RAR: Reading and Writing About Science!

   I chose to read an article that was inquiry-based and it was about a research project called RWS (Reading and Writing About Science), which you can read here. I chose this article because I wanted to learn more about inquiry-based learning since I find it interesting. The article focused more on the reading and writing behind it, but I wanted to see how to include them without overdoing it. As you can probably guess from the title, the research is about finding ways to incorporate literacy into science in order to improve students' reading and writing skills in general. They have four basic components or steps that everyone is supposed to follow: connect, organize, reflect, and extend. Connecting is what every teacher should be doing in the beginning of any lesson by figuring out what the students already know about the topic and helping them make connections between the new information and what they already know. The organize stage is where they have to put together all of the information from different sources and make sense of it. Reflecting takes place when they discuss the information with others before they begin writing and completing the assignment is where the student extends their learning.
   I actually really enjoyed reading this article; it gave me some great ideas to use in the classroom. One thing that a teacher did during the connect phase was have students' comments on a piece of chart paper that was kept up on the wall throughout the unit which was revisited and revised by the students and teacher. The article also emphasizes the use of graphic organizers, especially ones that had a similar theme to what the students are writing about. The research project used webs, linear string, falling dominoes, branching trees, and matrices in order to "match" the topic and it actually improved the students' writing tremendously. It's interesting how much the type of graphic organizer can impact student performance; I didn't even think about how important it would be to choose one that goes along with the actual topic. Here are examples of the graph organizers that they used during this research:

I found this chart really helpful and I can use it in the future when I'm teaching science!

   This article also mentions misconceptions, which we talked a lot about in class so it was cool to see that in this research. They mentioned that the reflect phase is the last opportunity to correct any science misconceptions and solidify the knowledge they gained. The writing prompts used during this project must contain five elements: focus, audience, type, purpose, and supporting details in order to assist the students with the writing process. It also helps the teachers create assignments that assess student thinking and learning better. Here is an example of a writing prompt, student response, and graphic organizer that would be used as well as the breakdown of the five elements:

Sample:

   They try to focus the writing on authentic audiences such as science magazines and younger students, which I love because I've actually used similar audiences when I taught lessons to whole classes. One time I had second graders write letters to the first graders and this year I had the students write a story that we were sending to an author. It makes the writing more realistic and interesting for them, so they enjoy writing it more. This project also included sharing writing with peers and teachers, which I've found is also something that students absolutely love participating in. The purpose of sharing the writing, according to this article, is to show students what others write and give them examples so the students can compare their work to their peers. I think this is a good idea, but it could also be bad. Students should feel proud of their work and not feel like they're stupid because they can't write as well as another student might. I think that sharing writing is important, but the soul purpose shouldn't be to have students compare their work to others. One of the struggles they encountered during this project was to develop a rubric that scored the science content and not just the general writing piece, but they were eventually able to come up with one which can be seen below: 

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Rubric:

   Overall, this project was very successful and resulted in an increase in both length and coherence of the students' writing and the performance gap between students decreased tremendously. The article included some quotes from the teachers who were involved in this project which I have below: 

• “We [teachers] realize that narrative and exposition share features. But we now prefer exposition over narrative for teaching reading and writing—it’s more concrete, and instead of teaching narrative first to students, we think that exposition should be taught first and that read/write instruction should be content-based.”
• “The instructional methods we are using in RWS clue the kids in on what the instructional format is going to be. After doing one unit, the kids know what’s coming and prepare themselves along the way. It’s creating a reflective student, not just the teacher. Students are “owning” the instruction and are motivated.”
• “Instead of just creating scaffolds for content, we’re creating scaffolds for process. We’re creating successful practice, and think that it will lead to successful large-scale assessment.”

I would love to use this program in my own classroom because it seems effective and very organized. I especially like the different types of graphic organizers that they used. The article contained all of these examples, so I think that it's be easy to implement. Reading and writing is extremely important to incorporate throughout all subjects to help students become better readers and writers, so I like this program.

Skype-a-thon!

Today in class we skyped with a teacher from Kansas for the Skype-a-thon! 

I've never used Skype before, especially not during one of my classes! It was an amazing experience that everyone seemed to genuinely have fun with. We're all so stressed out with finals and finishing up projects before the end of the semester, so it was nice to do something fun and different! We skyped with an 8th grade class in Kansas whom we've never met. During the call, we played a little game where we asked each other questions related to where the other class lives. Some of the questions we asked were, "Do you live in the Northeast? Do you experience bad weather often?" and they asked things like, "Do you live in America? Do you border the Atlantic Ocean?" There were many other questions asked, but those are a few of the ones that I remember. The kids had maps on their desks where one side has the whole world and the other just had America. Once they figured out that we live in America too, then they flipped their maps over to the America side and started crossing things out after they asked other questions. I loved the idea of doing this in a classroom; none of my teachers ever did anything like this and I think I would've had so much fun doing it. I'm in college and I still had a great time, so I'm sure it would've been even more fun in elementary or middle school! The teacher we skyped with does this kind of stuff all of the time and her students love it, so I really want to incorporate this into my future classroom!

After we each figured out where the other one lives, the teacher showed us how we would close the lesson if we were teaching it on our own one day. She had the students review which questions they asked to determine if they were good or bad questions. Bad questions would be ones that didn't really help or could have been more specific to help them figure out the answer quicker. Then she spoke to us about all of the different things that the students have done through the use of Skype and how much she loves incorporating it in her class to make memorable lessons. Her speech was honestly very inspiring and gave me so many great ideas. It was awesome to see a teacher using technology in her classroom and explaining ways to still do it even if your school doesn't have the best technology. I absolutely love the map activity and I definitely want to try it one day; I can't wait!!

At the end, we all gave each other a "high-five" before our class ended.

Projects Projects Projects

   Since we've left fieldwork, we've done two group projects and presentations. Our first project was based off of a topic that our whole group felt like they knew the least about. Multiple groups, including mine chose atmosphere. At first, I didn't think I knew anything about the atmosphere, but once we started researching it and saw everything primarily talked about the different layers of the atmosphere (troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere) I realized that I actually did know some things about the atmosphere. I remember learning about the layers numerous times throughout my years in school. The other groups talked about the layers, but they incorporated some other information; my group really only focused on the layers. Each group had to use a cool online tool to create their lesson; powtoon and glogster were used the most. Here is the link to my group's glogster and here's a picture so you can have an idea of what our presentation looked like:

We included a video and showed the first two minutes during our presentation. At the end of our lesson, we played a kahoot which can be found here.  Almost every group used a kahoot, but nobody got tired of doing it because everyone loves competing against their friends. Personally, I love using kahoot whether I'm the one playing or the one conducting the lesson. It's a fun, competitive way to see what everyone remembers, so everyone enjoys doing it and from a teacher's point of view, it's great to see students become excited about the lesson.

After that project, we worked in pairs to teach the rest of the class about different topics in astronomy. Most people were given a planet to talk about; the one my partner and I worked on was Neptune. It was so interesting to research Neptune and find out so many new things about the planet. I enjoyed watching everyone else's presentations as well because I really didn't know that much about the planets. Here is the link to our class powerpoint with everyone's information! I find science interesting, especially things like this so I loved doing this project and listening to my classmates. My partner and I created slides 23-26. 

Time to Leave

Group 4 finished teaching this week, so we are no longer going to be in fieldwork during class! In the beginning of their direct lesson, they introduced the little flags that they would be using for the students to respond to questions. One side was a smiley face giving a thumbs and the other side had a confused emoji.
 

   They did a great job explaining all of the vocabulary words to the students and even modeled some of them. For example, when they were talking about the different types of boundaries (divergent, convergent, and transform), two teachers walked past each other to show what the plates were doing to each other. One thing they did that I thought was a little different was that they had students chorally repeat definitions on review slides, as opposed to asking questions to check for understanding. I've never seen it done like that, but it might have worked for these students. Then they did some creative activities; the one that I thought was really cool was where they folded up a piece of paper and put the continents on top of it using play-doh, then squished and pulled apart the paper to show the continents drifting apart and coming back together. I thought that was an amazing activity that really helped the students because I even heard some realize what was happening and connect it to the lesson!
   The inquiry lesson was set up in stations and each station had a cool activity to go along with it. The students went around to the different stations, but they ran out of time, so the students each missed out on one station! The one that I was closest to was where they had a jar of sand that they had the students stick an index card in and shake it to show how the layers of the earth get jumbled up during an earthquake. I found that activity to be creative and a great way to show the students that concept; they all seemed to have a lot of fun doing it. In the beginning they had something up on the board, which had emojis that bounced around when the students got loud. The louder they were, the higher the balls bounced. I've never seen that tool before, so I thought it was awesome, but a group of students were getting distracted by it, so the teachers had to turn it off. I think it'd be a great tool to use on a daily basis, but since it was their first time seeing it, they got a little rowdy.

Our Time to Shine!

   This week was finally my group's turn to teach! We were all so nervous and spent numerous hours rehearsing our lessons, but it was all worth it because both lessons went pretty well; the worst part was that we ran out of time both days! The first day, we did direct instruction and after every couple of slides, we dedicated a slide to review what was on the last couple of slides to check for understanding. We created stoplights for the students to use while answering questions to say whether they agree or disagree, which everyone seemed to love. There were some students who didn't take the materials seriously, but they were effective for the most part. We broke up the two different topics by doing a guided practice activity where the students created foliated and non-foloiated rocks using clay and sequins. The students had fun with it and they were good about putting it away for the rest of the lesson, which was such a relief! We had to rush through the second part of the lesson and the guided practice for the rock cycle, so the students were all a little confused. If we would've had a couple of extra minutes to explain the cycle better, then I think the activity would've gone much smoother. We also didn't have much time left to explain the independent practice to them, but it was six simple questions about what we learned and they had their note sheets, so they were able to figure it out.

   Our inquiry lesson was cut even shorter because the students came in late, but they also had to leave early, which we didn't find out until we only had 10 minutes left. Other than our time constraints, everything went relatively smoothly. The students loved being able to go through the rock cycle using crayons. I stayed in the front of the room for a majority of the inquiry lesson because that's where we had the crayon maker plugged in. One or two students came up at a time to see that the crayon maker was melting the pieces of crayon that I put in. I asked every student that came up to me to tell me which process was happening on top (melting) and what happens when you pour the liquid into the mold (cooling), then they told me what type of rock was forming and they sat back down. The students all thought that the crayon maker was really cool and wanted their own. We ended up running out of time of course, so not every student was able to do the metamorphic stage. We also had a whole closure planned out, but we didn't have enough time to do it. I wish we would've brought more sharpeners for the students, so they could've gone through the sedimentary rock part quicker and we weren't have been so pressed for time.

   Overall, both days went relatively well and we're all so glad that we made it through the week and can finally relax, especially since we all had midterms this week too!

Learning About Rocks

   Group 2 taught their lessons this week and they did a direct instruction lesson the first day, then an inquiry lesson the second day. During the direct lesson, they used individual whiteboards for the students to write their answers down to some questions. Their PowerPoint was a little difficult to read some days because of the format of their text, but they had students read definitions off of the board. I think that if students were going to be asked to read the definitions, then they should've been written in a clearer way. Information should always be displayed easily, but especially when students are asked to read it. Other than that, the lesson went smoothly for the most part. At one point, they filled out a chart about the differences between igneous and sedimentary rocks where the teachers displayed the answers in a tiny font and just had the students copy the information. It might've been better to put up one thing, then have them list the rest on their own then share what else you had in case they missed anything. I liked the idea of having the students put the post-it on the door as they were leaving.

   The teachers started the inquiry lesson with a word cloud, which they also printed out in order for the students to be able to have a better view of it. For the activity, the students were each given play-doh and got to create their own rock (either igneous or sedimentary). Once everyone created the rock, the teachers gave each kid a popsicle stick with a number on it and they had to go to that number rock and guess which type of rock the person created. After that, the students went back to their seats and the teachers pulled out the popsicle sticks again one at a time and the students had to stand up and say which type of rock they made, then the person who guessed for that rock checked whether they were right or wrong. I loved this activity; it seemed like so much fun. The use of the popsicle sticks was an amazing idea and it worked out so well. I wish there was a way to incorporate it into my group's lesson because I thought it was such an efficient way to do the activity!

And So It Begins...

   Group 1 went this week and they chose an interesting approach for their lessons. Instead of doing a direct instruction lesson the first day and an inquiry lesson the second day, they chose to do an inquiry lesson the first day and a cooperative lesson the second day. Personally, I was very confused in the beginning because I was unaware that they weren't doing a direct lesson. The students obviously enjoyed both days because they had the opportunity to do fun activities throughout both days, but I think there should have been a direct lesson to teach the concepts first. In the beginning of the inquiry lesson, the teachers went over several vocabulary words quickly and then moved onto the activity. I think that the vocabulary should've been done slower or broken up a little bit more between the to lessons. Other than that, the first day the students were each given a mineral bag where they had to identify the different types of minerals that their bags contained, then they presented their findings and one fact about their mineral. It was a great idea for the lesson and the students definitely enjoyed the activity.
   For the cooperative lesson, the students were asked to create a poster for one of the minerals that were in their bag during the inquiry lesson. The teachers brought in cool little gems and decorations for the students to use, so the posters looked awesome! After each group completed their poster, everyone went around and voted for which poster they thought was the best one. It was set up to be like a mineral show, which one of the teachers actually said she's been to before. I think it was so cool to have a teacher share that she's personally been to one. The lesson was such a great idea and the kids had so much fun doing it. The teachers seemed much more comfortable the second day as well, so the lesson as a whole was a success.