First Day of Fieldwork!

For our first day of fieldwork, we had to create a "Getting to Know You" activity. My group met and created a game called "Sliding Through Science". The game works as follows:

• The students rolled a die and move their piece across the board.
• If they landed on a yellow square they got  to draw an "All about Me" card and answer a question about themselves, such as "Do you have any pets?" or "Do you have a sibling?"
• If they landed on a blue triangle they had to do a challenge. The students really enjoyed the challenges aspect of the game because it was different and fun and allowed them to move around. Examples of challenges include spinning around 10 times and touching your feet to your elbows. 
• The last spot that they could land on was a question mark. If a student landed on this spot they got to ask the teacher any question that they wanted. This excited the students because it allowed them to get to know the teachers which is something that they are not normally allowed to do.

The students really enjoyed the game and I felt it was a great way to get to know a little bit about them. I enjoyed getting to work with the students a little bit before I began to teach them. Although I am a little nervous, I am excited to get to eventually teach my lesson.

Fieldwork Pre-Test

Prior to fieldwork, we had to create a pre-test to give to the students. This pre-test is going to be used to test what understanding of the topics the students already have so we can adjust our instruction as needed. 

This pre-test was created using Google Forms, which was a bit of a challenge for me because I had never created a Google Form. It took a little while for me to figure it out, but luckily my group was helpful with teaching me how it worked. 

It was a little difficult for my group to come up with questions for the pre-test, for we were worried that our questions were going to be too difficult. Eventually, we came up with questions that we felt reflected what we were going to teach the students in the field. 

This is not my first time creating a pre-test, but it was my first time doing one in this format. It will be interesting to see what the students already know, and I am excited to see how much we can teach them!

Assessment

 We started our lesson today by thinking about assessment, instruction, curriculum, and learning. We were told to build a house and place each word as either a wall, a roof, or the foundation. Below you will see the house that I drew in class. I placed curriculum at the bottom because I feel that it is the foundation of learning. Without a curriculum, teachers would not know what to teach. I then put instruction and assessment as the walls because I felt they were intertwined. You instruct and then assess to check your instruction. Learning was the roof because it is the overall goal for your students and should be on top. Learning should be the outcome of the instruction, assessment, and curriculum. 

We learned about different modes of assessment. There are three different types of assessment. They are

• Pre-Assessment, which is an assessment before learning

Examples of pre-assessment are a pre-test, a KWL chart, and self-evaluation 

• Formative or Ongoing Assessment, which is an assessment for learning

Examples of formative or ongoing assessment are conferences, observations, questioning, exit cards, or journal entries.

• Summative Assessment, which is an assessment of overall learning

Examples of summative assessments include a unit test, a performance task, a demonstration, or a portfolio review.

After learning about the different types of assessments we got to add our own slide to the assessment powerpoint of something that we felt the presentation was lacking. Below you will see the slide that I created.

I decided to write more about formative assessment because I feel that it is vital for a teacher to understand. It is important to know that formative assessment can show you if your instruction is working, and if it is not then it is always possible to go back and revise!

Assessment is needed to ensure that teachers are teaching effectively. By learning about the different assessments in class, I feel that I am ready to one day implement them into my own classroom!

5 E's of Inquiry

This week we were given an assignment to explore the 5 E's: Engage, Explore, Explain, Eloborate, and Evaluate. We first were given a hyperdoc, which I found interesting because it is something that I have never used before. We then got to explore a Bill Nye video to watch which explained simple machines. I appreciated the video because I did not have a lot of prior knowledge of simple machines. To explain, we used Google Drawing, which is another thing that I had never used before. We had to draw an example of a simple machine. My drawing is shown below. To elaborate we were given a robot game to expand our learning. 

Overall I thought that this was a very engaging assignment. I enjoyed how it gave me more knowledge of what we will be teaching in the field. I also liked the technology that was embedded, and definitely would use this in my classroom one day!

Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Nature of being a Scientist

Neil deGrasse Tyson's video truly opened my eyes about what scientists do. Growing up, I assumed that scientists knew all of the answers. "I don't know," was never something that a scientist had to say, for they were some of the most intelligent people who had all of the answers. But the truth is, nobody has all of the answers! Scientist work tirelessly to learn more and more every day, and every day new theories come about, debunking the old ones. A scientists job is never finished, for they do not know everything about the world. 

Scientific Me

Exploring the outdoors even at a young age!

When I was younger, I was always forced to go to my brother's baseball games. It wasn't the game that I was watching though. Instead, I would sit and play with the rocks

and leaves around me until my mom would tell me to stop. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the environment and the world around me.

As I grew up, my curiosity remained, but over the school

years, my love for science began to fade. As I progressed through school science became more difficult and I began to struggle. I no longer was curious, and instead just wanted to do well in the class. I gravitated away from science, and once I got to high school wanted nothing to do with it anymore. I did not want to wear a white lab coat and be locked indoors researching all day since that is what I believed scientists did. My views were not far off from many others, as Jennifer DeMichele discusses having the same views in her Scientific Me biography.

Luckily for me, this class allows me to revisit my past love for exploring and questioning, and to debunk the beliefs that I once had about scientists. I am hoping that this class will revive the interest that I once had for the environment around me.

I think that science is all about exploration. It is about exploring the environment around you and digging deeper into questions that you may have about the world. Although I have not always had the best experience in science my past with science my curiosity and desire for learning have continued to push me to learn more.