Jewel’s

Science Autobiography

            At the beginning of the semester my thoughts about science were different than what they are now. At the beginning of the semester I thought there was so much to know about science and teachers had to know it all to teach it all. However, that view has now changed and I have learned that science is always changing, new stuff is always being added so it is nearly impossible to know everything about science at all times. I have found that research is key in the science classroom, letting the students conduct their own research and discovering the new aspects of science.

Science in Your Classroom

            Like I said above, research is key. To keep up with the scientific industry research is mandatory. In my classroom, I will teach my students to be researchers and to look for scientific discoveries as well as to keep the basics of science in their minds while conducting research. I believe that science should be interactive and hands on experience. I feel as if students will remember experiences better than lectures. For me, when we did the bottle rocket explosions in class it was very memorable. We got to choose how we would conduct the experiment and then execute the plan. I think this is the best way to teach science to students! I feel as if I am ready to teach science to children! I know that my learning is never done and therefore I will keep discovering more science knowledge as my career progresses as a teacher.

Reflection Over the Course

I think this course had a lot of net experiences and a lot to offer. I liked that we did the hands-on experiment with the “bottle rockets” and that we were able to make mandu in class. There were so many cultural aspects from this course that will help me as a science teacher in my future. I really enjoyed each groups presentation. I think thought that some students were dis-engaged during these presentations. I think that creating and interactive notebook in the future and having a grade over the notebook would ensure every student in engaged and showing their peers the amount of respect they deserve. This class was very well organize and I cannot wait until I can teach science in my classroom!!

Mackenzie’s

Science Education Article:

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.uta.edu/docview/1891826967?pq-origsite=summon

It’s very difficult to keep student’s attention and have them retain the information that
you are teaching. This article talks about how students don’t want to learn science or find it interesting because it doesn’t always make sense in their real lives. It seems like memorization instead of learning the information. The article talks about how one teacher decided to use video games as her method of teaching science. She had the students in her class play the video game and come in for a quiz. They did not know what the quiz was over and were not prompted to study. The students made a polymer from the knowledge that they obtained by playing the video game. The students were able to do it if they took the game seriously and played to the level that was required for the class. The article did mention that some people were just not very good at video games and did not learn the information in this fashion, but the others did a good job retaining and recalling the information.

Jewel’s

Science Education Article:

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uta.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=e9effde6-2f70-4aa5-a28c-212f092ca158%40sessionmgr4007

The article that I chose to read was “Arts in Science education” by Dina Izadi. After reading the article I now have a better understanding of how to incorporate arts and science together in the same lesson. Putting art in the classroom is more than just coloring a worksheet about the processes of life or drawing a Bohr model. Including art in the classroom is creating a masterpiece while using scientific concepts and scientific reasoning.

The problem science teachers have/had been incorporating meaningful art into the science classroom. Art that will help students develop a better understanding of science concepts. Not just the coloring sheets about a topic that was taught.

The solution to the problem in the article was to incorporate meaningful art into the classroom that will help the children gain a better understating of the scientific concepts. For example, “A new way to investigate simple periodic motion, such as that of a pendulum, as well as chaotic motion, is to ask students to build their own dolls with arms and legs attached to a rotating connector. The dolls can be built of paper, nonomagnets or any other materials, to investigate the parameters in this motion it is necessary to make the dolls in different shapes. Because students think differently, all these toys will help them to show their individuality in solving problems with their creativity in arts.” The author also suggested creating bridges made out of paper to investigate how much weight the bridges could hold; the teacher would also use that to teach about forces along with resistance. Artists enable people to visualize the sciences in different ways or to apply new ways of thinking.

The purpose of this study was to educate teachers on the importance of incorporating meaningful art into their everyday teacher of science. Teachers might even need extra professional development in the area of integration of the arts. Albert Einstein stated, “The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

The results and conclusions to this study was the implementation of the arts in a science classroom. One science teacher had her students look at nature around them for a certain amount of time; then they were asked to illustrate what they had been seeing. They were also asked to find scientific problems that they saw and analyze them through the arts. Displaying science knowledge through art an also help the children have a deeper understanding of the science materials but art concepts as well.

Ashley’s

Ashley’s Science Article

 link: https://www.citejournal.org/volume-17/issue-2-17/science/using-personal-science-story-podcasts-to-reflect-on-language-and-connections-to-science/

    Preservice secondary teacher candidates often are prepared and excited about teaching science, though they are not as prepared or enthusiastic about teaching the language necessary to communicate about science. These teachers feel great about their abilities to teach literacy when it comes to vocabulary, but nothing beyond it. The importance of facilitating students’ understanding of “both science content and academic language in the discipline,” is overlooked (par. 2, Frisch)

            Digital storytelling was the specific focus for this study, it has seven important elements.

  1. Point of view: the perspective of the author;
  2. Dramatic question: drives the story forward and is answered by the end;
  3. Emotional content; meaningful issue or palpable affect is evident;
  4. The gift of your voice: the author’s identity is evident in the piece;
  5. Pacing; the rhythm of speech;
  6. Soundtrack; music or sound effects; and
  7. Economy: the story is under 10 minutes.

This instructional strategy promotes the acquisition of high-level reflection.

         The purpose of this article was to allow students to become more engaged in science through personal stories told by their teachers, to give them real life connections to science. Also, this encourages students to express themselves and further their own science investigations in their personal lives.    

            The multiple candidates created very different types of podcasts. Not all podcasts contained all seven elements, or appropriately addressed them. It was concluded that embarrassing or disgusting stories tended to be more memorable.  There were too many variables that caused the results to vary so greatly. All in all, some candidates seemed to be more or less than creative or better storytellers than others. It turned out that many elementary education candidates did not feel comfortable describing science concepts and making connections to them in their stories. Some candidates were very heavy on their science concepts in their stories, besides making them relatable or personable. Sometimes the vocabulary words were mentioned but left undefined. All in all, digital storytelling can be effective as long as all of the elements are included and the story itself is something students can make connections to, is memorable and engaging.