Soil Lesson Number 2

Our second lesson on soil went just as smoothly as the first one.  Alyssa and I began the lesson by discussing what we had learned last week, and by asking the students what they had learned with Mrs. K during her lesson the week before.  The students had a lot of things to say about what they had learned, and it was a good way of transitioning into the next lesson.  We drew a KWL chart on the board, and filled the middle section in with the Key Questions for today's lesson, and we asked the students to share any questions they had come up with over the week (which we had asked them to write in their journals as they arose).  We introduced the three materials that we would be observing today, which were sand, clay, and humus, and then had a discussion about what the students knew about each material and where they had seen them before.  We showed a Brain Pop Jr. video to the class on soil, and since we already knew before the lesson that Mrs. K's projector did not work, we had the students join us at the reading rug so that we could all see the video play from my laptop (which worked out better than we had expected).
We did a good job managing our materials and distributing them to the class, but we had a little bit of trouble once again with the washing of their hands (same fancy gingerbread soap that the students couldn't get enough of last week).  The hand washing was less of an issue than it was last week because we were more orderly when getting the students to transition from one activity to the next, and we knew that one of us needed to stand at the soap line to keep the students on task and to get them back to their seats as quickly as possible.  Our lesson was connected to the Massachusetts Frameworks, and the students had an opportunity to write about what they had observed and to describe it using as many descriptive words as they could, like we had discussed in the beginning of the lesson.
I thought that Alyssa and I worked very well together again, and even though we had one student who was fooling around a bit, I thought we did a great job keeping the classroom interested and under control.  It was really funny that during last week's lesson, we were referring to humus as if it was pronounced the same way as the humus we eat with pita chips, and the students were all about correcting us as soon as we watched the Brain Pop Jr. video and realized what we were doing!  The students got a kick out of it, and told us that Mrs. Krauch had realized what we were doing last week and had already explained to them how to pronounce the word correctly, but she did not want to interrupt our lesson to do so, which was very thoughtful of her.  The students had a lot of fun again with the lesson, and were clearly very excited to have us back again.

My First Lesson Ever!

I was really nervous about teaching my first lesson ever to a group of 21 fourth graders, but Alyssa and I knocked it out of the park!  The kids had so much fun playing with the soil in the activity that we did, and I could not believe how well they listened to our lesson and stayed interested the entire time.  We were both really nervous about how it was going to go because we had never given a lesson to a real classroom before, but now that we have one under our belt, we will not be nearly as nervous coming into our next lesson this coming week.  It was hard to gauge how the class was going to respond to us as teachers or to our style of teaching in general, or how interested they were going to be with the information that we were teaching them.  I think it is definitely helpful that the students do not get to learn science on a regular basis because it makes it especially interesting to them when we come in to teach our science lessons, and it is something different and fun for them compared to the typical day that they spend in their classroom with the same teacher every week. 
It was a huge help that Alyssa and I met up and practiced our lesson a number of times, pretending as if we were in the classroom teaching the lesson to our students, because it got us to think about the potential problems and issues that may have arisen if we were to approach our lesson in that specific manner.  We were able to designate who was going to teach what parts of the lesson, and we were on the same page the entire time so that we could both jump in and help if one of us couldn't find our words or got confused (which didn't happen as a result of our collaboration).  We both knew what was coming next and what direction the lesson was going to take at each step, and I think that this connection was apparent in our deliverance of the lesson.  I am really going to enjoy working with a partner for these science lessons because we both offer our own unique teaching styles, and can learn from each others mistakes and successes. 
One part of the lesson that could have been a disaster was when we were having the students wash their hands when they were finished observing the soil.  The teacher just bought a brand new bottle of gingerbread soap, and the students could not get enough of it!  They were washing their hands three times over again, and the line quickly built up and could have easily gone out of control if we did not see this happening and were not there to intervene and move the kids along back to their seats.  Next time, we will be sure to think of a more orderly way of getting the students to wash their hands so that this type of potential disaster can be avoided.  Luckily, the students were really well behaved and responded well to our directions, but this level of excitement that comes from having new teachers in the room, along with a new and exciting topic, could have easily led them in a different direction.

S. R. Experience

I am really excited about student teaching at S. R. Elementary this semester.  I have never had the opportunity to student teach before, so it is going to be a little nerve racking the first day when we are giving our first lesson on soil, but I think the extra pressure is going to help me out in the long run.  There are always going to be people coming into our classrooms to watch our lessons when we are hired next September (hopefully!), so it is something I am going to have to get used to.  I think that if I am prepared to give my lesson comfortably in front of my superiors right from the start, the transition will be a lot easier when the time comes to do it for real.
I am looking forward the most to interacting with the students in the classroom, and I hope they respond well to us, and to the material we will be teaching them about soil.  Hopefully we can make the material interesting to them so they will be excited every week when we come in to teach our next lesson on soil.  I am a little nervous right now about how the students will respond to us on the first day because that transitional period is always the hardest time for me before we really get to know each other, which I am sure will happen quickly and those nerves will fade away.  I am also looking forward to getting feedback not only from Michelle, Bindu, and Jane, but also from the teacher whose classroom I will be teaching in.  I think it will mean a lot to me if a teacher feels confident in me and Alyssa's abilities and has no problem handing her classroom over to a pair of students who have never taught a lesson before, but at the same time, any criticism will not be taken lightly and will be constructive whether it is positive or negative.  It is going to be in the back of my mind until we get that first lesson under our belt, so I am excited to get the process underway to rid some of those nerves and to begin the practical part of the program!

My Science Story

I have always been very interested in science because there is such an array of topics, and there is an ongoing process of improvement as more information becomes available on any given subject.  I like that science is not set in stone, like English for example, and you can question pretty much anything you are studying because a lot of what is being studied is unknown and rather abstract.  I had a biology teacher in my sophomore year of high school that got me really interested in nature and how the world works, and I have often found myself trying to find answers to questions about biology when hiking in the woods or being outside.  I find myself rattling off facts that I learned in his class because they really do interest me.  For example, I think I have told my dad how to tell the difference between male and female moss about a thousand times by now! Last time, he gave me that look like "you really don't remember telling me that before?" which I thought was really funny because it shows that I really was interested in what we were learning in Mr. Beaumont's class, even though he was probably the most difficult and certainly the most intimidating teacher I have ever had.  Biology is definitely my favorite subject within the field of science (not just because Michelle loves biology too), but I also like astronomy and finding answers to questions that are relevant to my own life.  I can honestly say that Mr. Beaumont changed my religious views for a while because he was so adamant when teaching us about evolution.  I will never forget the first class we had on evolution because one of our classmates brought in a book titled, "Facts About Evolution," which was completely blank inside from cover to cover.  I have never seen anybody get so mad in my entire life (Mr. Beaumont), and that student was kicked out of our class that very day even though it was half way through the semester.  For this reason, I think he put in an extra effort to teach us everything he knew and to convince our class about evolution, which worked out in our favor in the long run because we were exposed to more information than we would have been under normal circumstances.  I have been interested in science ever since, and was eager to learn a lot about rivers and the way they flow from the college level science course I took at Wheelock College in Boston because it was so interesting to me and I knew that I would learn a lot if I put the time into the class. That's my science story!

The Importance of Lesson Planning

Lesson planning in science is especially important for a number of reasons, but first and foremost, is to keep all of our students as safe as possible.  There are a lot of instruments, supplies, and tools that are present in the science classroom that could potentially cause harm to students if they were to be used improperly, so safety should always be a teachers top priority when conducting any sort of science experiment with his/her students.  If you have a lesson plan laid out in front of you, then the experiment should run smoothly because you would have thought through all of the different possibilities of distractions and difficulties.  It is important that the teacher is prepared for the lesson he/she is about to teach, especially in a science classroom, because there is an increased chance that the experiment will not go as planned, and that there will be a need for some sort of backup plan or extension activity to help prove the point the original experiment was trying to make.
In class, we watched a video clip of an elementary school teacher named Sarah who tried conducting an experiment without ever trying the experiment on her own, and without even studying up on her content knowledge to be sure that she knew what she was talking about if something were to happen and her experiment were to fall apart, which it undoubtedly did.  Her biggest mistake was telling her students that she "did not know" when the experiment began to fall apart, and she started getting frustrated because she could not answer the questions her students were asking of her.  I think this exemplifies the importance of having an extension activity planned that you can refer to if all else fails, because let's be honest, not all science experiments are going to go exactly the way we planned them.  There are going to be times when the teacher will have no choice but to make the executive decision and stop the experiment in its tracks if it is not working in order to keep from confusing his/her students, or to maintain that high level of safety that is so extremely important. 
 I think that by using a lesson plan, teachers are able to get a much more accurate sense of how long an experiment is going to take, and what types of problems could potentially come up that would make the experiment extend for too long.  It is important for a teacher to keep an eye on the clock when conducting a science lesson because the students will be having fun and will not want to stop, so if the lesson is going to take longer than the time that has been allotted for science, the teacher needs to be aware of that so that he/she can make changes or extend the lesson over a few class sessions if necessary.  Writing and following a lesson plan will help teachers stay on track, and will help them stay within their somewhat limited time frame.  Experiments don't always run as smoothly as we would like them to, so I would highly recommend any teacher to refer to a lesson plan no matter how long they have been teaching, even if they feel they have mastered the material or have made this experiment work before in the past with no issues.

Online Resource for Teaching Elementary Science

A great online resource that I was able to find that would be excellent for teaching elementary science is Internet4classrooms.com.  This website is run collaboratively by Susan Brooks and Bill Byles, who began working on the website in 1997 as a resource for their fellow teachers.  By November of 2000, the website had grown tremendously into a free online portal for anyone to use as a resource in their classroom.  The website covers all subjects that are taught from k-12, giving the standards for each subject and a variety of lessons and activities for students to complete, which are designated for a specific age group or grade level.  The great thing about this website is that it can be used at home as well as in the classroom, so students can continue learning more about the subjects they really enjoy or are especially interested in.  The children can refer to this site to refresh their memory about a given topic, or to recollect and reflect on what was taught that day in the classroom.  The site is broken down into the various subjects that are taught for each grade level, and is very easy to maneuver throughout with little computer experience.

In order to get to the science section from the main website, you must first go to the "Links for k-12" tab on the left side of the page, and then you will see a list of all the different elementary subject areas, all of which have a huge repertoire of activities, lesson plans, and fun facts.  There is also a "parents zone" that you can access from this page, which gives tips for teaching the different subjects if your child is having trouble in a specific area, and gives a list of other safe (and accurate) websites for children to be using as an online resource.  There is instructional information for teachers to use as a resource when designing a lesson plan, as well as information about the different behavioral and learning issues that are common in elementary school classrooms (such as tips for keeping the attention of students with ADD).  There are a lot of interactive modules for the students to have fun with while learning the essential information, and it can be used as a resource in every grade level and for every subject matter.  I spent a lot of time maneuvering this website and found it to be very helpful, so I would recommend you to do the same if you are in the teaching profession or if you just want to learn something new and interesting!