Monday, July 13, 2009

Assignment for Day 1-4

Hi All,
For each day, post your impressions/reactions to the activites and materials presented. Also be thinking about the following questions as you plan for Friday's presentations/your paper and work with your partner.

Consider these questions when designing your project/presentations this week:
1)How might you incorporate these concepts (labs and discussions we had today) into your classroom curriculum?
2)How would this impact your instruction, especially meeting standards (use your own standards if you are out of state, etc) at all levels.
3)How can each partner work together to meet each others' as well as mutual standards.
4)What safety considerations should you have in place when you and your students work together on these projects?
5)How could you explain the process of collaboration that you and your students will be doing to another teacher?

You will be answering these questions as we progress through the next few days. Think about them and discuss them as you plan.
Have a great evening.

3 comments:

  1. While working in a resource room, many times with small groups of students and the experiments we learned today would work perfectly. I usually teach junior high so I checked into the content standards for 7th and 8th grade only. I could use any of the experiments to "impress" the students as well as give them some confidence that they can do the same experiment. I could have them learn the difference between facts, predictions, theory and laws while they do something fun. I try to teach students the steps of the scientific method frequently so they finally grasp the concept. I could have students design a similar experiment and show the steps of the scientific method. Older students could use the information from the probes in mathematical formulas to come up with an unknown. After looking at the standards, I see that there are several ways to meet the standards by using these experiments.

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  2. The thing about content standards is that excluding perhaps history, a science lesson could fit anything from language arts to physics. I would use these experiments to "get the ball rolling" in so far as my student's thought processes are concerned. Obviously the gas laws (all of them) would figure most prominently in either a class of chemistry or physics. Ionization, the mole concept, and stoichiometry in general could also be involved. I do think that making a marshmallow come alive (it looks like it's breathing) would strike kids as kind of cool.

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  3. I agree completely...in fact, science in the elementary grades deals primarily with lighting that spark and allowing students to explore the content area. As opposed to the high school level which focuses in on very specific performance descriptors, in grades 4-6, we are able to adapt these concepts in a broader sense. Besides safety regulations and procedures for cooperative work, my goal is to make my content area come alive for my students (and acting as a facilitator, of course!).

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