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. :)

How do you prepare for learning the science content you need to know to teach your kit?

                                                   Rocks and Minerals

I never realized how much thought and time you put into just one lesson plan. After learning about our first lesson plan ROCKS AND MINERALS (very exciting), I now know how much information you need to grasp about rocks and minerals in order to teach the lesson. There are so many resources out there that are great to learn all you need to know about rocks and minerals. I love Barnes and Noble, so I plan on going into the kids section and searching for whatever I can find about rocks and minerals and see if there are any fun and interesting things I find I can incorporate into my lesson plan.
       Also, the internet is a great place to find information on rocks and minerals such as: http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jmresources/rocks/links.html#samples (which has many different websites about rocks and minerals and fun activities you can do to learn more about them).
Another website is :http://42explore.com/rocks.htm (this website also has many links to other websites about rocks and minerals and projects and experiences you can do to learn more). 


I am very excited to explore more websites and Barnes and Noble to learn much more about rocks and minerals.  These resources will help me feel more confident in teaching the lesson plans in the classroom and exploring different experiments with the students! :)

Fun Science Websites!! Enjoy

I found some great websites for kids and teachers to use!
*Kids Astronomy  http://www.kidsastronomy.com/solar_system.htm 
           is a great website for kids to learn about the planets and what they look like and learn about the solar system, asteroids and comets.  There is also fun games to play to make learning more exciting!
                                                                                                                                                                    
The other website I found was Dinosaur Resources and Information for Kids www.guidetoonlineschools.com/library/dinosaurs#w be the website for you if you do not know too much about dinosaurs and want to learn more.  There is a lot of neat and interesting facts about dinosaurs and all the different kinds. There is also fun games and activities to play on the webiste as well.                                                                                     
Hope you all enjoy!! :)

My Science Story

I have always liked doing fun experiments. I love doing hands on experiments and finding out what is going to happen and how it happened. I always liked science in elementary school and middle school. I took biology, environmental science, oceanography and chemistry in high school. I love nature and exploring the outdoors. Camping is so much fun and I always help my father garden flowers and tomatoes when I was younger.  We had a blueberry tree in our backyard as well.  I was a tomboy when I was younger too so I loved to play outside in the woods and explore things with them. I would get poison ivy about every other week.  I think I have become immune to it now.   :)   The one thing I do not like about nature is bugs. I like some bugs but I absolutely do not like spiders. I am terrified and that can be an issue when camping.

I look forward to learn a lot more about science and create lesson plans and teach children in a classroom setting.  I am very nervous, but I believe this class will help a lot. It will be a lot of fun and I am very excited.