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