I had a really honest reflection over my progress as a teacher of science for elementary students, and it needed to be shared here. The original blog is here, if you're interested in my science shenanigans: Mrs. Slay's Science Ways.
My block participated in a Science Night at the local elementary school we've been student teaching science lessons in. Above are my partner Whitney and I, with our station "On Target."
Students and their families voluntarily attend Science Night and move from station to station, participating where they like. There was also a really great presentation given by a faculty member on electricity.
At our station, students could make predictions about how much weight (in paper clips) would be needed to launch their handmade parachutes onto the bulls-eye of the target lying on the floor. We helped the students construct their parachutes out of napkins, string, sticky dots, and paper clips, complete with a tiny cutout of a skydiver. The result was a fun way to learn about air resistance and gravity. The students were inventive with adding weight; some students constructed paper clip chains to attach to their skydivers, in hopes of helping him land on the target.
Other stations included the Penny Drop (how many drops of water can fit on the head of a penny), Oobleck (is it a liquid or a solid? can it be both?), and Heart Rate (measuring students' heart rates after they jumped rope for a length of time) as well as many others. Overall, it was a success! The students had a great time and so did we.
(I think you can see in this picture what a great time we had!)
This was the last class/project for our Science Methods course. That being said, it's time to reflect on how I feel I've progressed as a teacher of science.
I have enjoyed the course and have thoroughly enjoyed the hand's-on experiments and projects we've done. I am primarily a kinesthetic learner, so I learn best when my hands are deep into an experiment. I also like to take all experiences and internalize them and reflect over what I have actually learned. It's a good practice not only as a student and as a teacher, but for life as well. Everything, no matter how trivial or how grand, should teach us something, but it is up to us to "dig out" that deeper meaning for ourselves.
One of my favorite quotes regarding life education comes from L.M. Montgomery's classic, Emily Climbs. Emily is embarking on the beginning of her college career in the 1890s-1900s and she is told: "Whatever there is worth learning, you'll have to dig out for yourself."
It's an apt summation of my progress thus far, as well as a complement to constructivist philosophy: active learning experiences require students to construct their own knowledge, with teacher as facilitator.
I've built and constructed within the frame my professors have set in place, and have connected what we do in the classroom and what we read in our texts to the larger picture. I feel more confident about teaching science now than I have ever felt before. Science was always interesting when I was in public school, but somewhere down the line, it got intertwined with math and I have a long, bitter history with all things math. Once that happened, I lost interest in what was going on in the classroom, much preferring to continue to ask my own questions of the world around me (how does that work? why does that do that?). Asking questions and constantly pursuing knowledge of the world around us (as well as the worlds within us) is a life journey, not something that only takes place within the four walls of a classroom.
That being said, through what we have been able to place our hands on, I have regained that excitement about science in the classroom again. I can bring my love of science outside the classroom into the classroom and connect it to content. I can do that, and needn't be nervous or afraid to do so. The culmination of this entire science experience, in both EDEL 436 and the science unit in EDEL 548, has been forward progress into confidence in teaching science. That's a lesson I'll hold onto for a lifetime.
No comments:
Post a Comment