Time To Pass It On

It is sad to say that this is our last class and it is now time for my last post on the semester. Throughout this course I learned a lot of valuable content that I will take with student teaching and further experiences. One aspect that I really enjoyed from this course was blogging. Blogging seems tedious and a waste of time, but it is actually the opposite. Writing every week helps you summarize what you did on that specific week and it also helps organize your thoughts. I plan on implementing this within my classroom and I hope I have enough time to do it as well. Another attribute that really helped me excel in this course was incorporating the different means of technology. Being an ITE major I knew a couple of ways to implement technology, but this class goes more in depth with the concept. I learned how to use technology through the direct, inquiry, and cooperative lesson plans. These three lesson plans were vital to learn with teaching at Bishop Dunn. Before this class began we were required to fill out a self evaluation sheet based on the concepts that were taught in this course. There were a few pieces of content that I was unfamiliar with, but I can see the growth I made throughout the course. Some of these concepts included: the different types of lessons, using some technology tools and a few other aspects. One of the first attributes that we learned in this course were the three lesson plan formats. Through this we were asked to use them within our teaching session at Bishop Dunn. It took a little while to get the idea of how to write the three lessons, but Dr. Smirnova guided us through the process. With her help and collaboration from my peers I learned how to write a well formatted lesson. Through this course we were also asked to research some philosophy of teaching. My philosophy of teaching would follow a constructivism approach. The constructivist involves students to learn by experiencing certain aspects. This would be through the inquiry method where it states hands on, minds on. Students are manipulating materials or reflecting on their experience. According to Concept of the Classroom, "Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding. By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally become "expert learners" (p. 1). As mentioned before this philosophy will help students become expert learners. Relating the concept to expert learners can be correlated to the Bloom's Taxonomy Pyramid. This concept was also taught throughout the course and is meaningful for teachers to follow by. In my other ITE courses, this concept is mentioned through the issue of technology and how to implement the vocabulary of Bloom's Taxonomy within a lesson plan. Using these key terms will help you construct a better lesson plan. This theory will help students reach a higher level and will also help reach mastery level on the content. I plan on using this through teaching because it will supply a guideline for the students and myself. At the end of Science Methods I was a little more comfortable with the content and it also helped that I had a chance to look everything over. I am glad that I took this course at the end of my college career and I am happy to know that I learned a lot in this classroom. This successful course would have not been possible if it wasn't for Dr. Smirnova. She pushed me to excel and go above and beyond expectations. This outlook inspired me to be a better me. I would like to finish this last blog with a quote by Sidney Sugerman, "Teach the young people how to think, not what to think."

Below are the list of people I used to comment on their blogs:

• Dorian
• Danielle
• Melissa

Let's Trade Books

Today was an exciting day because we did a book talk and trailer. I learned a lot through this experience because everyone had different ways of approaching these two topics. Before I started to construct my project I first had to pick a book that is related to the topic I taught at Bishop Dunn. The first book I thought of was Super Worm. Super Worm is an engaging book for students because it rhymes and it touched upon the concept of consumers. I've also used this book for another class to do reciprocal teaching. The first step I took for this project was filling out the trade book format. This gave me an idea of what standards and activities that I would conduct with the students. Some of the activities I decided to do with the students is to have them create a food chain and food web with the organisms that are included within the book. This will help them learn the differences between food webs and food chains. Another activity that I would have the students design is having them create another superhero in the book. I will leave the imagination up to to the students, but it must relate to the food web and food chains because that is the main point in this book. After I designed my activities I then had to think of how I would create my book trailer. This book trailer had to be geared toward students and it should make them want to read the book. There so many tools to choose from, therefore, I decided to pick GoAnimate. I've used this tool multiple times and I enjoy making videos off of it. As soon as I opened up Go Animate all of my ideas came spilling out. When I was making this video I laughed a lot. Which means if I was laughing I can only imagine how the students would enjoy this video. After putting all the pieces together I was finally done with the video and it came out perfect. To the right of this blog I posted the final product. Please feel free to watch and enjoy the book trailer. When I was done creating everything it was time to put everything altogether. As a class we presented our projects and how we would fit them into our own classroom. My fellow teacher candidates all did it different ways which was wonderful to see because it kept everyone on their toes. A lot of peers used Animoto for their book trailer because they felt very comfortable with the tool. Everyone did an excellent job with engaging the our class and explaining how it will be implemented in their own classroom. I think this project was a great exercise for us to do because it helped us understand that their are different ways to bring in new tools in the classroom. Also, it gave us an idea of how to use trade books in our own class. It is important to use trade books because it will help students see different connections. I hope to use this technique when I start student teaching and even in the future. Until next time bloggers :)

Science In The News

For this specific topic we were asked to design a lesson around science in the news. It is important to incorporate current event in lessons because it keeps the students involved with aspects happening around them. In Social Studies Methods class, we were asked to design a lesson for a second grade classroom. For Science Method our articles were based on Astronomy and I used Newsela to these articles. Newsela is a great tool to use within the classroom because every article has a different Lexile level to accommodate students reading levels. According to the website Newsela, "Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news. It's easy and amazing" (About Newsela Page). I would definitely incorporate this tool within my classroom because it will help students stay up-to-date with events and give another source of enhancing their reading skills. While looking through this wonderful site I decided to pick a few articles that are related with Astronomy. The first articles that popped up were things about space and travel. I decided to pick these topics because I haven't been hearing a lot about the travels that civilians are taking to space. We had to choose seven articles for this assignment and I tried to get them to relate to one another. I wanted to keep the articles the same because if I was teaching this topic to the classroom they have articles that they can choose from. It will help them gravitate towards whichever article looks pleasing to them. If you give student choices it will allow them to be more interested in the specific topic. This lesson can be done through the cooperative lesson or even inquiry. It depends on how the teacher wants to conduct it in her classroom. Personally, current events are excellent to do with cooperative lessons. In order for this to succeed through a cooperative lesson the students will have to read the articles on their own time. Having the students read the articles on their own time can also be seen as flipped classroom. A flipped classroom is when students are asked to complete assignments before the teacher teaches them any material. The students are learning and exploring on their own. Therefore, I would use this aspect before teaching them about this topic so they can become more diverse in the topic. After the students have read the articles it is important for the teacher to explain any misconceptions that the students had while reading. This will eliminate any confusions before starting to work with their fellow peers. Through the collaboration section, students will answer questions based on their given article. The strategy the students will be using would be analyzing. This will help the students with comprehension skills and will make them go into further depth on the topic. In order for all the students to collaborate they must use a Web 2.0 tool so that they can work on one forum. The tool I used for Social Studies Method was Linot. Linot is a forum where students can work together and post a sticky note that explains their answers. There are other web 2.0 tools out there other than this given tool. Another tool that can be used for this assignment is padlet. Padlet is just like Linot where everyone can post their thoughts on the discussion board. I would use this tool for this specific assignment. When everyone is done analyzing the questions, the students will come together and explain their answers to the whole class. This way all students are hitting the 5 PIGS through this lesson. I feel that students will benefit through this lesson and it will be engaging for them. The way I organized my articles was through Symbaloo. This will make it easier for the students to pick the articles. Therefore, below is the link to the Symbaloo page I created. Please feel free to click it and look through the articles. Until next time bloggers :)

Symbaloo Science In The News

Exploring Through The 5 E's

The 5 E's are vital in a lesson plan and in a classroom. Teachers should be aware of these 5 aspects when implementing an inquiry lesson. Let me first start off with talking about what is consisted of the 5 E's. According to Enhancing Education, "The 5 E's is an instructional model based on the constructivist approach to learning, which says that learners build or construct new ideas on top of their old ideas." When students are exploring through the 5 E's they are tapping in on their prior knowledge and using that as a "crutch" to the lesson. Wait, but what are the 5 E's? Well I'll tell you, the 5 E's include: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. These 5 attributes should be included in your inquiry lesson to help the students build their knowledge. Another attribute that the 5 E's helps are cognitive skills. When going through each E, it helps the students develop a higher order of thinking according to the Bloom's Taxonomy Pyramid. All of these E's have a different aspect, but they all come together at the end. Breaking down each E is the best way to explain these different aspects. The first E that I will begin with is the Engage.
Engage section should always be the first E when implementing a lesson. This helps you make connections between what the students learned before and what they are learning now. The engage portion also introduces the problem or aspect that needs to be solved. An example of this was our group introducing the Web quest to our second graders. We gave the students a problem to solve and this helped us/them begin their lesson. Through this portion the students should be asked a question and this should get them to start thinking about the possible answers. This is where students "Become mentally engaged in the concept, processes, and skills" (Enhancing Education, 1). Also this section is important to bring in students prior knowledge on the subject, either by bringing up questions that were asked in the direct lesson or what the students should already know. After introducing all of these aspects it's time to move onto the second part of the 5 E's.Which brings us to Exploring! This section is for students to develop among themselves. Whether this is making the discoveries in a group or working alone. During this E, students are identifying and developing concepts. They do this by researching the subject and/or experimenting with the different ideas that they previously learned. The students are now taking the question that was posed in the Engage section and using that question to make new discoveries. Relating back to our fieldwork experience, students were asked to do research on their mystery explorers and they had to go through the inquiry process to complete this assignment. They had to read the first article that was supplied and make a hypothesis based on it. Through this students were asked to read through other research articles and find out more information on their mystery explorer. During this section, the students were exploring new pieces of information based on their "mystery explorers." The exploring section should be done by the students and ONLY by the students. Teachers should be there to support and observe the students learning during this section.
The next E that follow Exploring is Explain. This portion should only be done when the students have completed the Exploring portion. If students are not done with that portion this will be difficult for them to complete. Through this section, students are asked to explain their findings to the whole class or a small group. Having the students explain their findings helps them review on what they learned and might even introduce new key terms. Through the students verbalizing their findings they are also creating social skills. This section is pretty self explanatory and I think is the easiest section for the students to complete. To the right of this blog is a video that goes into depth about the 5 E's. It breaks down all the concepts in a simple language and helps people understand the importance of including these different attributes.
The second to last E is Elaborate. This section goes more into depth about the given topic that the students just researched.  During this section, the students "Expand on the concepts they have learned, make connections to other related concepts, and apply their understandings to the world around them in new ways" (NASA, 1). Through this process the students are building more knowledge on what they discovered and implementing them through this process. An example of this would be having the students write a letter to their mystery explorers. We did not have time to incorporate this in our lesson, but we included it in our lesson plan. Having the students write a letter helps them use the terms and attributes they learned in the previous section. You can see that each step relies on one another in order to complete the 5 E's.
Final Step: Evaluate! Last but not least is the evaluate section which is crucial in this learning method. According to Enhancing Education, "Evaluate is the phase that encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and let teachers evaluate students' understanding of key concepts and skill development" (p. 1). The last section allows the students to tie up everything they discovered and present their findings either to class or small groups. This coincides with the Explain section. Through this the students are asked to use academic language they learned and key details. If there are any confusion with any topics that the students researched this would be the time to clarify any loose ends.
Learning more about the 5 E's definitely helps me see the importance of this aspect. Without these E's our lessons would not be engaging for the students. The whole point of teaching is to help the students learn through an engaging and helpful way. When writing this blog, I came up with a bunch of ideas to use the 5 E's of learning through a Social Studies lens. I'm hoping that I can implement these ideas when I student teach. Until next time bloggers :)

Works Cited

Dunbar, B. (2012). 5Es Overview: "The 5E instructional model" Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/nasaeclips/5eteachingmodels/ 

The 5 E's. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://enhancinged.wgbh.org/research/eeeee.html

Mastering The Material

In order to master content one must reflect upon it. In this blog I will be talking about my fieldwork experience and go into depth on how it helped me master certain aspects. Before beginning my experience for fieldwork I was overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin my lessons. I've heard of the three different lessons, but I was unsure on how to implement them. Watching group one go made me realize the distinct difference between each lesson. During these lessons I was talking mental notes on what will benefit our group. Even at the end of group ones teaching we all had a moment to reflect upon how they did teaching. This gave all of us insight on how we should set up our lessons and implement them. A few blogs down, I gave my feedback on how group one did to mater their content. We were asked to fill out a reflection template based on how each group implemented their lessons. At first I thought this was going to be busy work and had nothing to do with the content, but it was the complete opposite. During this time, I was learning on how to think critically and even give "sound" feedback to each group. This was a learning experience for me and I enjoyed writing these reflections. In each reflection I put down aspects that I liked and how I would maybe implement some things different. The way I constructed it helped me apply my knowledge and construct a higher order of thinking. I was looking back to my recent reflections and observed how I was still unsure of the content and was confused on what to write. Skimming through the later reflections, you can see more in depth detail and a lot more emphasis on how to implement a proper lesson. Overall I think the reflections that were required helped me understand the difference between the lessons and how to implement them within a classroom. When reading about Bloom's Taxonomy I was a little skeptical on how this all connects with teaching, but it connects in a way through the students. Students are "blank slates" as they call it, but they do have some sort of prior knowledge on the different subjects. When learning new content they start at the very bottom of the pyramid and eventually build their way up to the higher order of thinking spectrum. We do this by building a foundation through the direct instruction. This is where it is teacher centered and the students are learning either by listening or writing. Listening would be on the bottom of the pyramid along with accessing prior knowledge. I like to think of this process like building stairs, in order to get to the next step you have to follow it in sequential order. The next lesson that is given would be the inquiry process. Students are applying the knowledge they just learned in the previous instruction. They are starting to build a higher order of thinking by making their own discoveries. Finally is the cooperative lesson. Cooperative is important to build students social skills and also evaluate their fellow peers on how they worked together and their overall summary on the content they learned from the inquiry lesson. Evaluation and reflection would hit the highest point on Bloom's Taxonomy. Relating this theory to the three different lessons really showed me the crucial connections between theories and designing lessons.
Another important attribute that I would like to talk about is implementing the 5 E's during the inquiry process. When designing the inquiry lesson, I was unaware that there were 5 E's that teachers must hit in order to develop this higher order of thinking. I started to realize this aspect when the first group taught their inquiry lesson. While they were teaching I was looking down at the reflection paper and comparing and contrasting on how they implemented these concepts. According to CScope, "Teachers should encourage students to explain observations and findings in their own words (5E Lesson Design: Application to CSCOPE Social Studies, page 28). The inquiry process should be a dual interaction between teachers and students. Students should have more control during this process, but the teachers are there to provide help to any students that are struggling. The 5 E's help the students discover their own findings either with a group or individually. Overall I think my fieldwork experience was successful and helped me develop more knowledge on not only how to teach well, but also how to write a well developed lesson plan. Before fieldwork I was not really sure on how to even start a lesson plan or even know how to implement it. I'm feeling very confident in what I am doing now. Below is a rubric that is based on my fieldwork experience. Feel free to look at the marks and I hope you enjoyed this blog. Until next time bloggers :)

Assessment & Instruction Reflection Rubric

Planning Everyday

Wow I can't believe we are halfway through the semester. We are about to finish up fieldwork which means it's time to stop and reflect on all of things we did. This fieldwork experience taught me a lot about lesson planning and collaboration. Collaboration was the key during this fieldwork experience.Without this key attribute groups would not be able to get any work done. This was my first time ever teaching a full classroom and I was little nervous throughout this process. Once I got up in front of the classroom it just felt natural. One thing I gained through this experience was confidence. Before this class I struggled with knowing what to say to students and being timid in the classroom.  After I taught it was a big weight off my chest, but also gave me the boost that I needed as well. Not only did I gain the confidence to teach, but I noticed my reflections towards my fellow peers increased over time too. Looking back to the first reflection and my last reflection I can see some progress in my writing and academic language.The one aspect I want to reflect on are the lesson plans. Dr. Smirnova wanted us to take our lessons plans and make a copy of the formatted one she corrected. With this new copy we had to design our own lesson based off of on our beliefs. I liked this assignment because it gave me time to really reflect on how I would want to change certain aspects. It also gave us an opportunity to look through a deeper lens undergoing the process of evaluation. The first step in this process was to make a copy of the original lesson plan and correct the changes I thought were necessary. For the direct lesson plan there was not much for me too change because I made all the changes that I thought were necessary the second time around. I tweaked a few things here and there, but nothing to drastic. When designing this lesson, I tried to think of how to incorporate technology. This was a hard process to think of something with the use of technology. One thing we used was the Smart Board for the guided practice. I really liked how we incorporated the Smart Board for this assignment and the students seemed to be engaged with the lesson. While correcting the second lesson plan I noticed a few important details that needed to be changed, but it was nothing too serious. The wording was a little jumbled and I just added in a few words to make is sound smoother. One aspect we forgot was to hyperlink the Web Quest within the lesson. This will make it easier for whoever is reading the lesson to follow along. The one aspect that I was struggling with was the objectives. I wanted to make sure the objectives were observable and measurable for us. Eventually I figured out an objective to write that correlates with our lesson plan. Our inquiry lesson was not as detailed as our direct was because the direct is more teacher centered then the inquiry. I would say all of our lesson plans were created to the best of our capabilities. I'm glad that I had a great group to work with and I look forward to being in the classroom now. Below this blog are my lesson plans that I revised based off of my perspective. I hope you enjoy reading our engaging lesson plans. Until next time bloggers :)

Direct Lesson
Inquiry Lesson

Ocean Blue Jiggy

This past week and the week before Spring Break we learned about the Jigsaw method. I had an idea of what the Jigsaw method could be, but I wasn't completely 100% sure. We were required to read a little more on this method and really break it down into pieces on what this method was about. According to Reading Rockets, "Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that enables each student of a "home" group to specialize in one aspect of a topic (for example, one group studies habitats of rain forest animals, another group studies predators of rain forest animals)." In order to successfully do this students must meet up with their groups and collaborate with whatever material that they are supplied with. This is a great way to have students interact and help them with social skills that are needed to succeed. We had this opportunity to discover how this Jigsaw

method worked in our own classroom. Dr. Smirnova introduced this method to us and wanted us to complete it altogether. The first step in this lesson was to get with our fellow colleagues that were sitting next to us at the time. Second step was to discuss in our group who wanted to do which components of the cooperative lesson. We all decided on what we wanted to be because that was going to be our expert group. At this time I was confused on what was going to happen next because I was still unsure of how this was all going to work out. After we picked our expert groups we then had to meet up with the same people in our expert groups. Finally we were altogether and that's when I realized the different components on what makes up a Jigsaw method. I like to think of it as putting the pieces back together. Once we were in our expert group we collaborated on the topic that was handed to us which was Ocean and Currents. This was a topic that we were all a little unfamiliar with. Everyone in the group was responsible to look up information online and contribute their information on the PowerPoint. While they were looking up information I was beginning to started the PowerPoint. I was in charge of all the graphics and videos that were included within this lesson. My group decided to make an interactive game using Kahoot. This helped the students through a formative assessment. Kahoot is an engaging tool for students to complete through a competitive way. The point of this Jigsaw method was to work together to complete a task with your expert groups. Once completing the task it was now time to come back together and have each expert group explain their findings with all of the class. At this time we are learning while the experts are deepening their understanding of the material. Each group had a different twist on the way they presented their material. Some groups used videos to convey their messages while others used lecturing to teach their lesson. The one thing I noticed from everyone was the use of academic language and eye contact. I can see that everyone is growing and going to become excellent teachers one day. Personally I started to feel more confident and comfortable with speaking in front of the classroom. It's amazing what practice can do. Listed below is my groups Jigsaw PowerPoint. Feel free to access it whenever you want. Also towards the end of the PowerPoint there is the Kahoot game that you can access, from there you can set up an account. I highly recommend using this website in a classroom setting. This is a great way to assess students knowledge and make it into a competition. I hope you sign up and use this amazing tool in your classroom. Until next time bloggers :)

Ocean & Coasts