Science Rocks! :)

                             

My overall impression of this experience was great! I enjoyed every minute of it. It was such a great learning experience and I am very excited to have my own classroom someday.  Kelly was a great partner and we worked very well together.  I have learned so much after teaching science.  As Jillian said in her blog, I thought it was going to be easier for me because I work at a daycare, but it was such a different experience.  I learned how to manage a classroom and I also worked on time management and how important it is to have your lesson plan ready to go. Without the lesson plans, I would be lost.  It helped me stay organized and focused on what I was teaching to the students. 

My weekly feedback I received from my supervisors was very helpful.  Kelly and I used all the feedback from every lesson to try and make the next lesson even better. I love hearing feedback on how we did, because if there was something we could work on, it is great to hear it from someone else, because it will help me improve more and more.  The classroom teacher helped me learn a lot about teaching science. She gave us great feedback and suggested some things we could try differently.  If she realized the students were having a hard time understanding something, she would take Kelly or myself aside to suggest ways to help them better understand something.  We learned how to stay organized by writing the agenda on the board and having the students use it as a guideline as well.  

I feel as though my content knowledge on rocks and minerals has increased greatly.  I knew some things about rocks and minerals, but I learned so much more after teaching these lessons. I learned how to find the streak test, light and luster of minerals and learned more about the rock cycle.  Not only were the students learning something new everyday, but I was learning new things right along with them. I loved observing the students work and how enthusiastic they were about each and every lesson. It makes me more excited to become a teacher.  I have learned a lot about science process skills throughout this semester.  I realized we use the science process skills in every lesson and it was a lot of fun teaching the students the science process skills and how important they are.  

My level of confidence for teaching has changed unbelievably as a result of this experience.  I was so nervous for my first lesson, because I had no idea what to expect and I had never taught science to fourth graders before.  I teach 5 year olds at my daycare, but these students are much older and very intelligent. I was also very nervous teaching students while being observed.  I thought it was going to be hard for to me focus on the lessons while being observed by two teachers, but Kelly and I did a great job staying focused and excited. Once, we started teaching the lessons, we became naturals and the flow of the class was great overall. 

I feel that blogging was very useful throughout this experience.  It helped me expressed myself after doing each lesson and what I learned and what I could work on.  I had a great time reading everyone else's blogs as well and getting great ideas from their lessons.  I feel as though the blogs were part of the learning experience as well and helped me throughout the semester.  I believe I will continue to use a blog, because I believe it is very important to blog about your experiences, because I want to remember these wonderful memories I am so lucky to experience.  I want to be able to read these blogs in a few years and remember how far I have come.  

All I can say is I think the blogs were a great idea.  They were very helpful and I believe they should be used again.  I have learned so much over these past few months and it makes me even more excited and motivated to become a wonderful inspiring elementary school teacher.  

                                   

Light Test

                

Monday's lesson was a lot of fun. Kelly and I set everything up as usual and talked about what we were going to do for the lesson. We wrote the agenda on the board as well for everyone to follow. We wanted to show the students the differences between the 3 squares, (transparency, wax paper and cardboard) and our lovely classmate Sarah :) let us borrow her flashlight to show the students a cool way to explain it. We started out by asking the students what we learned last week and some were confusing the week before with last weeks lesson, but they eventually remembered they learned the streak test and I reminded them what the difference between observable color and identifying color was.  We then passed out squares of transparency, wax paper and cardboard to each group and asked them to write down words to explain the color and differences of these three materials.  After the students had a chance to discuss words to describe them we asked them to share their ideas and we wrote them on the board. The students had some great words to describe the three different squares.  After we told them what each square was called in relation to light. The transparency was transparent, the wax paper was translucent and the cardboard was opaque and explained each one.                                

                       

  We then told the students we wanted to show them how these three squares are transparent, translucent and opaque with a light test. We warned them we were going to shut the lights off for a minute and we had to calm them down alittle because they seemed to get very excited.  Kelly held up the transparent square and shined the flashlight through it to show how you could clearly see all of the light through it.  She then held up the wax paper and shined the flashlight on it to show some of the light was going through it and then she held up the cardboard square to show that no light was shining through it.  The students thought it was really neat and I think it helped them clearly understand the difference of the three vocabulary words. 

I then told the students we were going to be doing a light test with the minerals to see which one were transparent, translucent and opaque.  I held up mineral E and explained to hold the mineral in front of you and put the light behind it so the light is shining towards the mineral and you to see if you can see light shining through.  We explained how it is important not to shine the light in anyone's face because it could really hurt their eyes and to please shut the lights off when they were not using them. 

We then passed out the minerals and the lights to all of the students and told them we did not have enough lights for every group and to please share them.  We all did mineral E together so they could get the hang of how to use the light.  They were then on their own and they were all very eager to do the lesson.  The students did a great job sharing the lights and working together on this lesson. They also did a great job to shut the lights off when they were not using them to save the battery. We did not even have to remind them. Kelly and I walked around and asked the students questions about what they see and they were very excited to tell us what they discovered. They seemed to go through this part of the lesson kind of quickly so we told them they could read about the different minerals in the back of their journal and also they could organize the minerals into the three different categories.

At the end we cleaned up all the materials and finished the lesson off with what they learned today.  The students told us they learned about transparent, translucent and opaque and which minerals are which ones.  The students had so much fun and so did I. Next week we will be our last lesson on luster :(.   I am very excited for this lesson, but also very sad because it will be our last one. These students are great and I will miss them.

Lesson 7 The Streak Test

Today's lesson went very well.  Kelly and I are becoming more and more organized and prepared every week.  We set everything up and we actually had time to sit down and just review what we were doing for the lesson.  This lesson we were supposed to incorporate technology into our lesson, but we did not need an overhead or anything for this lesson.  We have used the overhead in the previous lessons, but we want to try and incorporate some sort of technology again before the semester is over.  We first asked the students what we did last week and asked them the important question to see what they remember and they all raised their hands to say all minerals are different (colors, shapes, sizes and textures, etc.)  This made us very happy because we are actually teaching these students important facts about rocks and minerals and they are doing very well.  We then passed the minerals out and had the students sort them by color.  We then told them that they just sorted the minerals using their observable color and told them the observable color is what we see with our eyes.  

We then told them scientists use a streak test to find the identifying color of a mineral, whcih is the powered form.  We gave them black and white tile plates and showed how to do mineral A.  We wrote questions on the board to have them think about throughout the whole lesson.  We forgot to tell them these questions before they started the streak test, so we used our teachers handy dandy heart bell to get their attention.  We were then able to tell them the questions, which were written on the board and then they continued with the lesson.  They seemed to have a blast doing the streak test and were so eager to show us what color the minerals came out on the tile plate.  They seemed to do the experiment pretty quickly so if they were done, we had them read about hematite and graphite or discuss with their partners if they found their observable colors to be different from their identifying colors.  We also gave students with IEPs a checklist to use, which they all used.  :) We cleaned up and picked a helper to collect the hand lens. 

Since our reflections were a success last week and the other objection was writing in science, we thought we would have them write another reflection on what they learned. The students seemed to love this and all were so eager to share theirs with the class.  The students all had the cutest reflections and one student said she had so much fun this week and cannot wait until next week.  That really made us happy and made me appreciate and enjoy this awesome experience even more. :) We had a great time as well and I cannot believe we only have two more lessons left.  The semester is going by too fast.

Lesson 6 Minerals! SUCCESS!

           Today's lesson went very well.  Kelly and I were very excited for the students to be able to observe the minerals even more.  We wanted to make sure they had plenty of time to observe, since last week they did not have as much time and had to look at 12 rocks and 12 minerals.  This was very overwhleming for them.  Kelly and I were well prepared and brought all the materials necessary.  We had plenty of time before the lesson to set everything up and practice.  We wanted to do one of the mineral observations together using the overhead, but there was a substitute and we did not have a transparency copy.  Instead, we wrote it on the board. 

          We started the lesson by asking what the most important idea we discussed last week and all the students knew and raised their hands saying rocks are made up of different minerals and minerals are just one (pure).  Kelly and I were very excited about this since we had a difficult time getting this across to them last week.  We also discussed some content vocabulary words we learned this semester and the students were very receptive to this. 

         The students had a blast observing the 12 minerals and recording the texture and drawing a picture.  The students especially liked observing the smell of the minerals because they got to use new materials.  They had a cup of water and a dropper and poured water onto the mineral. They realized it helped the smell and color of the mineral become more distinct.  We were very nervous at first to allow 23 students to use droppers, but overall they did really well.

        

    Kelly and I really enjoyed the reflection the students did at the end.  We gave them each a piece of paper and told them to write a reflection on what they discovered today.  We discussed this at the end of the lesson and asked them what the most important idea they learned today. One student was very excited and wanted to read his reflection to the class. He said "Today I learned that minerals are not all the same. They are different shapes, sizes, colors and textures", and continued with his reflection.  :)  It was a great way to end the lesson.  We plan to use the reflections more often at the end of the lessons.

          The students really seemed to enjoy this lesson, because they did a lot of hands on observations and used new exciting materials.  Overall, I believe we had a great flow of the class.  We finished on time, YAYY! and the students enjoyed observing the minerals and using their senses to record the properties.  I really need to work on not saying "you guys" to the students, because I catch myself saying it right away, but I need to think before I call attention to the class. 

Lesson 4 & 5 Discovering Minerals and Sharing what we know about Minerals

Kelly and I seemed very prepared for this lesson. We had time to go over what we were going to be doing with the students multiple times before the actual lesson.  We had all materials ready to go and name tags on their desks. The only problem was we did not know how many minerals and how many rocks for the students to observe. We thought 12 rocks and 12 minerals would be very overwhelming for the students so we lowered it to 12 minerals and only 6 rocks. After the lesson, we soon realized even this was way too many for the students. They were very excited to look at all the different minerals and did not want to look at just one.  We discussed properties of mineral A and B together and had the students observe and record properties of mineral C. We then gave them 6 rocks to find similarities and differences. They did find similarities and differences but what we realized after the lesson was they did not grasp that rocks are made up of different minerals.

I believe we had good class management and finished in the right amount of time, but the teacher took us aside and wanted us to show the most important part of the lesson, which is rocks are made up of many different minerals. She had us give the students one mineral and one rock per group and asked them what they see. The students observed the similarities and differences of the rock and mineral and realized that minerals are pure and only made up of one thing, where as rocks are made up of many different minerals combined together. I thought it was a great idea and I am glad the teacher helped us explain this to the class. Reflecting on our lesson I believe we should have just observed one rock and mineral altogether for the students to grasp this concept. Having 12 minerals and 6 rocks was very overwhelming and exciting for them, so they did not really focus on the most important part.

Before the lesson started Kelly wrote the process skills the students would be using on the board, and before the students observed their rocks and minerals, Kelly explained the important process skills to the students.

We ended the lesson on the rug discussing the similarities and differences of rocks and minerals which was our lesson conclusion.  One student showed the class that mineral graphite writes. She was very excited to share this with the class. The teacher then had the students go back to their desks after discussing with Kelly and I to explain how rocks are made up from minerals.  We also referred back to the rock cycle and asked how are the rocks made up of different minerals. The students responded very well and seemed to grasp the importance.

Kelly and I were overwhelmed after the lesson, but after talking to the teacher, she made us feel better. She gave us some great feedback and ideas for our future lessons.  For our next lesson we really need to focus on one or two important goals or questions we want the students to come away with. We were too focused on sticking with the lesson plan, that we did not focus on the most important idea. We have definitely learned a lot and I am looking forward to making our next lesson a better success!! :)

Laura's 2nd lesson on Rocks and Minerals!!

                                                    

Kelly and I were a little less nervous this time setting up for the lesson, because lesson one went pretty well. We had an idea of how much the students knew about rocks and minerals and had everything planned out. We also had all of the materials ready to go for the students.  Once the lesson started we could not calm down.  We both became very nervous, because we needed to know facts about the different types of rocks and the rock cycle.  We were nervous about what questions the kids asked and if we could answer them correctly or at all.  Kelly, my wonderful partner did a great job reading to the class "The Coolest Rock" book.  She stop in between to explain what the different types of rocks were for the children to understand.  The teacher wanted us to really emphasize the rock cycle to the students so we thought that book would be a great way for them to understand. Even at the back of the book it had a picture of the rock cycle and how it works.  I explained the rock cycle and was very nervous because I did not want to mess it up.  We also went over the rock cycle song, explaining what each line meant and asking the students what they thought it meant.  The teacher did chime in a few times to explain the rock cycle, which was a great help!

                                                         

For some reason after all the students went back to their seats, Kelly and I seemed to calm down a bit and walked around observing and asking the students questions about the different properties of the 12 rocks.  Kelly had a great idea to make a worksheet for the students and to use three of their senses to describe the properties of each rock. We used our sense of smell (wafting), sense of touch and sense of sight.  The teacher did have to interrupt and talk to the students about doing a better job on their worksheets, because they were not doing the best work they could.  Kelly and I realized we can make an example worksheet of what we expect from the class, so they understand how much effort they should really put into it.  We really need to work on time management for our future lessons, because we went over the 45 minutes and did not give the students enough time to observe the 12 rocks. We realized we should have given more time for the hands on activity.  For our next lesson we plan to time everything in order to complete the whole lesson. Overall, I would say Kelly and I did a great job and I am very excited to start minerals!! :)

My First Science Lesson!! :)

  
I did my science lesson with Kelly, who was awesome to work with! We were very nervous at first when we came in the classroom. Luckily, we had 45 minutes to set up everything, talk with the teacher and practice the lesson together.  We were freaking our for nothing because the kids were so excited when they saw us standing in front of the classroom. One girl had a huge smile on her face and waved to us. 

The lesson turned out great. We started by asking the scientists what they know about rocks and we were nervous no one would participate.  We even had extra questions to ask them in case they did not have any answers. We were completely shocked. Every time we had a class discussion, almost every student had their hands up eager to talk. Some students had their hands up multiple times.  The little scientists did a great job coming up in pairs to gather their materials. We made sure to tell them to treat the rocks with respect and they should not put them near their mouths or throw them. Like Kelly said, one student was funny saying rocks do not taste good because he tried one when he was three years old. They really enjoyed observing the rocks and we told them to look for different properties of each rock and write them down. We realized we should have made that clear before we had them gather their materials because some students were not completely listening when we told them that.  

The students had a lot of interesting properties they wrote in their journals and some students said some very intelligent things. I was surprised at how much they already knew about rocks and how much they wanted to share with us.  Some students wanted to be silly and asked me how to spell booger. I did not think that was an appropriate word to use so I asked her to find a better word to use instead. Also, as Kelly said, another student referred to one rock as looking like baby puke and Kelly made sure to tell him that was not an appropriate word to use.  I had so much fun teaching the students this lesson and I am very excited to teach the next lessons. We are going to try and make it more exciting by gathering the students on the rug and reading them a fun story on the rock cycle. 

Overall, I believe Kelly and I did a great job and had a lot of fun with the students. The teacher was nice enough to sit with us after class and discuss how we did and make some suggestions for the next lessons. We really appreciated what she had to say and look forward to trying to improve throughout the semester. :)