Commenting Reports

Commenting Reports

Responding to my colleagues blogs is an important tool for blogging. A blog is an outlet for us to relay information in a fun and creative post, allowing the blogger to reflect or inform their thoughts.  The purpose is for the reader to be informed on the topic and that is best expressed through responses, telling the blogger how they felt from reading the blog and was the information creative, useful, and relevant.  I have responded to a few of my classmates blogs.  I hope that I was reflective and insightful to their thoughts.  There are some great discussions (or discourse as I have learned!) that have been written. 

 Great Job everyone!!!

Jason's blog-Grading, Should we use it?
I agree, I tend to go back and forth about the philosophy on grading. But I think I lie on the side of grade as it provides feedback, monitoring data, and allows students to know how they are doing, and where they can improve on. I unfortunately feel that most students will only do as little as possible to receive the grade they want. If they have no bar to work for, will they continue to keep working? I have struggled with this class, not having any grades to reflect my efforts. I find this stressfull, as I'm sure my students would too, not to mention their parents! My daughter's 8th grade teacher attempted a no grade approach for a quarter. My daughter said he found it stressful and stopped doing it after the first quarter was up. Maybe no support from school, or just didn't work i his classroom, but he must have been interested in trying.

Tara L's Blog-Trade Book Project
I agree, the book trailer was a fun and creative project that I bet kids would love to do!! I enjoyed making mine, and after seeing my colleagues' projects, I have so many more ideas on how to make better ones. You connected your lesson topic perfectly with the story of the book. Your blog was well written as well, with lots of insight into your creativity. Well done.

Lauren's Blog-Chapter 7-9 Reflection
This is a comment to your science joke... I have one for you! Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I think I've lost an electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive." or how about... A neutron walks into a toy store and grabs a toy. The salesman says to the neutron, "For you no charge." Finding fun and creative ways for students to make connections to the content they are learning is a great resource for retaining information. Meeting the needs of all our students will be challenging, but we just need to focus on inventive ways for them to understand subject matter. Poems, rhyme, song, jokes are great tools.

Book Trailer

TradeBooks

Severe Weather/Drought

Kendra Soule

Out of the Dust Karen Hesse, 1997, Scholastic Press, ISBN 0-590-36080-9

Synopsis of the Book 

Out of the Dust is a John Newbery Medal winner.  It is a lyrical free verse novel that tells the story of Billie Jo, a young girl who lives in the harsh reality of the Oklahoma panhandle during the 1930s Dust Bowl.  Despite the constant dust storms and the struggle to help her family survive, Billie Jo is happy with her life. But a tragic accident changes things forever. As she tries to escape her painful memories and injuries, Billie Jo flees on a freight train, leaving the dust behind.  But Billie Jo has not realized the dust is a part of her, and she must learn to forgive her father and most of all herself. Set against the backdrop of the Dust Bowl and the hardships faced by prairie living, the novel is a testament to the power of hope and the triumph of the human spirit. 

Science Connections

This book tells the story of life during the Great Depression.  Oklahoma experienced severe drought, dust storms, tornadoes, in addition to soil erosion from over farming.  This left the habitants with poor soil, no water and drought like conditions. This story can provide real life experience for living through this and be compared with how life was like, how it used to be, and how life is now in present day.  Lessons can be adapted to show how people accepted this life and/or what they did to adapt and prepare. During Drought conditions habitants often have to leave their homes, go without food or water, these are all side effects of the dust bowl and drought today.     .

Teaching Connections

This book can be used as a vocabulary lesson, as a ‘real’ experience for students to be able to write about or as a book group project on the tragedy of the Dust Bowl and how people survived it.  Out of the Dust tells the story of the sequence of events that led to the erosion of the soil, affecting the water cycle and creating dust storms and ecological disaster.  Review with students that when the grassland was plowed up for farming, the soil became more exposed and vulnerable to erosion and could not hold water as well.  For an introduction to understanding the dust bowl, read other poems or stories. have groups work together, using facts from the book and additional resources to create a diagram that shows the chain of events that led to the dust storms, and measures that helped the storms end.  Have students present their findings and discuss what lessons we can learn from the Dust Bowl.  

Resources

Come on, Rain! by Karen Hesse 

The Year of the Dust by Albert Marrin

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aadema

21 century Challenge!

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Physical Science Chapter 16-18

Physical Science
Matter and MotionChapter 16

This is were science lost me.  Physical science has so many concepts, terminology that still boggles my mind.  Teaching these concepts have always been a direct (learn and memorize) instruction base.  More inquiry-base instruction and cooperative learning to help engage and encourage students to learn.  

Matter
 kinetic molecular theory* chemical change*chemical changes*elements, compounds and mixtures*parts of an atom*nuclear energy

Motion
newton's law*gravity & motion*jet & rocket engines*flight*

Energies and Machines
Chapter 17

How Energy is Transferred
Conservation of energy*Energy Transfer

Electrical Energy
static electricity*current electricity*

Sound Energy
Light Energy
Heat Energy
Machines
Fiction

Physical Science Lesson Ideas
Chapter 18

Like I've said, science lessons were always so boring and overwhelming.  This chapter does provide many examples os inquiry-base instruction where students can apply there understandings and experience to new content.  Hands on experiences are a critical element for student learning.  WebQuest, experiments, projects, and discovery centers are great examples.  




  

Earth Science: Chapter 10-12

Earth & Space Sciences

chapter 10

Earth's Surface, Atmosphere, & Weather

There are so many wonderful lessons to be taught about earth.  

Topics:

Earth Surface, rocks, minerals, fossils, Rock cycle, land mass, 

Oceans, continental shelf

Model of the center of the earth.  styrofoam & paper mache

volcano with diagram of the inside of a volcano for labeling vocabulary 

Earth's atmosphere & weather-water in the atmosphere, violent weather, weather prediction, meteorologist, climage change and global warming

This is one of my favorite topics! I look forward to teaching students about the wonders of our world, and how it has changed from the beginning to continually changing.  

chapter 11  

The Cosmos

What is the Universe, ad how was it formed?

This subject has changed so dramatically since I was a child.  There are more then 9 planets, and one of those planets is not even considered a planet anymore!! 

 topic subjects: big Bang Theory, Magnetars, Quasars, pulsars, & black holes, galaxies, constellations, the sun, the solar systems, the moon, planets, meteors, comets, asteroids.

Exploring the first steps of space; the space launch, there is a field trip that local schools take that have an exhibit about the launch.  There is a lot that can be done with this topic.  

Chapter 12

lesson Ideas

This chapter reflects on probes-determining what the students already know

probes-basic questions and simple activities that get children thinking and talking about particular topics.  Probes are great ways to get children talking engaging prior knowledge.  It's also a great way for teachers to assess what they my know.     

Starter Ideas for weather:  Weather Predictions,

Question: How do we know a storm is coming?

Unit overview: students identify the forms of technology used by meteorologists and build a model of at least one instrument used to gather weather observations. 

Read it! Chapter 7 Engineering

Integrating Science and Engineering

Science & ELA

• Science, Engineering and ELA can be integrated together as they cut across disciplines and are useful in understanding concepts.  
• Trade Books or textual resources are important to engage students and motivate them to think in inquiry-based research.  Trade books are not fictional stories on a topic or even text books, they focus on scientific adventures, the lives of scientists and science careers and provide factual material about stars,  planets, dolphins, etc.  
• Crossing subject matter barriers using language arts as the bridge is creative and effective. 

1. Literature-Based integration
2. Theme-based integration
3. Project-based integration

Language arts teaching strategies can be easily adapted to enrich and extend children's science experiences.  Writing stories along with a science topic.  My daughters had to create a story that went along with the concepts of gas, liquid, and solids.  One story was of an ice-cube who melted and froze and evaporated.  The second daughter wrote about a busy bee fly everywhere (that symbolized gas), then as the bees met each other and were moving less (liquid) then bees made a hive that was small so they could barely move (solid).  These stories helped them to understand the concept better and put it in different context.  It also helped them to use specific vocabulary associated with the subject matter.  

Science/Engineering & Math

• Computational Skills
• Data Collection and Expression
• Logical reasoning skills
• As students become more proficient in seeking explanations based on evidence, math will give students the tools to see patterns and express relationships.  

Science/Engineering & Social Studies

• Social issues provide contexts that often make the need for explanations or solutions to problems purposeful.  
• ex. designing user-friendly recycling bins demands an awareness of social issues, scientific principles, and engineering design for integration. 

Read it! Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5
Creating Science workspace

• discovery stations
• adding some life to the classroom eg. aquarium, plants
• consider other senses e.g sound of ocean, jungle, woodlands
• distributing materials 
• providing work areas
• providing clear directions
• create routines

Encourage science talk

• questioning strategies
• convergent-get children to think in ways that focus on basic knowledge
• divergent-think about a # of alternative answers
• evaluative-gets students to offer a judgement based on some critera
• wait-time/think time strategies
• give time 
• partner share
• Fostering active listening strategies
• science talk and the science circle
• recap, redirect, re-voice, restate

Encourage Collaboration

• teach social and small group skills

Chapter 6

Assessment of Understanding and Inquiry

Formative Assessments

Summative Assessments

Assessment Strategies

• Prompt and Rubric
• performance assessments
• portfolios
• Science journals
• Affective Development Checklists
• Science Conferences with Children
• Science probes
• Concept mapping
• Self Assessments
• End of chapter assignment
• quizzes
• unit tests
• Research Reports 
• Activity write ups

Weathering the lessons!

This blog is a reflection on my group and our lesson.  I couldn't have been happier on the outcome for our first run. As with any lesson, it takes a trial and adjustments to get it right.  There are definite things that I would like to have improved on, or in hindsight, done differently, but for our first time, and as a group effort, I thought we did great!  We worked really well as a team, everyone brought something creative and constructive to the table. We edited, questioned, added, critiqued each other.  There were no judgments, no taking control from anyone.  It was a beautiful cooperation.  And it definitely helped to go third!

Click here for slide show

Our group of students was smaller then we planned for.  We had thought we would have one student per grade for our inquiry project groups.  This is where we had to do a lot of adjusting.  Our investigative questions were written based on grade.  Lower level questions were for our younger students while more higher thinking questions were for the older students.  But unfortunately, our groups were only partners of younger students while the oldest was solo.  My group of two boys were eager to do the project, but had no interest in the books.  They enjoyed the videos, and listened and analyzed what they were learning.  Boy "M" did not like to read, and was beginning to get anxious, but when I gave him a task of making the letters for the poster and had be the poster designer adding from already written notes, he settled in.  We assigned boy 'J' as note taker.  These roles were approved by them and things got more organized.  Both boys contributed to the poster and it turned out great, maybe a little unorganized, but they had freedom to create it their way.  

The direct lesson was on the difference between weather and climate and how global warming and climate change are affecting weather.  We broke our students into small groups and had them research a severe weather and connected it to climate change.  They utilized books, videos and websites as sources for their research, and were able to answer preassigned questions.  They created a poster based off what they learned from their research and shared their knowledge with their peers by presenting their findings.  During our lesson, one child would talk out, use funny voices, and fell off his chair.  A teacher would usually stand by him as a reminder to check himself.  Though he was the one student to act out, he was also the to student in the Kahoot Quiz!

  

We ended the lesson with the students creating a tweet to post to their school's twitter account as an independent practice.  

So proud of them and my fellow colleagues!!