What's Our Sputnik Response

I really enjoyed reading this article because it made me think where we are as a country.  Our focus is not on ourselves and how we can better improve our facilities and policies but spending money on helping others.  I think the quote that resonated with me the most was that we need to "dig inside ourselves and not for oil" (Friedman, 2010).  The war has not brought any benefits for our own educational advancement and oil prices have not even dropped.  I think Friedman was insightful by stating that when Sputnik occurred, it motivated our country and created a positive work ethic.  Today, I think everyone is so tired and there is nothing that is motivating us.  I feel that our country need to reflect and boost our own people.

In education, teachers need to give students the skills to improve themselves and this country.  I feel that this is possible by changing the way we look at teaching.  I think many science enthusiast have already started the change but we need to find a way to inspire the rest of the country to focus on STEM teaching.  Most teachers in my school are not familiar with the term "STEM".  I think the Department of Education should create a system where teachers must stay current with their information because there is such a necessary need to provide current methods for our students.  There are good teachers in my school and yet they do not know about inquiry-based lessons or how to teach them.  Our students are at a great disservice because they are not getting the support they need when they graduate college.

It seems that other countries are supported by their administration and know the importance of a quality education.  I think for a long time, we have focused so much on standardized testing that we are no longer giving students the experiences and skills that they will need to live in this competitive world.  Therefore, I think it is necessary to pass more initiatives to increase student awareness and interest in STEM careers and create positive experiences with learning about how their world functions.

Reference:
Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our Sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8

Earthquake Lesson

How did the use of a model work for you and your students? Share the triumphs and challenges of using models in an effort to support student understanding of complex science concepts.

My lesson went very well! I had two groups of students that I used for my lesson.  My brother is going into 6th grade, so I was able to get some students there but unfortunately half of them did not show up for the lesson.  I conducted part of the lesson with two of his friends and then later on in the week with friends in college and fellow teachers. I used slinkys to demonstrate how P and S waves move.  First I had students work with partners to demonstrate the different motions between P and S waves.  Then I create a 5 slinky model which demonstrates how waves move in all directions.  Both these activities were very effective and the students were really intrigued.  This model helped them to visualize what happens in the earth's interior as the vibrations travel.  I also had students determine the location of an earthquakes center by using this online simulation (http://www.sciencecourseware.com/VirtualEarthquake/VQuakeExecute.html).  The only issue was that no one was able to find the epicenter because they made little mistakes while reading the seismogram.  I think in the future I print them out so they are easier to read for students.

I wanted to use the 5 slinky model to generate data and have my students graph them but the vibrations moved too quickly and we could not get a time down.  Does anyone have suggestions on how we could get around this?

Natural Disasters

I think it is extremely important for students to understand how natural disasters occur and what we can do to predict them.  It is even more important to know how it affects peoples lives.  One of the best ways to introduce a topic, is to provide a real world example that is has affected their own country.  Often students do not think that disasters could happen in their areas but they are more real than they could imagine.  I would choose a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina and show them pictures of hurricane from NOAA and videos showing the destruction.  By showing them real examples, they are more likely to be focused and interested in how the hurricane is actually caused.  This also will be more motivated to help and contribute to relief efforts because they have an emotional connection to these disasters.  This past winter we had a bad snow storm and our mayor did not plow the roads, leaving most families in Brooklyn stranded in their homes for many days.  I wish that I had discussed with my students ways that they could contribute during times such as a snow storm.  For example, they could help shovel the walk ways for people on their block or make sure that elderly in their neighborhood have food and water.  I think it would be important to stress the idea of community at a school and foster a love for each other's neighbor before a disaster hits.  One of the most powerful tools teachers have is the power to motivate their students to be contributors to their society, whether it be knowing why they must recycle or how they can help others during natural disasters. It is our job to be a source of knowledge about disasters and lead by example by being an active contributor to society.

Different Presentation Technologies

There are many presentation tools that I experimented with. Some presentation tools I could not use because my school was not listed or I need to have adminstrative assistance.  This was frustrating because they seemed like great tools (such as Globster).

 The first one was Prezi.  Prezi was fairly easy to use and I thought of many applications to use for my students.  However, when I watch and click the prezi presentation after its created, I felt a little bit confused and that could be a problem with my students. It seems a bit limited in that it can be confusing with the other tools that students are used to using.

I tried Empressr next and I thought it was cool how you could add in graphs and their data.  It also allows you to add in powerpoint presentations.  This can be both a benefit and not because students can use powerpoint with this tool but then I need to have time to teach them about powerpoint.  This program also allows the presentation to be public or private which is nice to keep a presentation just for students and allow them access to change and edit.

If anyone has any other suggestions please let me know!  I tried others websites but some said they were no longer in use!

Energy Sources

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=about_forms_of_energy-basics#top-container

http://www.kids.esdb.bg/index.html

http://energyquest.ca.gov/index.html

While I was researching, the most impactful websites helped students see that science was relevant in their lives.  The government website gives a great overview of the types of energy that is used and how we can help our environment.

These tools would help my students become more scientifically literate students by fostering and support their understanding of energy sources.  Part of being scientifically literate is learning how to use the information on the computer.  Researching is a skill that they will use for the rest of their education careers.

It would be interesting to have students use these websites and create a brochure on a new way of energy and why it is the best for our ecosystem. Students could work in groups and develop a model based off the ones that they find from the websites. The website from California has an interactive room that students can find timelines of energy usage and scientists that were involved in the creation or improvement of different energies sources.

Some challenges of these sources would be the complexity of the material.  My third graders are limited because they do not have experience using the internet as a research tool and there is not many different sources that are not simplified.

Heat Transfer Lesson

For this lesson, I decided to use a cloth, paper towel, saran wrap and tissues.  I wanted to use tin foil but of course we were out of tin foil.  The saran wrap was the most effective insulator.  In the future I want to compare the tin foil to the saran wrap to see which one is the better insulator of heat. For my students, I would like to ask them to think about how they keep things warm or cool in their own home.  I would like them to base their prediction on this and bring in the materials from home for them to test.  Perhaps I could make groups based on the students who bring in the same materials and then we could test and compare as a whole class.  I would like to have a test to see which size container keeps the water the warmest like in the article we read this week with the porridge.  I think that is something that students do not realize and would be beneficial for their understanding not just for class but in life as well.

Guided Inquiry Lesson

For this assignment I did tested the different surfaces affect on marbles.  I borrowed a ramp from my brother and used carpet, tile floor and sandpaper as my different surfaces.  My results were the same as my prediction.  The marble traveled the furtherest on the tile floor because it was slick, less friction than on the carpet which was thick and have more friction with the marbles.  I had conducted a similar experiment in the past with cars so the results were the same.

When setting up the experiment, I did not have enough resources which is always a struggle for teachers.  At first I only had enough 2 sheets of sandpaper which was not enough for the experiment.  We are having work done at my house so I asked the construction workers if they had more paper I could borrow.  In general, it always seems that teachers need a lot of different resources and I always get the same confused look when I ask people about different materials!

I was going to try to test the amount of time it took the marbles to travel but then I realized that would not really measure the momentum as much as measuring the distance it traveled. I think I would like to provide students with different materials (such as different ramps) and allow them to see which one would help them provide the best results.  I wouldn't like to make this an open inquiry because I am not sure I would know how to supervise one and I would be afraid that a topic such as friction would be too confusing.

It would be fun to have students go to a local park and put different surfaces on slides and have students race each other.  For example one student would just slide on the slide regularly and the other would have to slide down a felt slide.  Then I would have students compare and explain which student traveled the fastest. I would want students to understand how different objects react with different surfaces and understand real life applications such as driving on a wet surface as opposed to a dry surface and the implications it would have in their everyday lives.  I would also like students to be able to use the term friction easily and accurately in their explanations. I think I achieved this goal for myself but I know my students would need more practice to become comfortable using scientific terms.

Structured Inquiry: Adaptation

For my lesson I had students conduct a lesson on adaptation using different bird beaks.  Unfortunately, due to the scheduling of the class, we were unable to complete everything that we wanted during the lesson.  Attached is student work.  I started as whole class but this was the first science experiment we have done in class so they were very excited and we lost time during the instructions.  I ended up choosing a small group at the end of the day to finish the activity.  Students had to compete for food sources using different beaks (tweezers, straw, spoon and chopsticks).  They predicted how effective their beaks would be and then they recorded how much of each food they collected in their stomachs.  After we discussed if their prediction was correct and the second question.  Unfortunately we did not finish the rest of the questions but given the time, I think the students could have shown their understanding more clearly.

For the most part, the students understood that the spoon was the most effective beak.  The students used their data to answer the second question which we discussed as a class as well.  The students who had the straw were very frustrated but learned more about the activity because their bird could only have one food source and very little of it.

These two were Lilly's work:
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=138df54727&view=att&th=12e200874b2beb0b&attid=0.3&disp=inline&realattid=f_gk47y0ut2&zw
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=138df54727&view=att&th=12e200874b2beb0b&attid=0.4&disp=inline&realattid=f_gk47y82o3&zw

These two were Alan's work:
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=138df54727&view=att&th=12e200874b2beb0b&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_gk47xtfe0&zw
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=138df54727&view=att&th=12e200874b2beb0b&attid=0.2&disp=inline&realattid=f_gk47xwx01&zw

Global Warming

Global warming seems to be one of the most controversial topics in science today.  Personally, I feel that throughout my background study of global warming it seems that this is a dangerous issue that is facing our society today. Ecosystems are in a constant state of balance and imbalance, however the changes that the world has shown are more rapid that other changes observed in smaller ecosystems.  If the polar ice caps were to melt, I think it would have a dramatic affect on the sea level and destroy the wildlife that exists in the polar regions.  Our world ecosystem would be in a dramatic imbalance and I find it hard to see how it would go back to a state of balance.  There would be such drastic change, that it would affect multiple areas of the world.

Some questions I have include:
How can we teach students to understand the interrelatedness of global warming to their every day lives?

What are we doing in schools to encourage students to be proactive about their environment?

First Science Lesson

While trying to plan for the first lesson, I felt I struggled a bit with the format.  I thought it was helpful to have the standards but I had trouble relating the work to the historical perspectives.  I felt that they were very broad and did not give much help that could be used for elementary purposes.  Many of the historical perspectives shared what middle school and high school needed which made it difficult for me to relate material that would meet those standards.

I thought the 5 e's were helpful although there was some overlap with the learning activities section.  I felt that the 5 e's should be used to help guide the thinking process but not a part of the lesson planning itself. Perhaps I was confused on what specifically needed to go in those sections.

Typically I do not write out a developed lesson plan like the one for this assignment.  My school has lessons that they want us to teach in specific ways so often I find myself just following what other teachers in my grade do.  I would like the chance to develop more lessons so I can see the whole picture of what my classroom will look like from every angle.  Although it requires a lot of time which is always an issue in education.

I think implementing this lesson would be difficult because I incorporated a field trip into the lesson.  I could not put this lesson into action because my school has set field trips and I cannot plan trips on my own.  There is freedom in a college course to develop lessons and resources but when it comes down to doing the lesson, certain logistical things have to be changed.