Haw River Science…Round Three

Today’s experience at Haw River was yet again another unique experience! I yet again found myself struggling with the inquiry portion of the parachute lesson. There are very specific objectives that we want our students to meet and they sometimes tended to be way off base. Our students were stuck on the image of a human sky diving from an airplane. This was a good jumping off point and one student made the connection between a person and the clothespin but it was hard to pry them away from this to focus on our lesson.
Last time we had a difficult time teaching the concept of an average. If the students had never heard the term before, it is a completely foreign notion and I found myself at a loss for words. This time we opted to skip that step and focus more on the change between the times from the original trial and the times after a modification was made to the parachute. We explained if the number was smaller in the second trial then it was faster than the original trial and if it was larger then it was slower than the original trial. One boy was correct in his answer of faster or slower with each trial and most of the other children seemed to just be arbitrarily yelling out faster or slower. That was a clear fact that I guess just has to be engrained in the students after more practice than we could offer in one 40 minute lesson.
For me, the hardest part about this science lesson is figuring out what objective I am trying to teach. I really have liked our classroom discussions about backwards design and have learned through this process how counterproductive it is to try and make a lesson fit an objective. I know that we are just trying to find out how changing different variables will affect a parachute’s flight but in trying to teach more than that, I found myself overwhelmed and frustrated in the lesson. I wanted to pose open-ended questions that led to inquiry and I honestly feel like I did a better job at that this time than I did last time, but I felt like I couldn’t completely step back and let the students take over because they were lacking some basic knowledge about the subject. I know that in my future classroom, this would be a great lesson into a unit after we had already built up a schema about the subject. As a launching lesson, I feel that this would be a poor idea.

Haw River…Round Two

This time at Haw River was very different from last time. I felt, as the teacher, much more equipped for this lesson than I did the last time. Not only am I a more confident and comfortable teacher, I also actually understood the lesson and the lesson’s objectives this time. Posing inquiry based questions came more naturally this time. I accredit this to my growth and to the fact that the students were able to give responses to lead the lesson as opposed to last time where the students really were not able to express their thoughts because it was just confusing.
The students in this class were really interested in the experiment process. They brought a lot of prior knowledge about flying objects to the lesson and were comfortable talking with us about what they knew. The students made predictions and were confident in their guesses. It was fun getting to talk with them and watch them process their discoveries. The students seemed to be more familiar with the experimental process and thus were more comfortable during the lesson.
Next time, I would certainly find a way to explain finding an average. During this part of the lesson, I knew that we were floundering. Another option would be to call it something else and explain it not as the technical term “average.” Just like we called water tension the “skin” we could also come up with a way to explain to the students that we have to find one number to use for our results. I think I also would want to find a way for the students to drop their own parachutes. It would probably be more meaningful and leave an impression of ownership over the experiment.

UDL in the Classroom

In my classroom, using other means of getting the same information to various students should be a priority. Obviously, as a learner I know that we do not all learn the same. The fact that some people are visual learners while others learn better in small groups versus whole group instruction is evident right at the beginning of the school year. For some students, technology is going to make no difference while to others it may be the key to success. One thing I hope to do in my classroom that I have yet to see in my student teaching is to give directions in multiple formats. I am not sure exactly what this will look like, but I have seen that some students get lost in class activities and this maybe could be cut down if they received the directions differently. Sometimes, we have the instinct to hear about new technology or software and think it could be useful but never actually pursue it for use. I hope that when I hear about UDL opportunities in my classroom that I will actually seek out the resources. Using the technology resource teacher at my school could prove to be an invaluable asset.
In the second grade classroom that I am in right now, the smartboard is an invaluable UDL tool. Students can see all kinds of information presented in a myriad of ways. At the same time, I have seen my teacher show the same information just on the smartboard, not a variation of the standard lesson plan. Other than the smartboard, everything is pretty much presented in one standard form for all of the students. The children do get to use a listening center during literacy centers that could be very useful for some students, I’m not sure how that actually plays out.

Conceptual Change in a World of Bubbles

Conceptual change requires a deep reorganization of knowledge. Our four children came into the bubble experiment already knowing something about bubbles. To start out the lesson, Melissa and I even asked the students to brainstorm what they already knew about bubbles. They all came up with multiple adjectives to describe the properties of a bubble. The students clearly associated bubbles with fun, but to get the children to think of bubbles scientifically proved to be a challenge. Unfortunately, we did not seem to get the children to reorganize their thoughts to come to the definition of surface tension. They knew about water, they knew about soap, but we just were not able to really take it one step further. I think part of the problem was that we, the teachers, were a little unclear about the goal that we were going for.
It is hard to think about taking a fact that a child knows and helping them restructure that into new knowledge. As a teacher, the real life aspect of science is going to be the most useful tool for lessons. Without coming up with some kind of actual application for a lesson or concept, all it will be is a definition to be memorized. In this way, the bubble activity was perfect because it was aiming to give the students a visual of a really difficult concept in science. I just think that since the teachers felt ill-equipped and since the lesson was vague, we did not reach true conceptual change.
On the other hand, it seemed that the children were used to working in science to reach conceptual change. They were open to experimenting and eager to see results. They seemed to come into the lesson with knowledge of how science works and what they needed to do to conduct a scientific experiment. In this sense, we were very lucky! If the children had never been part of a science lesson like this, they probably would have treated it more like play time instead of a time where they could actually learn something.

Bubble Activity at Haw River

The science experiment was fun because I could see how excited the children were about conducting an experiment.  All of the children did a wonderful job with following directions.  They each waited their turn and listened very carefully.  At the beginning of the lesson, we did a brainstorming activity to see what we all knew about bubbles already.  The children all actively participated and did not stop giving answers after they each gave one response.  All four of the students seemed to be thinking through our questions and attempting to process them with intention instead of being unengaged with the lesson.  There was an eagerness to attempt the experiment and find out the answers that was really fun to see.  It was also great to see that the students did not really care about getting a right answer.  So many times in science I think that an easy response to a question is “I don’t know,” but these children seemed to be searching to come up with some kind of response no matter if it was correct or incorrect.

Teaching Science Begins…

After reading The Trouble With Textbooks, I now have some researched based results to back up some of my opinions.  As a teacher in training, I am slightly nervous about my science and math skills but I know that I do not want to become a classroom teacher that only relies on the textbook to outline all of my lessons.  It is sad to think that students do not know the most basic facts about science and yet it is not hard for me to believe.  I lack faith in my own ability to answer simple science questions and I have been in school for seventeen years.  Thinking back to elementary school, most of the science curriculum involved reading chapters out of the textbook and regurgitating facts and definitions based on the bold words and the five questions at the end of the chapter.    I especially found it interesting to find out that teachers are sold on textbooks based on all of the accessories that come with it and really, after the research, those supplements are not assisting in the education process.  All of the internet assistance and technology components would, to me, look like fabulous tools for my students.  In the end, it comes down to whether or not the technology is furthering learning.  I hope to take information like this and make sure that I am applying it to my future classroom.  Close scrutiny of student’s textbooks needs to be a priority in order to ensure the best education for all students.

An inquiry based science classroom is exactly what I hope to provide for my students.  Science can be exciting but so much of schooling has taken away that element.  Students should feel like actual scientists conducting research in the classroom.  The real scientific process and everything that goes along with it should be presented to the students.  Ideally, students should fully comprehend that science is a method not a bunch of facts to be memorized and regurgitated.  I liked this article and it made me think deeper about how I want to organize my classroom.  There is so much to account for throughout my planning that the task seems a little bit daunting at times!

Science Autobiography

Science is anything having to do with discovering truths and facts.  There has to be a discovery part in the definition because science is a process that must unfold in order to reach these new concepts.  The earliest memory that I have of science in my life is spending time at the Natural Science center at home.  At the center I was able to play, discover, and learn throughout my visit.  I loved the science center because it felt like play time.  Even when an employee of the center was teaching me about the crustaceans in a hands on water tank, it still felt like an adventure!  I was able to touch and feel the animals and actually have a clear and live visual example of what I was learning at the time, it was wonderful.  Anytime in school where I was building something or creating a product in science was my favorite time for learning.  I loved using my hands and discovering the nuts and bolts behind a science lesson.  At the same time, I can remember countless nights of being assigned to read a chapter in my science textbook, define the bold terms, and answer the five questions at the end of the reading.  That is not any kind of science that I love.  There is no discovery, no adventure involved with answering five questions.  No memory is created when I simply was instructed to read and write.  In high school, my favorite science class was chemistry in the tenth grade.  My teacher really made the subject come alive and either had us working on experiments or creatively demonstrating from the front.  I can distinctly remember times in which science was presented creatively and that is when I learned best.

In elementary school, I believe that children’s imaginations should be ignited and excited!  This should be a subject that students look forward to learning about and it should be integrated into other curriculum areas throughout the day.  I do not want science to be the subject that is always pushed to the end of each day so that if something has to be cut, science is the first thing to go.  I think it has become a subject in school that everyone talks about being really important but then it is constantly overshadowed by reading and math.  Based on my observations, everything is pushed to the side to make sure that reading and math is given the most attention.  In my mind, science is essential in the development of individual and independent learners and thinkers.  Kids need room to grow and ask questions and this is precisely a way that teachers can enable that growth and experimentation and at the same time help their students learn applicable knowledge.  I know that science cannot be all fun and games, but it is a place in which the mind can wonder and that can help build confident students who are excited to search for knowledge.  Learning and discovering science can empower students who have trouble reading at their grade level or the students that cannot add to save their lives!

My positive experiences in science have always included me actively engaged in the subject.  I have always been working with materials or playing with models to understand what the teacher and the textbook are talking about.  My negative experiences have always included the teacher speaking to me and assigning me mindless work to complete.  Those experiences made me hate the subject and put the idea in my mind that every science class that I would walk into would by default always end up being boring.