1st Grade Science

4. Scientists raise questions and seek answers about the world around them through observation and experimentation

Concrete- show students a video of a scientist or person asking a question about nature and what happens next.
Questions-
1. Why did he/she ask that question?
2. What will he/she do next?
3. What could he/she do to find answers to he/she question?
4. (If they come up with the word observation)  What is an observation?  What would you notice about a person who is observing something?
5. How can you record observations? How do the observations help you answer a question you have asked?

SATIC Pattern

I taught my science lesson today to a first grade class.  Throughout my lesson I was thinking to myself about what to do and what not to do as far as the SATIC coding goes.  I thought it would be easy, but it was not.  I felt during class we all would be laughing or joking about some of the "silly" things that we should never do that those teachers in the videos were doing.  After my lesson today I definitely caught myself doing them!  When I was watching the videos in class I knew what was "not appropriate" and what we were aiming for, but when I got into the situation myself I either got caught off guard which took me back to old habits or I just didn't notice what I was doing. 

I felt like I had to give a fair amount of directions, which I think you need to do in the younger grades.  I felt I did well with asking thought provoking questions and using students comments or ideas to springboard into other questions.  Although I was asking many questions, I sometimes got tripped up with how to ask a question either without giving the answer away or wording it properly for the students to understand. 

I watched about half of my video after I did my lesson and some things that I noticed that I struggled with was: I did ask a rhetorical question....oops.  I have a problem with confirming students answers when I know they are right even though I tried to remember to just say okay thank you or count with my fingers.  I also found myself have of the time asking the student to clarify, but sometimes I would do it for them because it took them like ten minutes to articulate what they wanted to say!

This blog is getting rather lengthy and I'm sorry about that, but another thing I run into in other lessons as well as this one is I asked a lot of questions today in my lesson.  In first grade, students tend to keep their hand raised the whole day and after you call on them to answer your question they either stray away and comment on something totally off or give a completely wrong answer.  I just don't know how to deal with that yet.  Today I was still on the concept of balance, but I felt like I was all over the place with my questions because of the random stuff the students were saying. 

Strategies that I could use to improve would be to practice, practice, and more practice.  There is no way I can get better unless I continue to break bad habits by practicing the new ones.  Just like in sports you practice to become the best player and in teaching I need to practice to become the best teacher.  I also find it extremely helpful to videotape lessons.  I am seriously contemplating buying a flip video camera.  I can learn from what I have done and it is kind of hard to forget how bad you were when you have it on video!

Myths and Characteristics of how science works

Myths

• There is a single scientific method (step by step)
• Only scientists can do experiments
• All science is done in a lab
• Science and technology are the same
• If we make an observation there is a purpose behind it

Characteristics

• Observations & discoveries
• Creative
• Lots of questioning
• Multiple methods
• Collecting information

Reflection of Thursday Class

Last class was very helpful to my understanding of how the standards relate to eachother.  I feel like we continue to repeat ourselves when talking about the standards and a lot of the answers to questions are the same, but that is the point.  The standards intertwine so much that it will get repetitive at times.  That also shows that if we do one specific thing like have students work in groups, it connects with a lot of the standards. 

In my meeting it was hard for me to connect classroom management to any of the other standards except for a non-verbal cue of walking around the room.  This last class helped me realize how easy the others do contribute to management.  Of course the appropriateness of the content will contribute to classroom management.  If the content is too hard or too easy the students will often times be more disruptive.  Others that we discussed that contributed to management was keeping lessons interactive, asking questions, providing time, and modeling.

I like how we clarified what modeling is and should be.  There is a clear difference between modeling and showing.  Just demonstrating how to do something without keeping the students mentally engaged is just showing, not modeling.  Modeling is explicit and active.  The actual demonstrating is the explicit part and the active portion can be attained by asking a question, like what do you notice about how I'm sitting in group time?  To be honest the schematic didn't make much sense to me until now.  After we had that long discussion and drew up the schematic and where the stuff actually fit is when I realized how it worked. 

There was a lot to process after that class, but it is continuing to make more sense to me.  My biggest improvement I can make is to develop a better understanding of how all the standards connect and relate.

What I understand about standards so far

Student goals are what you want students to achieve in your classroom.  I believe that if the students have an input on what their goals should be they will be more meaningful and take ownership of those goals.  I also think there can be two sets of goals in your classroom, just like we have in ours here.  One is the teacher's list for their students and the other is a list that the students come up with together.  I also learned yesterday that when you look at student actions for each goal is where you start to see these goals overlap and relate to eachother. 

We also touched on learning theory and how we used to think that students were empty vessels when they came to school (which they never really were).  We can still ask them questions and have conversations with them because they will have an answer even if it is not right.  If their answers or comments are not right then continue to ask more questions to get them to the correct understanding.  All students come into school having different background knowledge.  Knowing our students background knowledge will have an influence on the type of instruction we give and what content to teach.

Non-verbal strategies can send a big message to students.  Things like eye contact and walking around the room are examples of non-verbal strategies.  Another that is important is giving time after you ask a question for students to think about what you said to construct an answer.  Students need time to process what was just said so giving a good amount of wait time is good.

Questioning strategies we have seen used a lot in this class.  By asking questions you are getting students to think critically (which is part of a goal we have) and possibly facilitating them to reflect (which is going towards another goal).  How you phrase questions is important.  If you realize no one is responding after you have waited awhile you should think of a way to rephrase that question.  Not all questions will make sense to all students so you need to be prepared to ask them in more ways than one. 

Just in this last class we had we intertwined about four of these standards in 30 minutes.  I didn't realize until he started pointing out, well we just talked about this standard and this standard that it started to make more sense to me how these relate.  As we continue I hope that he will keep notifying us when we just talked about a certain standard until I can start picking that up on my own.

Standard Struggles

Although a few of these standards would give me trouble right now, the one I think I would struggle with most would be content and activity selection.  At this point in time I do not know what elementary students are learning about in Science.  I want to make sure that when I have a classroom of my own I will know what I will be teaching and after taking this class know HOW to teach those concepts.  I'm also interested in talking more about learning theories.  Learning theories play a big role in all the standards so obviously it would be important for me to really understand what those are and how to use that information.

After last class I understand the grading system and how it relates to elementary, it makes a lot of sense to me now.  Although I am still intimidated about having to "defend" what I understand, I think this will make me a better teacher.