Week 1: Methods 2

 Elementary Science II

Week 1: August 26th - 30th


In the lab this week we asked ourselves "Why should elementary students learn about science?" My group discussed turning students' curiosity into critical thinking. Students love to ask questions and want to learn how things work or why things are the way they are. We as teachers need to support this through science because science helps develop many skills. We also asked ourselves "How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?" We looked at racing as an example, "how can we ensure that a race is exciting?" Our job was to work with our table group to figure out how to get two different racers to finish simultaneously even though they ran at different speeds. After much testing, my group figured out that if we let one racer start and get to a certain point when jumping on one foot and then let the second race (who is walking) start then they both will end the race at the same time. 

In the lecture, we discussed how students first begin talking about motion. They start by making observations and ask whether there is a pattern that they can predict based on evidence. This was something we did in our lab, we watched each other race, we saw a pattern, and we predicted a method that would work based on the evidence we gathered when testing. This then helped us when solving the practice problems, as seen below image. I learned that designing investigations is a great way for students to be able to engage with science, learn hands-on, and gain skills like problem-solving. 

In this week's reading of chapter 8, Describing and Measuring Motion, I learned that as teachers we need to start students off by allowing them to tell us what they know. They already have an idea of what is motion, distance, and speed. They might have already tested some ideas unaware they are using some of these terms in playgrounds, for example, student's movement on the swings. Learning to describe motions allows students to learn how to predict where things will be in the future and begin to understand why things move as they do.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 9

Image
    Elementary Science II Week: October 21th - October 25st  What did you do in lab this week? / What was the big question?  The two discussion topics for this week's lab is geologic time and earth viewer. We began by looking at a presidential elections are impacted by a 100 years old coastline. We learned that parts of the south were underwater as a point in history, flowing the blue line. Then as a class we got to place events on a number line ranging from humans appeared to moon was created. This allowed use to visual see how far away it took earth to become what it is now. It also helps break the misconception that after the big bang earth just appeared. Now that we have learned many things about our universe we answer the question on how to now placed them in order. If we put  all the formations of the Earth on a time line humans have only been part of the timeline for 2 million years.     Answer questions about the weekly text books readings...
Read more

Week 13

Image
   Elementary Science II Week 13: November 18th- November 22th What did you do in the lab this week/ What was the big question:  We started by talking in our groups about the two articles, Couple Inquiry and Sweater, and about how similar and different they are. Both talk about teachers letting go of the control. I think that is something a lot of us are not used to or have never seen. Even as a college student, I am used to being told what to do and study for. To then move to allowing students to take over the lesson can be hard. But both articles make a great point. The sweater article talked about how students naturally lead a lesson if and only need a little bit of guides. The Coupled Inquiry talked about allowing time for freedom but with guidance.  A fun fact that I learned is that Americans are lagging in academics and despise the free education we give. I find it interesting but also not shocking. In all my travels I have seen how smart students can be withou...
Read more

Week 8

Image
                                                                             Elementary Science II Week: October 14th - October 18st  1. What did you do in lab this week? / What was the big question?  My group's big research question was about the earth's origin. There are so many misconceptions about how the Earth was made, for example, the Earth was formed instantly. Historically people used to believe that the Earth was the center of the world. We learned that current science understands that Earth is 4.65 billion years old thanks to geology and fossil studies we were able to set a date for the Earth.  We also got to hear from other groups about the origin of the Universe, the lifecycles of stars, galaxies, Black holes, and exploration of spa...
Read more