Engineering and Technology

During today's lesson debrief I learned how important it is to make Engineering and Technology connections often within one's science lessons. I had no idea that 25% of the fifth grade MCAS test will focus on what these connections teach students. However, as I look over the steps of the Engineering Design process, I see that I had actually used many of these steps within both today's and last week's lessons. In both lessons, my co-teacher and I had students attempt to model how they thought they should set up their experiment materials in order to test for specific data. During their efforts, the students were identifying the problem they must solve, developing possible solutions, selecting the best solutions, constructing their prototype models, communicating their solutions to others, and redesigning if needed. Although some groups did not design their models in the "correct way" (according to how the lesson plan would have done it), I still had them communicate to me why they designed their models how they did and what they thought it would do. I was impressed by how much detail they put into their planning and conceptions of how the model would function. After each group had constructed and explained their model, my co-teacher and I showed the class the way the lesson plan said to construct the model and explained how it worked. Then, I asked all the students to think about what their models would do in their current states and to make adjustments to them if needed. After this part, all the groups had constructed models that would work perfectly for testing the variables in the experiment. Overall I think seeing and discussing the ingenuity that the students have to offer has been the most fun for me all semester. I hope that I will be able to include another activity that will allow students to brainstorm and create modles to test for certain variables. 

Tech "no" logy

In this weeks science lesson we were instructed to try to incorporate some use of technology into our instruction. My co-teacher and I both found wonderful videos from Bill Nye and Brainpop.com that would serve as great materials for reviewing all the topics that have been covered in our class this semester. In our lesson plan we had detailed every step on how we would set up and implement our videos. Then we e-mailed the classrooms teacher about our plans because we had some questions about the extent of the classrooms technology capabilities. That's when we found out that the computers didn't really work, there was no wifi for the internet, and the computers did not have speakers that would be able to present to a group of students. After this we attempted to create an activity for the classroom projector. Then we remembered that the projector is an old fashioned Elmo, and had no hook ups to be able to support any type of powerpoint presentation. Of course we also have no idea where one would procure transparency slides to use on the projector. Plus how would we get any type of presentation information on the slides without just writing it out by hand (which we could just do on the white board or with a simple pre made poster). In the end we ended up having to do the lesson without the technology incorporation. It was a good lesson over all, but I really wanted to show some videos. Sometimes I guess things just can't be available to you.

From Awful To Awesome!

Sorry that I haven't been posting in a while. I must have missed somthing because I seem to be one blog behind. In fact, I wouldn't have even posted this update if the thought of checking my blog hadn't randomly hit me. Two weeks ago I taught my science class as per usual. However there were some very odd circumstances that occured prior to my lesson that I did not think would effect the outcome of my instructing. Guess I was wrong. The students had a week off of school due to power outages, had Halloween the night before my lesson, and had a substitute teacher who had just taught a science lesson before I showed up in the classroom. Together, the events lead to a complete disaster. I should have known somthing was going to happen when one of the better students in my class stated, "But we already had science today"! Of course this also had to be the week where I was being monitored for classroom management. Lets just say my feedback was less than desirable.