The ending has come

"You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having."

The end of the semester came in a flash! I cannot believe that I am finished with my last semester of classes as an undergrad! This is definitely a bittersweet feeling. I am extremely excited to be student teaching next semester. For my first placement I am in a second grade general education class. For my second placement I am in a fifth grade co-taught special education class. Thanks to Dr. Smirnova I have so many resources that I can use when creating my lessons and unit plans. Furthermore, when

I am completing my edTPA next semester I will have so much practice!

This semester was definitely hard work! Sitting in class the first day I never thought I would be sitting here writing my final blog post! I have acquired so many skills and expanded my knowledge and experience! The thought of all the work we had to do made many of us crazy. But, now that it is over,
I am sure we all see the benefit it had on all of us. We have learned so much this semester. As well as learning new material, tools, philosophies etc. I have also learned a whole lot about myself as well. I have learned what certain teaching styles work for me.

Overall, I am very happy for everything I have learned in this class. This class has made me so excited for my future when I have my own classroom! There was also no better feeling than completing my eFolio! My eFolio has everything that has been completed over the semester. Follow this link to take a look!!

Here are the links to some of my peers blog's that I have commented on:

Mallory's blog

Shannon's blog

Kristen's blog 

Creating My Unit Plan

Creating Unit Plans can be a very stressful thing to do. I find it most helpful to plan a lot before you begin your actual unit plan. You need to think about how many lessons you need and what type of lessons. For our unit plan, we had already created 2 lessons that we taught in the classroom. Therefore, we needed to include at least 3 more mini lessons. At first, I thought this was going to be very difficult. But, during our semester, Dr. Smirnova provided us with many great resources that we
could use to create a mini lesson with and gear toward our topic. For example, two great mini lessons that I am going to include in my unit plan are: Science in the news and a trade book lesson. While creating my mini lessons, I am gearing it toward rocks and minerals and sixth grade. The next step I usually take when creating a unit plan is gathering everything together. It is important to see what you already have and what you will need. After you gather all your information you can begin to create everything you need to complete your unit plan. Creating a unit plan takes a lot of hard work and effort. You have to be patient and adaptive. At times, creating a unit plan can be very overwhelming! It is important that our lessons are not only educating but creating experiences for our students.

Efolio Struggles

Since I took Social Studies Methods last semester, I thought I would have an easy time creating my e-folio since I had already created one! At first I hated the website we used, which was livebinder, but after a while I got used to and became an expert. This semester Dr. Smirnova decided to use Google Sites instead so that everything would be on our Google accounts. This threw me for a curve ball!! 

I am still learning how to navigate the site and there are some things that I just cannot figure out! Little by little I am making my way and getting my e-folio done. We have to include everything such as edTPA tasks, science projects, an about me section, our blog, unit plan, resume and much more. Not being familiar with the sight has hindered me a little bit, but it is something that I can overcome. Hopefully with a little practice I will figure out how to navigate it better!

The e-folio is a great tool for us to have because it keeps everything in one place. This is something that would be so excellent to show a future employer and I am sure they would be very impressed by what we have accomplished! Throughout the course of the semester I think we did amazing work and many impressive projects. We learned so much and our e-folio is our chance to show to the world what we learned and what we achieved! Hard work always pays off! I am hoping that I will finish my e-folio by the middle of next week so that will be one less thing I have to worry about. Another great thing about this e-folio is that I can use it next semester when I am student teaching. If I need to refer back to anything we did during this semester, it will all be easily accessible in this e-folio! 

Science Fairs!

Throughout time, one of the most exciting ways to engage students in science would be through science fairs. Students would pick a problem, go through the steps of the scientific method and carry out their problem to test their hypothesis. Some love it~Some hate it. Science exhibitions originated in 1828 in New York. There is a lot of competition that usually takes place with science fairs. The competition of science fairs is usually reduced at the elementary level so that all students can have the self confidence and courage for their love and learning of science. Science fairs have grown in popularity all throughout the years all around the United States. They have been recently growing in popularity in other countries as well, including Brazil, Canada, Chile, Sweden, United Kingdom and many more. A lot of times, when students have to participate in science fairs, there is a judging system. An article written by Lawrence Bellipanni and Edward Lilly, broke down the difficulty in being fair and partial when judging science fair projects. They believe that judges should be recruited from elsewhere so that there is no biased views. Judges should also be given instructions on what to be judging on before seeing any projects and should evaluate all projects on the same rubrics or scoring sheets. Students should also be judged on factors such as creativity, skills and  thoroughness of their work. They also believed that science fairs should be voluntary for students and the emphasis should not be placed on competition and winning, but instead should be placed on the experience of learning. One great quote that I found from this article said that "The elementary teacher has to be the guiding light for the student." Science fair should be a fun and rewarding experience for students and teachers should be an inspiration for their students and help propel their learning forward. The science fair project should be more of an opportunity for students to get involved with a hands on learning experience in science. This article concluded by saying that it is most important for science fair projects to be a learning experience that is rewarding and helpful to the students (Bellipanni and Lilly, 1999). 

In another article written by Janell Wilson, it was stated that science fairs are a great way for students to become engaged and interested in their science problems and their science learning. It gives students the chance to become an expert on a particular topic, have to put their project together in a way to present to others and then be able to explain and help educate others about their project. By having a science fair it can get students more involved with the material they are learning. By giving students the option of picking their topic it can also be a fun time for students. It was concluded in this article that science fairs can help to promote a positive attitude toward science and give students the chance to actively participate more in science (Wilson, Cordry, Uline 2004).      

Overall, I think that both articles made excellent points about science fairs and students involvement in them. Personally, I agree that with science fairs comes a huge deal of competition. Sometimes people focus more on the competition part and wanting to win more than they focus on the question they are going to be exploring and explaining. Although, I do think that it is crucial for students to be judged and evaluated on their projects. I also do think that science fairs give students the chance to become more directly involved and engaged with the science material. Science fairs should be another way that students are learning hands on and it should be a fun process as well as educational. 

Bellipanni, L. J., & Lilly, J. E. (1999). What have researchers been saying about science fairs?Science and Children, 36(8), 46-50.

Wilson, Janell D; Cordry, Sheila; Uline, Carol. College Student Journal38.1 (Mar 2004): 112-115.

Skype around the world!

Today during our class session, we had the great opportunity to participate in a "Skype-A-Thon" and Skype with another class! This was part of something the other class called a "Mystery Skype"! Our class skyped with an 8th grade class from Kansas! We did not know them, and they did not know us! It started out with the other class asking us a question about where we lived! They would ask us a question and then we would ask them going back and forth. The class would ask us a question and then mark off on a map they had. So, they would ask us questions to try to narrow down where we lived, and when we answered they would mark off an area that would then be considered 'out' based on the answer we gave them! We went back and forth for a while before we finally guessed they lived in Kansas! After a few more questions they figured out that we were from New York! They said that they were surprised we did not have New York accents! 

This was a really great opportunity and learning experience. At first, I was a little weary about how this would work out skyping with another teacher and classroom that we had no idea who they were! But, the class was really great and very into the whole process, as was ours! The teacher was also excellent and had a lot many amazing ideas and advice for us as future teachers! One important thing she kept saying, was that as teachers, we need to create lessons that students will remember! It is so important that students are involved with their learning experience and it should be memorable and enjoyable for the students! 

After the lesson, she showed us how she would normally wrap up a lesson, as if we were not there. So they gathered together and talked about the overall lesson. I think this was also good for us to observe because we got to see how another teacher handled this and effectively closed a lesson. I think there are a lot of benefits to this "Mystery Skype." One of the students in the class explained to us that she skyped with another group of kids from Africa. They were trying to help the kids in Africa learn about clean water that they could drink and use. The student told us that they also talked with a class from Greece as well! This gives students the opportunity to learn so much about other people and other cultures! 

The teacher even gave us some time to ask her questions because she has been doing this for many years now. Overall, I think this is a great tool that I would definitely use in my classroom. This allows students to learn in more ways then one and gives them an incredible experience. I am very glad that we got to participate in this! 

Breaking Science Stereotypes RAR

I read an article titled Breaking Science 
Stereotypes, written by Alec Bodzin and Mike Gehringer. A study was conducted and students were asked to draw a picture of what they thought scientists looked like as a way to get a better understanding of what they thought scientist looked like. The results were that many students view scientists as white males with stereotypical items such as a lab coat and eyeglasses. The class that participated in this study was then visited by a variety of scientists who did not fit the students original perception of what a scientist was. After he visit, many of the students drawing changed! Some students drew pictures of female scientists and included other images that were less stereotypical than the original drawings. It was concluded that the interaction between the students and the scientists influenced students and their perceptions of what they thought scientists looked like. Seeing scientists face to face helped to break many of the stereotypes that students originally had in their minds. The researchers concluded that there needs to be a way that scientists can be more involved with elementary school students so that students can be engaged and get a better understanding of what scientists are!

I thought this was an excellent article because it was a great study that was conducted about the perception of what students think scientists are. I think it was an awesome idea that real life scientists were brought into the classroom to meet the students. It is great to give students a time to interact with real scientists and give them the opportunity to meet and see that they are just like us. This can also inspire students to realize that that can be them one day!

We participated in this stereotype breakthrough the first day of science methods with Dr. Smirnova. She gave us each a a piece of paper and asked us to draw a picture of a scientist and give them a name. Even as college students, we all had a stereotypical scientist drawing. We walked around the classroom and looked at each other's drawing. Most of the scientists were, in fact, males with glasses just like the study concluded in the article!

I think it is extremely important to break stereotypes within the classroom at any level. I chose this article to write about because I wanted to see how the stereotypes were researched and broken within this study. I think having the scientist come in was one great way of breaking through the stereotypes and if it is possible to have real life appearances, it can break many other stereotypes. As a teacher, you also have to be willing to talk about the stereotypes and then show students those are not always true. 

Bodzin, A., & Gehringer, M. (2001, January). Breaking Science Stereotypes. Science and Children, 36-41.

Science in the News

ThingLink

Science is all around us! I logged onto NewsELA, which is a wonderful website that has a compilation of so many articles on different topics and can be customized for different reading levels. Using this website, I was able to find tons of articles having to do with science. I focused on astronomy and compiled a collection of about ten articles that I thought were relevant and interesting. I took those ten articles and put them into a thinglink to make a scrap book. All of the articles I chose were very current and recently in the news. I thought this was a great type to choose because these discoveries are relevant to our lives right at this moment! For example, I found a few articles about scientists learning about life on other planets! The thinglink I created was fun and easy. This is a great tool that students can easily use in the classroom. Next, I took all the articles and created a timeline about when these articles were written. To create the timeline, I used tikitoki. This was an excellent tool and the final product is amazing! It is a little bit more confusing and hard to navigate, but in the end it is completely worth it to use it! Students can have the prompt to research articles and create a scrapbook, then put them into a timeline, just like I did. Then to take it a step further, they can pick one article that interests them, and continue to investigate this article. Depending on the grade level a research project or paper can even be incorporated to make sure students are grasping the topic they chose. 

TikiToki T

One article that I found particularly intriguing was about scientist possibly finding a new world past Pluto. This planet is part of our solar system and scientists are thrilled that they may be so close to a new discovery. Another article I found to be great was a new, nonexplosive source of black holes. Usually black holes form from the violent death of a star but with this new discovery a computer says that at least one black hole may have been formed from collapsing gas cloud. This is so interesting because this is such a new and interesting discovery that could lead to so many more discoveries about black holes. A third article that I thought was worthy to discuss is that astronomers found planets that they think could support human life. Obviously, they are no where near actually being able to make a final decision as to whether it is one hundred percent possible, but they are on their way and one step closer. 

This has helped me to realize how science is all around us all the time. This would be a great assignment for students so they can realize this as well.