Farewell

  This class has been a roller coaster of emotions. All of us have had so much stress throughout this entire semester, but it was all worth it because we gained a lot from all of it. We have completed project after project and become better teachers because of each one. The best part was when we went to Sacred Heart and were able to actually teach students who are the age of the ones that we want to teach, Preparing for the lessons was definitely hours upon hours of hard work and frustration, but the end product made me feel like it was worth it. My favorite part of being in the classroom was our inquiry day because the students were all so genuinely excited about the activity!

I've been introduced to countless new resources and lesson ideas that I cannot wait to implement within my own classroom one day. I absolutely loved the book trailer and the inquiry lesson, so I want to teach those lessons in the future. I also liked the stoplights that my groups used; I think if it was something that the students used in their classroom everyday, then they would take it more seriously and they'd work even more effectively.

  This class teaches you how to really work with your peers in order to come up with the best possible lessons. It also requires a lot of reflection, whether it's about your own teaching or others. No matter which way you do it, each one is incredibly helpful. Sometimes you're exhausted and it seems unnecessary, but you'd be surprised how many things you pick up on when you take a minute to sit down and think back to how the lesson went. I could go on all day about the things we've done in this class and everything I've gained from this course, but you could find evidence of that within all of my other blogposts!

I also commented on some of my peers' blog posts which you can see below. We don't only reelecton each other's teaching, but we just reflect on the class as a whole.

Emily's Blog

Kim's Blog

Kristi's Blog

Mallory's Blog

So Close to Freedom!

   I'm finally finishing up the biggest project: our e-folio! It's honestly crazy how much time I've put into creating this e-folio and making sure that it looks perfect. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, so doing one little sub tab takes me forever! I'm really happy with the way it's coming along though so I guess all of the handwork that I've put into it is going to pay off when I see the final product! While I'm putting it together, I'm starting to notice how many things I've actually completed throughout these past 15 weeks and it's amazing! I've had to go all the way back to the beginning of the semester to find projects that I did and reflect on all of them. It's intriguing how much you realize when you reflect on your own work. I hope you check out my e-folio and enjoy it so my hard work doesn't go to waste! I'm glad that we had to create one though because now I can easily access anything from this semester at any time!

Here is the link to my e-folio!

FWE

During this course, I taught a sixth grade class two lessons: a direct instruction lesson and an inquiry-based lesson. I used diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments for each lesson. The diagnostic assessments from each lesson consisted of questions that pre-assessed what the students already knew. For example, in the direct lesson, there was a word cloud on the first slide that the students looked at and shared some of the words that they recognized. During the inquiry-based lesson, The first slide contained five questions pertaining to metamorphic rocks and the rock cycle that they had learned about during the previous class. The formative assessments for both lessons was more observation based; I walked around throughout the lesson to see how the students were doing and if there were any confusions. I had to go over to some students’ desks and help them get back on track, but they were all good for the most part. Another formative assessment I used during the direct lesson was having review slides where the students had to answer questions. I would call on one student and the rest of the class would hold up either a green or red stoplight to say whether they agreed or disagreed. The summative assessment for the direct lesson was a sheet titled “Let’s Review!” that consisted of 6 fill-in-the-blank and short answer questions. There were a few students who didn’t seem to understand what the questions were asking because they answered the questions with other words that they learned that day. One questions asks what the two types of metamorphic rocks are, which would be foliated and nonfoliated, but one student put gneiss and quartzite. Those were the rocks that were passed around for the students to look at, but the student just didn’t understand exactly what the question was asking. The summative assessment for the inquiry-based lesson was for the students to write a rock story, which they were given the rubric for. They had to pretend they were a rock and explain what happened to them as they went through the rock cycle. Below is one example of each of the summative assessments:










We discussed the three different forms of assessments in the beginning of the semester during class and we were required to read about it in our textbook. I learned from this class and my Social Studies Methods class that diagnostic assessment is basically just a pre-test or a series of questions that you can ask to determine what the students already know. For both classes, we also created a pre-test that the students took before we started so we could have an idea of what they already know. Formative assessments are informal assessments that are conducted throughout the lesson without the students even noticing, which is typically done through observations or possibly even asking the students questions again. Summative assessments are given at the end of the lesson to inform you whether or not the students learned anything from the lesson. I think that all of the ones that I chose for my lessons were extremely important and followed the guidelines of what we discussed in class, as well as what we read in our textbook. After grading the summative assessments, I was able to tell where each individual student was. The formative and diagnostic assessments showed me that I didn’t spend enough time explaining the rock cycle because many students were still very confused by it. If I had the opportunity to spend another day with this class, I would definitely ask if they had any more questions and review the rock cycle in a much slower and more detailed way.

Some of the students have severe disabilities that effect their learning, so those students had some accommodations. One student has a one-on-one aide that stayed with him at all times to help him with each assignment. There was another student that typically had a teacher by her because she struggles with things such as writing and panics easily. An adult stayed close by to make sure she stayed calm and got everything done in a timely manner. There weren’t any other areas of concern that I was notified of and the students all completed their work during each lesson. The students all loved the inquiry lesson and were able to comprehend the rock cycle much more after the activity, but there was still some confusion. The inquiry lesson required the students to go through the rock cycle using crayons, so they further developed their understanding of what actually occurs during the rock cycle. The students were able to make connections between what they were doing with the crayons and the actual rock cycle, so they were able to apply it to real-life scenarios.

Collaboration and cooperation within the classroom is absolutely crucial. I believe that students should have the opportunity to work in groups more often than not because it allows them to bounce ideas off of each other and explain things in a way that the teacher may not be able to. The students worked together during the guided practice activities in the direct instruction lesson, but for the inquiry-based lesson, they were actually put into groups. One of the guided practice activities required the students to figure out where the index cards their group had belonged on the rock cycle chart. Each group had to discuss it and problem solve, then everyone got a chance to come up to the board and place their card where the group agreed it would go. The groups for the inquiry lesson had to go to each station together and figure out what was happening at each one as a group. The students were actively engaged in each lesson and seemed to genuinely enjoy it.

Book Trailer!

   This week I finally completed my book trailer! We had to choose a trade book based on our unit plan's topic and create a trailer for it. I've never had to do something like this before, so it may not be the most well-done trailer, but I think I did good for a first time! I really like the idea of this project and I think that students would love to be able to create a book trailer. It's fun and different than what they're used to doing in school. I think that it's a great way to get students to work together collaboratively. We did ours individually, but I created a mini-lesson based off of the idea of a book trailer where I require the students to work in groups in order to create book trailers. Personally, I chose Animoto to create my trailer, but you could give students the option to use other tools such as Powtoon, Voicethread, or even film a trailer where they have the opportunity to act in it! There are so many possibilities which is one reason why I really like this project!

Here is the link to my trailer if you would like to watch it!

   My book was actually kind of a mystery because you follow the journey of this one stone and learn all about how it formed, but they don't tell you which stone it is until the end of the book. I would love to use this book in my future classroom. It even has a sample experiment and an online activity in the back of the book that I think would be great to look at with the students after reading the book. This would be an ideal book to make a trailer for and we could even do it as a whole class after we read the story. There are so many ways to incorporate trade books and book trailers into the classroom and I can't wait to do so!

Explore the News!

   For one of our assignments, we had to find 7-10 articles about Astronomy that we liked. I chose to use Newsela because I like their articles and it's easy to find good information on any topic that you want. I took all of my articles and created a glogster with them. Some of the pictures that I included where the cover pictures for the articles that I chose. I think that Astronomy is fascinating; space goes on forever and it's crazy to think that we don't necessarily know everything that's out there. I've always really liked astronomy, but I haven't learned too much about it until I got the chance to read these articles so I'm really glad this was the topic that we were asked to focus on. We used the articles to create timelines and word clouds together in groups, which I've talked about in another blog post that includes the links! Here is the link to my glogster and a picture below!

   It's absolutely crucial for teachers to stay up to date with what's going on currently in the world in case students ask any questions or try to make connections to the topic you're focusing on. When you have real-life example, it also makes the students more interested in what's going on. Kids are often easily bored when you talk about things that happened long ago, but when you share something exciting that happened recently, they're more likely to get excited. Newsela is a great place to find articles about all of the new things happening in the world whether you want to do your own research or show the students some interesting articles. I would love to use Newsela in my future classroom because the articles are short and sweet and they contain Lexile levels which is great when you're finding articles for students. You could even use Newsela articles during guided reading time and pick articles for the different Lexile level groups!

Science Fair Time!

   Originally, we were supposed to conduct our own science fair experiments and create a glogster to show to the class, but we were given a research project instead. I found some articles based on science fairs that were actually pretty interesting. I'm glad our assignment was switched to this because I think it's more beneficial for us as future teachers to learn about the importance and set-up of science fairs as opposed to creating our own projects. I think that doing projects might've been more fun, but I still enjoyed reading about science fairs. The articles really emphasized kids doing the experiments by themselves and not getting too much help from their parents. "How to Put on a Great Science Fair!" talked about how kids learn by doing and science fairs allow them to have that opportunity. The best way to encourage students' accomplishments is to recognize them, especially when it's done publicly because they feel special and important. All of the articles also discuss how crucial it is to incorporate other subjects, particularly math since you need it to record data. They also stress how teachers should be involved in the process to help the students along by assisting students when they're creating their questions then monitoring the progress weekly and showing them how to analyze their data. On top of all of that, they need to explain the importance of oral presentations to students, so they know how to communicate their findings properly. The first article that I read, How to Put on a Great Science Fair!, also discussed how teachers should have a math lesson based on comparing items quantitatively, such as ratios and fractions. The author really wants the teachers to assist their students throughout the process, even with the poster making process. Teachers can have their students make drafts of the layout of their presentation during class or for homework. One thing that I really liked about this article is how it says that successful projects show students that they can learn for themselves and that the goal of education is to teach students to teach themselves.

   The second article I read, The Value of a Science Fair, mentioned how science fairs also improve students' computer research skills, library research skills, and they learn how to use different computer programs such as spreadsheets. Younger students don't typically have long assignments, so this allows them to have that opportunity and experience what it's like to have to plan out their project. It also talks about the communication skills that children gain because they have to figure out how to explain their project in a way that impresses the judges and clearly expresses what they're trying to say. I like how this article includes how science fairs give teachers the opportunity to discuss ethical issues such as plagiarism and falsification of data. These topics are incredibly imperative for students to know and learn about early on, so they understand the importance of them. Another thing this article mentions that really caught my attention is how science fairs are great examples of active learning and the inquiry process, which aren't employed enough in classrooms. We talked a lot about inquiry throughout the course of this semester, so it seemed extremely relevant. I also agree that inquiry isn't used enough in classrooms, which is a shame because students love it.

The third article I read, Science Fairs: Teaching Students to Think like Scientists, mentioned that a misconception that students have about science is that is must be conducted in a "cookbook sequence". I like that they included this in their article because we talked a lot about misconceptions in our class as well, so it's interesting to hear the misconceptions about science fairs too. It talks about how real science is actually unpredictable and we should be teaching students that, which was also discussed in class. This article was probably my favorite out of the three; one thing I liked about it was how they talked about science fairs as a chance for students to educate the teacher and tell you their discoveries. Everyone learns better when they can teach the information to someone else instead of just learning it, so I like the idea of having students teach the information to the teacher. The article was based on one community where they have volunteers such as other science teachers, retired teachers, engineering mentors, and environmental scientists who all help students conduct their research and refine their problems. The volunteers also help the students figure out the correct steps that they should complete in order to have an accurate experiment. Their goal is to teach students how to become researchers and I love that idea. I think that more schools should have systems like this because the students seemed to enjoy it and it's a great system to have in place to help the students improve their skills.

I used three articles to conduct my research on science fairs:

How to Put on a Great Science Fair!

The Value of a Science Fair

Science Fairs: Teaching Students to Think like Scientists