Final Vision Statement

After reviewing my initial vision statement I have discovered that my ideas for how to teach science in the classroom wasn’t that far off.  I had the idea that the students should have many hands on activities the only part that was missing is that it should be inquiry based.  Classrooms usually support the activity or kit portion of the science experience.  Though during this experience students are told the hypothesis where in inquiry based the hypothesis comes from the students questions (Shifting pg. 15).

Through this inquiry based classroom the learner should be fully engaged by the scientific questions.  These scientific questions can be generated by the teacher or by the students.  While the students are doing the tests they are making observations and gathering evidence to use to develop their explanations to the questions. Students then evaluate their explanations by comparing them to other outcomes that occurred in similar labs.  The students then communicate their answers to their peers.  In the communicate portion the students must use logic and reasoning to back up their explanations. 

I also believe that for the students to thrive in the classroom they need to know that they are safe to share their ideas with confidence and without ridicule.  The students need to view themselves as a community of learners working for the answers and not just as individuals trying to pass a class.  This environment starts on day one where the class starts to work as a community instead of individuals.

I believe that the students need a place to write down their explanations and observations and science notebooks are the place for that writing.  “Various forms of expository writing—procedural writing, narrative writing, descriptive writing, labeling, and other styles” occur in the science notebooks (Gilbert 30).  These notebooks help students with their writing skills in many different areas.  It is an outlet that has many purposes and one that I will use in my classroom.

I believe that teacher must discover the prior knowledge and misconceptions that the students have about the topic being discussed.  The teacher must break down the misconceptions to be able to provide the students with accurate knowledge (Stepans).   If the teacher does not break down the misconceptions the student may file the new knowledge in with the previous misconceptions and come out with a false account of the concept (Watson). 

I believe that students learn best in an inquiry based classroom, where they are engaged in the topic.  I would make my classroom inquiry based and have the students use the science notebooks to help aid in their learning process.  I will discover their misconceptions and bring them to the student’s attention to be able to convey the accurate information.

Quotes:

“Various forms of expository writing—procedural writing, narrative writing, descriptive writing, labeling, and other styles…”  Gilbert, Joan and Marleen Kotelma. “Five good Reasons to Use Science notebooks in the classroom.”

“Teachers can take steps to prove misconceptions or to break them down after they have formed.”  Stepans, Beiswenger, and Dyche. Misconceptions Die Hard. 

“If alternative views of scientific principles are not addressed, they can coexist with “what the teacher told us” and crease a mishmash of fact and fiction.”  Watson and Konicek.  (Sweater Article). Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children’s Experience.

“…the working hypothesis is clearly defined by the teacher prior to experimentation while in inquiry, it arises from the student’s questions and is based on their experiences.” Moscovici and Nelson. “Shifting from Activitymania to Inquiry.” 1998. 

Science Teaching Reflection

Day 1:

I went into the day feeling prepared for the part I was teaching for the day.  I was still a bit nervous since this was my first actually experience of teaching a lesson to Elementary aged students.  Once we started teaching I was really into the topic and engaged with the students.  The students were engaged and enjoyed the oobleck very much.  I found it very easy to tie back to the vocabulary terms they have been using.  There are a couple of things I would improve on.   First off I would make sure every group member knew what was going on during the oobleck demonstration I was leading.   I also wish I would have done more to get to know the students before today because I felt like I did an okay job connecting with them but it would have been better to know more about them so I knew which students needed the extra challenge.

Day 2:

Our lesson plan that we wrote was very similar to the Foss Kit. We decided to go with the Foss kit on this day since the students had already observed the powders from the kit during a previous lab with their teacher.  Their data would be supported by the observations they recorded while just writing notes about the physical observations using their five senses.  I severely underestimated how long it would take to get all the materials set up from the kit. I wish I had more to prepare the stations so the students would have not had to wait so long from when we got there to actually start the lab.  We had the students sit in groups of six since we were working with six different powders.  The group I was working with, each student worked with one powder and recorded the results from the four liquids mixed.  We let the groups decide how they wanted to test the powders, if each person take a powder or if each person works with one liquid and test all the powders.  The groups then had to communicate their results to the rest of the group to be able to compare their observations.  While walking around I saw students talking with their tablemates on how they would describe the reaction that occurred.  They were really working together to fill out there charts. 

The students met our learning performance goals.  They were able to verbally express the difference between physical and chemical reactions.  They also worked through their definitions of the two while working on the lab on day two.   Also they discovered in the oobleck experiment, that there are some exceptions to most rules. They discovered that oobleck was both a solid and a liquid.

On both days I felt like time was flying by so fast and the steps were taking longer than we had expected.   We stayed longer than we were scheduled to on both days, but our cooperating teacher didn’t mind one bit.  We didn’t accurately account for how much time the students would need to be able to write in their science journals about the differences between chemical and physical.  I also didn’t think about added support some students might need in the area of spelling.  It didn’t even cross my mind that it might be important to write the words they were working with on the board.  The students were very engaged while working on both days.  They were enthusiastic about learning science, and that was such an awesome feeling.

I have learned so much through this experience and am excited to get to teaching as my career.  I now understand that is some extra work to have an inquiry-oriented science classroom.  I put in a ton of effort to prepare for the first day with all the oobleck.  The reaction from the students is what made the whole experience worth all the hard work.  They expressed how they never thought science could be this much fun. I personally like the lesson and wouldn’t modify much except maybe allowing the students more time with the powders that they worked with on day two.  I would want to give students time to research about oobleck to be able to know more about it.  I would connect the oobleck cross curricular with using it in reading and math so that the students have it in all subject areas.