I don't remember much from my elementary school years about any subject. The only other thing I can remember at the moment is putting together paper skeletons and cells in fifth grade. I've always liked projects and hands-on experiences. During middle school and high school, we were able to do actual labs, which were fun sometimes, but I remember having to do a lot of labs that involved touching gross things that I didn't enjoy. One time in fourth or fifth grade, my teacher had us dissect an owl pellet and in seventh grade we dissected a variety of animals. Those were the types of labs that I really didn't like, but they're the ones that I still remember. In college I took a science class that was almost all outdoors and I liked it much more than I expected to! Most days we were out exploring the woods or the river, instead of sitting in a classroom looking at a powerpoint. There were definitely days when we did that too, but we spent at least half of our classes outside looking at real animals and trees, as opposed to pictures. I thought that was a great class that I'll actually remember way in the future! Here's a picture of where I took my science class in college:
As I've learned from my own experiences and looking back on how my teachers explained things to me, I know that it's crucial to engage students and provide them with real-life situations. Technology is great and allows us to do so many things within our classroom, but I think it's important to either bring in real objects that pertain to the lesson or even explore right outside of the school. Students have to apply knowledge and see how it can actually connect to their lives in order for them to grasp the information while enjoying the process. I think that I've always been successful in science, but I've been more successful in topics or classes where teachers allowed us to use actual objects and do experiments, instead of just lecturing us. When I think of science, I think of experiments, questions, and hands-on activities. If the students aren't out of their seats and working with real materials that relate to the topic, then the lesson is not being taught effectively or engaging the students.
I think that the activity we did in class today would be a great way to introduce students to science. We were each told to draw a picture of what we think of when we hear the word scientist. The activity opens our eyes to all of the stereotypes of what it looks like to be a scientist. It's important to explain to students that anyone can become a scientist; it's not just people who look like the pictures they drew. After the activity, we walked around and looked at what our classmates drew and it was interesting to see how similar most of them were. This activity is also a good way to see if students have any prior knowledge about science. I drew a female, but, to be honest, when we were first given the task I was going to draw a male with crazy hair. I figured most people would draw that, so I tried to do something a little bit different.
Here is the picture that I drew.
