Diving into the First Week

The first week of classes are always so nerve wracking. It is fun to get to know your new classmates and teachers but it can also be a little scary. Fortunately, I took Social Studies Methods with Dr. Smirnova last semester, so I had a little idea of what to expect. This week was kind of bittersweet though because it was my last first week of classes! I am a senior and I am going to be student teaching in the spring! 

I am excited to take this class because I want to be able to improve my skills and knowledge of science. I am also excited to learn about different tools that will help to make science more exciting and engaging for students. I am a little nervous about having to teach 6th grade. 

For our first assignment in class we had to draw a picture of what we thought of when we heard the word scientist. I drew a scientist named Sandra working at a desk! This was a really good assignment because it allowed us to talk about some stereotypes that are often associated with scientists. This is also a really great assignment that we could do with our class in the future! Another assignment was to write a reflective paper called a Scientific Me.  In this paper we were asked to reflect about our past experiences with science. This was a great assignment to be completed on the first day because it gave me the chance to really think about science and how I felt about it as a student. I remembered that although I never hated science, it was never my favorite subject. I hope that throughout the semester I will learn different strategies on how to make science really fun for my students! 

Our last assignment was a Digital Me project. Each person in the class chose a web tool that they would use to introduce themselves to the class. We then put it on on a powerpoint presentation and presented it to the class! Each tool is also really helpful to use in a classroom. The tool that I used was Tagxedo, which is a word cloud. You can see it to the right. This tool was really easy to use and fun. I used about 20 words that really described me. This is great to use in a classroom because you can do so many things with it. For example you can use it before you start a chapter and put all the vocabulary words in it. There are so many options!