Genna’s Blog

Science STARS is now officially over; we had our presentation this past Saturday and I must say that I was very impressed. Although my girls were a bit nervous at first, they pulled it all together and put on a wonderful presentation. Unfortunately, I was missing one of my STARS but the other three came with enthusiasm and excitement! The girls definitely got a lot out of the program, I just wish there was more time during our meetings to work with them.

During camp over the summer we had a lot more time with the students and that really helped them to understand the information inside and out. For STARS, I did feel like we were rushing the whole time to get everything done, sometimes I didn’t feel like they were getting the understanding of the material that I had wanted of them; however, by presenting and fielding questions during Saturday’s presentation they demonstrated their knowledge of the content (heart rate) and the process of scientific investigation.

Overall, I had a great time with the Heart Breakers (my group’s name) and I hope that they left on Saturday feeling accomplished and proud!

Looking forward to tomorrow…

After the crazy day of STARS two weeks ago I am hoping that the students understood what we were doing! We spent much of the day taking our first round of data. Unfortunately because of the craziness I didn’t get to accompany my students to each station or really discuss with them afterwards what all of these tests were for. I am worried that because we didn’t discuss, their understanding will suffer.

Tomorrow we need to collect our second round of data…afterwards I feel the need to really delve into the idea of heart rate changing because of exercise like dancing; however, due to the time constraints it is just frustrating trying to get everything done within the next two weeks. I do believe in depth over breadth though; since this is an afterschool program I would rather the students understand the investigation more deeply!

The season is changing. I am usually not so thrilled by the idea of snow banks and scraping off my car in the morning; however, this year I am deciding to have a more positive outlook on the seasonal change (thus the change in the background).

Science STARS has been going extremely well. Although we have had our share of glitches, the girls have been amazing! I am working with a group of 5 girls. I have found that each of them brings excitement, attitude, smarts, and charisma to our group. We have figured out our question and most of the design. We are focusing on dance and how it affects Heart Rate. I wish we had more time with the girls to really delve into the science behind our experiment and to get to know the students better as individuals, but just as you find in school, the time flies by!

How do students learn? This question has been plaguing educators for quite sometime; and I have to admit I have been wrestling with it as well. There are so many theories that are all researched based, therefore all of these theories should work; however, as we have all experienced, students all learn in very individual manners. Although some learning styles are similar, I don’t find it fair to lump all students into one category.

I have found that students do learn well through inquiry-based labs. On tests, when asked to think back to the lab and apply it, I have found students very able! However, if the question does not refer back to the specific lab, the information is not as assessable for the student (they have a harder time with the question). The students have learned the material and have personal experience with it; however, the standardized test at the end of the year is not going to be asking the students to think back to their paper towel lab, or mixture lab, to remember information.

This creates a conundrum. I know that these lab really touch the students but at the end of the year they are evaluated on standardized measures. How can we transfer the knowledge the students achieve when it comes to the accountability piece?

So to the question of how students learn…I don’t know if I answered it completely. I skirted the issue because in all actuality I am still trying to figure that out.

Even though I have been in the classroom since the beginning of the year I am struggling with them seeing me as one of the teachers. On Friday I directed class for the first time and my CT was out. I felt like I was all over the place and this definitely lead to the chaos that I thought the room turned into. Although the students really weren’t that bad, I think that it felt worst than it was because I wasn’t fully prepared.

Due to this chaotic Friday I talked with my CT and other teachers that I am working with to become even more involved on a day to day basis. I want to work in large group settings with the students instead of just small groups!

On another subject, Monday was STARS at Wilson and it was fantastic! The students all decided to participate in a dance routine which they all now will begin toinvestigate next week.

One thing I have been struggling with lately is trying to help students who seem to be struggling with the material. During class I feel like there is so much to cover I can’t get to everyone individually. It is especially hard when I see a student struggling in class and not being able to give them extra attention. I would try and see the student after school; however, because of the busing situation, teachers have to get the permission of the students’ parents to allow them to stay after.

This has created a situation in which I seem to watch as some students struggle in class. Sometimes (since ther are many teachers in the majority of my classes) my CT or I can pull a student off to the side and talk to them about what is going on whether it is trouble at home or not understanding the material, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough.

One thing that has worked is talking to students during lunch. There are usually about 3-5 students that come in to help out grading (not any material from their own class) or putting packets together. The students that come in are typically doing well in class, however, if I could talk to some of the students who do seem to need the extra help during this time in a one to one or small group situation maybe it could be affective. The one repercussions is that lunch is typically the time in which I am helping to set up for my next class.

Lately I have felt like I have been thrown into fast forward. Not necessarily that I am just going through the motions just to get by, but that I am going through many meaningful experiences…just in high speed. Partially, I think that it is because I have so much on my plate right now. I am presently juggling five classes, a part time job, field/experience/student teaching, an after school program, and attempting a social life. All of these experiences are incredible, but it sometimes feel unfortunate that I can not focus myself more on one part of my life, specifically the field experience/student teaching part. I just feel that I could become a more successful teacher if I could really delve into the school system. I guess that will come with the start of my four week placement.

Seeing how my life is a whirl wind…a lot of meaningful experiences have happened in the past week. Firstly, I met with the sciences stars girls at Wilson Foundation! The girls were great they were not only enthusiastic, they all love science!! I find this very refreshing, it makes me want to create even better plans to encourage their experimentation. I am thoroughly looking forward to our next few weeks with the girls!

Secondly, my last week in school was fantastic! All my classes have been going through an inquiry based exploration involving the soda spill I mentioned in an earlier post. This experiment is attached to advertising. Our students believed that Bounty was the quicker picker upper, because of the commercial. After their experiments they then found that Bounty really was the fastest and strongest.

From this my CT and I then had our students design an experiment to further test advertising in the media. We posed the question, “Are double stuffed oreos really double stuffed?” The students got right to designing the experiments collecting data and presenting their results.

Through just one guided inquiry experiment (the paper towel lab) our students, when posed a question or given a situation now easily use science to support their hypotheses! Seeing how fast the students picked this up really demonstrated how authentic experiences stick with students much more than a lecture.

The next unit I am starting is on matter and the periodic table…any good ideas for some inquiry activities??

In the Rochester city school district one of the professional developments brought about this past summer was a workshop on inquiry. It stressed that teachers start the year off with a lab entitled “the paper towel lab.” This lab goes through putting mentos into a diet coke and exploding the soda. Then the students have to come up with investigatable questions and go through and see which brand of paper towels works the best (according to their questions).

It was suggested that this lab be performed on one of the first days of school; however, after talking with my CTs about it, I realized how unprepaered the students would be. In order to do a lab like this the students would need to be able to measure. Unfortunately many of our students came back to school and had no idea how to measure liquid volume or mass. They also had problems with length. Because of this need for practice we spent the first month really grounding them in measuring! Now that we have finished…we got to do the first day of the paper towel lab; and I am happy to report that before we even exploded the soda one of my students (who usually has a hard time focusing) said, “Why can’t we do this stuff more. It makes science fun!”

This is my fourth week of field placement and I can definitely say that I have learned a lot. I finally realize the truth to the idea that in order to really get a handle on teaching, you just have to go out there and experience it. My cooperating teachers and the other mentors I have picked up at school have really helped me to look at the theory that I have been learning throughout my time at Warner and really find a place for it with in practice.

In both of my classrooms we have also got a few new technologies. In my CT’s class we just recieved an LCD projector and in my other classroom we should be getting a smart board any day now. After moving from camp and knowing about the technology available for science STARS, it is unbelievable for me that many teachers are still using overheads instead of LCD projectors. We did a lab the other day on head circumference and collected class data. This should have been an easy enough feat; however it became a bit more difficult because many of the students could not read the overhead. If this had been on the computer, it would have been much easier to read and we could have printed out a data sheet for the students to make sure that all the numbers they had were correct. It was important for all the numbers to be correct because the next step in the lab was to calculate the averages and graph the data. Simply using a different technology could have made the data collection of this lab more  easy.

It is hard to think that many classrooms still don’t have these technologies when they really do seem to improve the atmosphere and ability of learning. I am looking forward to having these new technologies in the classroom because we will be able to get through lessons faster and more clearly using diagrams and even animations! It would also be interesting to have the students work on some sort of project using the computer and/or LCD projector.

So after going through what seemed like thousands of analogies in my head…I am still coming up short with one that really captures my philosophy of teaching.

However, I think I can manage to figure out ways to relate my ideas to a more generic idea of growing a plant such as a chia pet. Plants need important factors that allow them to grow and flourish such as access to sun and daily water. This can be related to the facilitated freedom that I would like to give my students so that they could question and create investigations to answer their own questions; I attribute the water to the daily feedback I would be giving my students on their questions and their progress. This classroom nourishment would allow the students to grow and question everything. However, as the teacher I would help them to refine their questions and scaffold them to really achieving the goals they had set for themselves and that I had set for them. This would be like trimming the chia pet to shape it. I have found in my recent experience as a teacher and my experience as a student that receiving feedback is incredibly important! It validates students in showing them their progress or it can help them realize the areas in which they still need to work a bit harder. When I was a student in college I found it very difficult to do all sorts of work and then not get my tests or papers back. At the end of the semester I would receive a grade but I wouldn’t know my progress throughout the semester.

Lastly, it is important to realize that not all chia pets are the same. They come as cats, dogs, a Simpson character, Mr.T, etc. It is important for me as the teacher to realize this and be able to treat each student as an individual with out bias. This is one of the most important parts of my philosophy of teaching. It was important to me as a student to be known by my teacher as an individual and not lumped into a category. Because of this I really push my self as an up and coming teacher to break down any biases I may still have and to treat my students as individuals.

The analogy is a bit cheesy; however, it served its purpose of allowing me to mold my teaching philosophy into the growing and tending of a chia pet.