they collected. The student learned how to collect evidence, analyze, make inferences and effectively come to a conclusion based on the evidence they collected. The students were given a scientific bag containing minerals and a chart, the students were instructed to write a conclusive statement based on a rubric about which minerals were in their bag they were evaluated by thus rubric. Students were divided into groups and worked as a team to identify two minerals in their mystery bag. The students learned how to identify minerals and classify rocks. The students followed the steps of the multi-step procedures of the scientific method to solve the mystery. The students took measurements on color, streak, hardness, luster, transparency and fracture versus cleavage.

I began by pre-assessing the content that the student learned during our ice breaking activity. I gave students a handmade sign I created as a tool to check for understanding. The sign had a green thumbs up, meaning I understand or agree, and a red thumbs down meaning I disagree or I don’t understand. I made use of the color green, meaning go, and red, meaning stop, and used icons rather than words for the students who need reading accommodations. I developed a slideshow that used minimal amounts of words, instead I used pictures to go along with the topic I was describing to accommodate to those visual learners. I assisted a student during our slide show who is classified as ASD. She needed assistance following along, to accommodate her needs my fellow teacher candidates continued teaching the class at a typical speed while I worked independently with the student until the direct instruction was complete. At this point we introduced the students to our Voki, Ms. Mineral. The voki presented a problem, she had recently discovered a large amount of minerals but she needed help identifying them. The students were asked to help her identify her new discoveries. To accommodate students with auditory processing disorders or students who are visual or kinesthetic learners we provided the students with a typed letter from Ms. Mineral stating the same things she presented in her recording.

I divided students into groups of three forming six different groups. Teacher candidates were stationed at each group and helped facilitate the tests on the mineral samples. Each group identified the color, streak, hardness, luster, and fracture/cleavage of each sample and noted these identifiers on their Mineral Identifier Chart. I supported and monitored the student’s interactions within my group. I assigned roles to each individual student and allowed all students to review the results of each test and come to a group decision. After performing the tests, the students compared their charts to the reference booklet information in order to identify which mineral samples they had. After the given time and all groups are finished, I gained students attention towards the front of the classroom.

I expected students to present their finding in front of the class. I explained the behavior expected by presenters and the audience. The student reported their findings about the rocks and minerals by telling the class what they had in their scientific mystery bags. One person from each group was assigned as the speaker, they were responsible to tell the rest of the class the name of the mineral and to share how they came to that conclusion and explain the steps they took to come to the final result. As an independent practice students wrote a letter to Ms. Mineral. In their letters, the student were responsible for telling Ms. Mineral what minerals were in their bag and what tests they conducted to find out which they had. The student were given a rubric and were graded based off thus rubric.

The lesson was based off of an introduction, introducing the topic to the class and giving direct instruction about the topic. The lesson developed through the use of Ms. Mineral when the mystery was introduced. Students were evaluated by their ability to evaluate and collect data based on the scientific 

method for their minerals. Students were given an independent

task in order to check for understanding.    

During my second experience teaching the class, the students had a mineral show. This lesson focused on expanding the student's knowledge of identifying minerals by engaging them in cooperative learning in a group task. At this point the students will have learned about the characteristics of minerals and how to identify an unknown mineral specimen. They should also know that geologists perform tests on minerals to identify them. During this lesson the students demonstrated an understanding of how to research and identify minerals and present their ideas to the class. The students gained a better understanding of the mineral they identified. The students learned how to work together to complete a group task. Based on their mineral discoveries from the prior class the students had to research the mineral and create an advertising poster about their mineral. The students then had to vote for the mineral they would be most likely to buy based off of the poster created. The students were given a mineral, mineral information card, poster board, craft supplies, and a task to work in a group of geologists. Student created an advertising poster promoting/advertising their mineral. Students followed the criteria illustrated on the rubric. To prove mastery the students had to receive at least a 3 out of 4 on each section to prove their understanding, each student proved mastery.

I introduced the topic by reviewing the content. I explained to the students that they will be working in their geologist groups to advertise their mineral at a mineral show. I explained that a mineral show is when many geologists from all over the world come together to try and sell their minerals. I supplied the students with pictures of what a real mineral show looks like. This helped the visual learners visualize what a mineral show actually looks like. I explained that their task is to work together to use the information provided to create a poster promoting their mineral at the show. Teacher candidates joined groups to assist in student collaboration. To monitor cooperative learning I rotated from group to group making sure the students are effectively working together and collaborating. I facilitated individual accountability by explaining that each student has a specific role within their group. I made it known to the students that they each must complete their role effectively and are individually contributing to the success of the group.  I fostered positive interdependence by explaining how each role is very important when working together in a group. I explained to the student that each group member will have a specific role and you all depend on each other when working toward the common goal. I also made it clear that the success of the group is dependent on the participation of all group members, that each role is important in order for the group to successfully complete the poster. Group processing was facilitated by having the students work together in their small groups. The students, working together to achieve the same goal, are responsible for their own work and the groups work as a whole.  The students reflected on how their groups worked together on their independent practice assignment by answering the question “How did you and your group member’s work together to complete the poster?” Face-to-face interaction was encouraged by having the students working together and giving each student a role. During the face-to-face interaction the students provided feedback to their peers as well as encouragement and motivation. During this lesson the student developed multiple social skills. One of the social skills was working together and collaborating. Working together and collaboration requires listening, turn taking when speaking and cooperation among all group members. Another social skill the students developed is presentation skills. After creating their advertisement, they presented their poster.

As an independent practice the students filled out a raffle ticket stating which mineral they would buy and why they want to buy that one. The ticket will also ask them to identify their role in their group and how their group worked together to complete the task. We concluded with a class vote on which mineral is most useful.

Teaching Science and Technology allows the teacher candidates to explore and teach science through the use of technology inside the classroom. As a group I collaboratively worked with the teacher candidates in my group to create and execute two interactive lessons on rocks and minerals. The students mastered the goals based on our lessons. We followed the steps of inquiry to form sequentially based lessons that would assist students learning the topics.

Astronomy through time

Traveling through time is always interesting. Individually we created a glogster with articles about current topics of space, check mine out in my previous blog post! It is all about the planets in our universe!

 After creating the virtual collage I found common words found in my articles and created a word cloud with them. Word cloud is an amazing tool to introduce a lesson with. On word cloud you can choose different designs to fit the topic of your choice. I decided to do a picture of the earth for my word cloud, other groups did clouds and rocket ships. Its easy to use and a good way to identify prior knowledge on the subject and potential misconceptions about the subject. As the  teacher you can assess prior knowledge by asking if they recognize any of the words, what the words mean and where they have seen or heard the word previously. Teachers can also ask the students if they can think of any other words not on the word cloud that relate to the topic, this could be a method of identifying misconceptions.

As individuals we created the word cloud then joined together as a group of two than a group of four to collaborate on and create a time line about discoveries within space. We used Tiki Toki to create our time line. It was rather difficult to use this website at first. The website offers many possibilities, including creating a background, adding pictures, links and text as well as create a time line that is three dimensional. It is an amazing resources that can be used in the class as a visual. Tiki Toki can also be used by students to create a time line about a given time period. Exploration and assistance of this tool for children will definitely be needed.

I really enjoy that as a class we have the opportunity to collaborate and work as a group with everyone in the class. Thus far I have worked with about 75% of the students in my class. It gives us all the opportunity to meet one another and share our resources. It is so important to form collaboration skills across networks.

Astronomical Discoveries

As a class we have been working diligently outside of the field on new assignments to further expand our abilities to be wonderful science teachers. The past two weeks we have been focusing on astronomy. Astronomy has always been my favorite science topic. Previously, before I transferred to the Mount, I attended a community college that offered two courses on astronomy. I took both and loved it. The teacher created the class to be very hands on which is my learning style choice. He allowed us to attend school at night to observe the sky through his telescope. He made the class exciting. 

I was enthused to hear our current topic. During our first session doing space we created a virtual collage of astronomy articles. I chose to create one based on the planets in our solar system. I found a recent article on each planet and organized it in a coherent manor on glogster.

Check out my Glogster. Glogster is a really easy to use website that allows you told hold links about a topic in one easily accessible location. It allows you to create crafty backgrounds to match the theme of the articles. As a teacher, you can assign students a topic to research and allow the to gather different articles on this virtual collage. As a teacher, introducing a lesson could be very helpful with this tool. It is easy to access, easy to use and a great space to gather information from different sources on one engaging document. 

On Thursday we split into groups of two. We were assigned a topic to research. Elizabeth and I were assigned to work together on Neptune. I have never had the opportunity to collaboratively work with Elizabeth. I like that our groups change every topic and we are all having the opportunity to work with different people. This is a teaching method I will take advantage of in the future. It allows all the students to collaboratively work together. Switching groups also allows for different bonds to be made between classmates and different views to be exchanged between each other. 

Elizabeth and I presented our research on Neptune via PowerPoint. We combined groups and added Danyela and Bridget to our group. As a group we must create a word cloud based on our articles than create a virtual time line. We have been introduced to a number of different virtual applications to assist in our teaching experiences. I'm excited to continue learning more about how technology can benefit me as a future teacher and my future students as learners. 

Virtual Class

The first snow of the season, October 27th. Due to the inclimate conditions we held a virtual class. The virtual class was a great alternative. It was our first time using it so we spent a monitory of our time setting it up but now that we all know how to use it, it is a very easy tool to use during cancellations. We were all able to video chat as a class. Through this website we could all activate our microphones and speak to each other as well as type for those of us who didn't have microphones. 

I don't consider my self to be very technologically inclined, but this class has allowed me to interact with a variety of different technological tools that will assist me in my future career. Technology is increasing in its importance as the years go on and it is crucial to include in a classroom. It is also a wonderful tool to use in the classroom. I'm very impressed with how much I have learned thus far and how many amazing tools I've found. 

Curtains Closing

The final day of field work. It's a bitter sweet ending. Although we're all happy the stress is over we will all miss our experience with the sixth graders. This experience has opened my eyes to the realities of teaching. It was my first experience ever teaching in front of an entire classroom. It is so nerve racking and stressful but it has eased my nerves for my next experience teaching like this. It has opened my eyes to the realities that the students face and struggles they face in school. Being in a school faced with a high poverty rate, many issues arise with in the classroom. Between monitoring students language, not having wifi or not having the proper equipment because of school budgeting it can be very stressful. While talking to the teacher she informed us about how many supplies she has brought in to her classroom, including a wifi router.

School budgeting is an issue in every school and is something that must be thought about before your class starts in September. I read this article about the severity of this issue. It is reported that nearly 90% of the items needed for the teachers classroom is payed for out of their pocket. 10% of teachers reported spending $1,000 for one academic year, majority spent $500. It's outrageous that teachers must pay out of pocket for the supplies they need to do their job properly. I hope school budgeting is used more properly and appropriately soon.

Take the quiz and see how tech savvy you are!

I got a 68%. I'm getting there!