Science Teaching Philosophy
I believe science is exploring the world around you and making sense of it. In science we use a variety of different process skills in order to make sense of the world. Some of the basic processes (including but are not limited to) are observing, communicating, and predicting. These are the things that students should be engaged in order to be actually doing the science. While they are doing the science they should also be building up their content knowledge and understating how doing and knowing science are apart of the nature of science. (NOS)
It is important for elementary students to learn science because just like every other subject it is where the students get the building blocks to continue their education. It is important to science in general because it is what we use to make sense of the world around us, the more we are exposed to it the better we can do this. "Many children come to secondary science not merely lacking the science ideas they need, but possessing alternative ideas that are a barrier to understanding their science lessons." (Harlen) Since we contend that teaching science is necessary, it is also imperative to teach children at a young age so that they start building the process and skills needed to be a active participant in their continued science learning. In addition students form their opinion of the subject at an early age so if their exposure to it is not there they may take a while to grow acclimated to it and it will take lots of work to then expose them to the subject. "Interest in science among males continue to increase trough middle and high school; females' interest in and attitudes toward science are greatest in the elementary years and drop as females enter middle school and high school" (Hammrich) Imagine if we didn't teach all students to science in elementary school who much harder would it then be to catch the students who we see an obvious decline in engagement in. To accomplish keeping all students interested and engaged in science we need to catch them all when their interest level is highest, so we can foster and build this interest.
I believe students learn science best when they are active participants in their own science learning. “I contend we cannot attribute doing science to others if they do not attribute it to themselves.” (Sullenger) This quote is imperative to me because if the learner is able to say that they are in fact doing science it will show that they understand what it is they are participating in."Elementary students cannot be expected to immediately be able to design and carry out their own investigations" (Banchi) Once students understand how to conduct an investigation much of the science learning can be shifted to more of an inquiry based teaching model.Students learn best through the different types of inquiry because they are beginning to come up with their own questions and finding their own answers. Besides being a part of the science learning they need to be a part of the science planning. Even if this is just in the form of asking questions and the teacher is able to connect it back to what they are learning in science.
As a science teacher it is my hopes to be a facilitator then a content driver. To help guide my students to ask their own question and find their own answers. I know students learn best when they attribute themselves to doing science, as a teacher I need to make sure they are making the connections necessary to achieve this. These connections should be me relating it to how science occurs in the real world and making sure they see how what they are doing is similar to that. "Science knowledge is discovered, much like finding a lost physical item" (Olson) If I am just providing them with the answers what are they learning? If I just give them the content how much will they retain? If they are finding their own answers and discovering the content themselves they will retain and understand so much more. "When they recognize what they know and don't know and decide what they need to learn" ( Harlen) If they are coming up with their own knowledge base and determining what they need to know it is my job as a teacher to provided them with the resources essential to figure this out. In order to maximize what they are learning I can integrate their subjects so they can build connections and they get exposure to multiple different skills in many settings. An example of this as far as literature integrated with science is would be to give them a reading assignment that relates directly back to their science objectives, in this case they are building their science content as well as working on their reading strategies.
It is important for elementary students to learn science because just like every other subject it is where the students get the building blocks to continue their education. It is important to science in general because it is what we use to make sense of the world around us, the more we are exposed to it the better we can do this. "Many children come to secondary science not merely lacking the science ideas they need, but possessing alternative ideas that are a barrier to understanding their science lessons." (Harlen) Since we contend that teaching science is necessary, it is also imperative to teach children at a young age so that they start building the process and skills needed to be a active participant in their continued science learning. In addition students form their opinion of the subject at an early age so if their exposure to it is not there they may take a while to grow acclimated to it and it will take lots of work to then expose them to the subject. "Interest in science among males continue to increase trough middle and high school; females' interest in and attitudes toward science are greatest in the elementary years and drop as females enter middle school and high school" (Hammrich) Imagine if we didn't teach all students to science in elementary school who much harder would it then be to catch the students who we see an obvious decline in engagement in. To accomplish keeping all students interested and engaged in science we need to catch them all when their interest level is highest, so we can foster and build this interest.
I believe students learn science best when they are active participants in their own science learning. “I contend we cannot attribute doing science to others if they do not attribute it to themselves.” (Sullenger) This quote is imperative to me because if the learner is able to say that they are in fact doing science it will show that they understand what it is they are participating in."Elementary students cannot be expected to immediately be able to design and carry out their own investigations" (Banchi) Once students understand how to conduct an investigation much of the science learning can be shifted to more of an inquiry based teaching model.Students learn best through the different types of inquiry because they are beginning to come up with their own questions and finding their own answers. Besides being a part of the science learning they need to be a part of the science planning. Even if this is just in the form of asking questions and the teacher is able to connect it back to what they are learning in science.
As a science teacher it is my hopes to be a facilitator then a content driver. To help guide my students to ask their own question and find their own answers. I know students learn best when they attribute themselves to doing science, as a teacher I need to make sure they are making the connections necessary to achieve this. These connections should be me relating it to how science occurs in the real world and making sure they see how what they are doing is similar to that. "Science knowledge is discovered, much like finding a lost physical item" (Olson) If I am just providing them with the answers what are they learning? If I just give them the content how much will they retain? If they are finding their own answers and discovering the content themselves they will retain and understand so much more. "When they recognize what they know and don't know and decide what they need to learn" ( Harlen) If they are coming up with their own knowledge base and determining what they need to know it is my job as a teacher to provided them with the resources essential to figure this out. In order to maximize what they are learning I can integrate their subjects so they can build connections and they get exposure to multiple different skills in many settings. An example of this as far as literature integrated with science is would be to give them a reading assignment that relates directly back to their science objectives, in this case they are building their science content as well as working on their reading strategies.
Course Goals
Goal 1: Resident will plan and participate in science lessons/ activities for the developmental talents of children.
It is apparent in no matter what subject I have taught that all of my students are more than just a group of 22 fourth graders. When it comes to science this is when I feel like it really gets tricky. Students not only think differently than one another but they come into each lesson with different levels of understanding and their own schema. I have to be able to take the knowledge they have and build upon on it or often be able to reconstruct it. Students will come in with background knowledge and from there it is finding out their misconceptions so that I am able to address it. A tool that I have used to help me discover students misconceptions is the following site http://amasci.com/miscon/opphys.html. Here I look at what is going to be taught in my classroom and then see what some common student misconceptions are. This comes out in a variety of ways into my classroom. Some times we address them before beginning the lesson, to make sure that they are on the same page other times we address it as we go. In order to do any instruction it is imperative that I build up my own content knowledge. I use the counts recourse as well as my course recourses to accomplish this.
Artifact 1: Misconceptions Site: http://amasci.com/miscon/opphys.html
Rationale 1:I use this as a tool to help me plan my lessons and how best to support my students. I also use this to find out my own misconnections and build up my own content knowledge.
Artifact 2: Understanding Primary Science by Martin Wenham and Peter Ovens
Rationale 2: When it comes to building my content knowledge I use this text A LOT! I kind of use it to just get a basic understanding and if I have any further questions I go from there. To either my CT or online resources but this is my primary source to build up my own knowledge in order to teach my students the best that I can.
Artifact 3: Folder Lesson Plan
Rationale 3: This is a great example of not only how I have planned in science learning but it is also a great way to show some shifts in my thinking. When we revisited the lesson I ended up changing all but one of the E’s. Some things that I thought would be great I found fit better somewhere else and other things I realized were better left out of the lesson. It showed me how important it is to have all of the E’s laid out, so that you can have a lesson plan that grows with the students. It also showed me that there are often things that sound great, like taking a field trip, but really aren’t the best way to get the objectives across to the students.
Goal 2: Resident will choose appropriate strategies, grouping arrangements, resource materials and visual display for learning science.
Artifact 1: Classroom Seating Chart
Rationale 1: The seating chart shown below is for one of the two different classrooms and not two different classes. The names in read are where the students sit in math and the blue text is where they sit in math. In our class the math seats are stickily by ability level. In science it is a little more fluid. We have mixed ability levels at each group but the thing with the science lessons is that the students aren’t always in the same group. We try to often mix up the groups so that they are working with different people throughout the unit, this way they are able to see how others are learning and have the opportunity to learn for just the same set of students. They often start the unit or even just a lesson with their assigned group then as they learn more they interact with other students, in the end they make it back to the group. Each student then has had a different learning experience that they can bring together. This helps keep the conversations going, its not one student speaking for the group and then others restating the same things, they have all had different experiences.
Artifact 1: Classroom Seating Chart
Rationale 1: The seating chart shown below is for one of the two different classrooms and not two different classes. The names in read are where the students sit in math and the blue text is where they sit in math. In our class the math seats are stickily by ability level. In science it is a little more fluid. We have mixed ability levels at each group but the thing with the science lessons is that the students aren’t always in the same group. We try to often mix up the groups so that they are working with different people throughout the unit, this way they are able to see how others are learning and have the opportunity to learn for just the same set of students. They often start the unit or even just a lesson with their assigned group then as they learn more they interact with other students, in the end they make it back to the group. Each student then has had a different learning experience that they can bring together. This helps keep the conversations going, its not one student speaking for the group and then others restating the same things, they have all had different experiences.
Artifact 2: Water Cycle Analysis
Rationale 2: Through the process of evaluating a visual example of the water cycle I realized how much impactful visual displays are. If we are providing an visual that invokes misconceptions in students is the visual helpful at all? It can be fixed if we are making sure to show the students understand what is being represented, a way to make sure this occurs would be to create a visual with the class or discuss the visual limitations. An example of this would be if this visual of the water cycle had arrows pointing to the sun, students may believe the water is being evaporated into the sun. Unfortunately we can't provide all of the visuals our students will see, If the visual explained were a visual provided in a book it would be very beneficial as a teacher to have the conversation with students to explain what the visual means.
Rationale 2: Through the process of evaluating a visual example of the water cycle I realized how much impactful visual displays are. If we are providing an visual that invokes misconceptions in students is the visual helpful at all? It can be fixed if we are making sure to show the students understand what is being represented, a way to make sure this occurs would be to create a visual with the class or discuss the visual limitations. An example of this would be if this visual of the water cycle had arrows pointing to the sun, students may believe the water is being evaporated into the sun. Unfortunately we can't provide all of the visuals our students will see, If the visual explained were a visual provided in a book it would be very beneficial as a teacher to have the conversation with students to explain what the visual means.
water_cycle_evaluation.docx | |
File Size: | 602 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Goal 3: Examine the nature of scientific inquiry through modeling hands-on, minds-on, activities that foster scientific “habits of mind” and promote scientific literacy.
Artifact 1: Science? Or not science?
Rationale 1: To the left of this shows one of the first things wee did in class. Given a list of a whole bunch of different things we were asked to check all we feel are science related. When I first completed the worksheet I said all of the different components were science related. Now I don’t think I would disagree with that, I do think all of the things on this list can be related back to science , but I would contend that it needs to be explained in order for me to fully believe that it is related to science. Before I just took it at face value and said it was science, now looking back upon it I challenge myself to not just take it at face value but to see how it could be related back to science. More importantly I look to see what is being done, and try to see if it will be something that a learner will benefit from. Some we automatically attribute to being science related like “A class grows seeds in different types of soil.” Are the students learning the content or are they just watching the plant grow with out getting to understand what they are seeing? These two different scenarios lead to different learning experiences. In order for any of these example to be science related they need to contain the three legs of science (content, process, and nature of science). The example I already gave can be easily made to fit all three legs. You could talk about the stages of the plants life cycle, the students can be using basic skills such as observations and communicating about what they are seeing, and to include the nature of science by keeping that social aspect going. One like “ A mother and child bake cookies together” is a little more difficult to adapt. The content could be introducing students to mixtures and the different types involved in baking cookies, or the physical and chemical reactions that occur. The process that could be used are measuring, observing and even inferring or predicting. As far as NOS it could be the fact that our world is understandable there is a reason why when we combine all of those ingredients we get cookies, it is not just a happenstance.
Artifact 1: Science? Or not science?
Rationale 1: To the left of this shows one of the first things wee did in class. Given a list of a whole bunch of different things we were asked to check all we feel are science related. When I first completed the worksheet I said all of the different components were science related. Now I don’t think I would disagree with that, I do think all of the things on this list can be related back to science , but I would contend that it needs to be explained in order for me to fully believe that it is related to science. Before I just took it at face value and said it was science, now looking back upon it I challenge myself to not just take it at face value but to see how it could be related back to science. More importantly I look to see what is being done, and try to see if it will be something that a learner will benefit from. Some we automatically attribute to being science related like “A class grows seeds in different types of soil.” Are the students learning the content or are they just watching the plant grow with out getting to understand what they are seeing? These two different scenarios lead to different learning experiences. In order for any of these example to be science related they need to contain the three legs of science (content, process, and nature of science). The example I already gave can be easily made to fit all three legs. You could talk about the stages of the plants life cycle, the students can be using basic skills such as observations and communicating about what they are seeing, and to include the nature of science by keeping that social aspect going. One like “ A mother and child bake cookies together” is a little more difficult to adapt. The content could be introducing students to mixtures and the different types involved in baking cookies, or the physical and chemical reactions that occur. The process that could be used are measuring, observing and even inferring or predicting. As far as NOS it could be the fact that our world is understandable there is a reason why when we combine all of those ingredients we get cookies, it is not just a happenstance.
Artifact 2: Chromatography Inquiry
Rationale 2: In class we got to experience many different inquiries. One of the earliest ones was the chromatography inquiry. Here we got to see a science lesson that modeled a few bad practices, to highlight what our students are experiencing when we use these teaching methods. For me it showed that I was not always creating an environment which built and supported student learning. As a teacher these methods are not enjoyable to use and as a student they were even more painful to experience. After the being lesson the teaching methods being used shifted. Instead of rushing the student and telling them step by step what they had to do we had the choice as to what we were interested in. This was the first time in my experience as a science student that I was able to explore what I wanted. It felt great. This whole process made me realize how important the process of inquiry is. By using these same teaching methods I will be allowing my students to engage in the science and actually become a part of their science learning.
Rationale 2: In class we got to experience many different inquiries. One of the earliest ones was the chromatography inquiry. Here we got to see a science lesson that modeled a few bad practices, to highlight what our students are experiencing when we use these teaching methods. For me it showed that I was not always creating an environment which built and supported student learning. As a teacher these methods are not enjoyable to use and as a student they were even more painful to experience. After the being lesson the teaching methods being used shifted. Instead of rushing the student and telling them step by step what they had to do we had the choice as to what we were interested in. This was the first time in my experience as a science student that I was able to explore what I wanted. It felt great. This whole process made me realize how important the process of inquiry is. By using these same teaching methods I will be allowing my students to engage in the science and actually become a part of their science learning.
Artifact 3: Mealworm/ Darkling Beetle Inquiry
Rationale 3: Out of all of the inquiries we had through the course this one was my favorite. I felt for one of the first times at least in a very long time I was the main participant in my own learning. I was able to find what truly interested me and then conduct an investigation to find my own answers. I got to go through the process of inquiry to really get a better understanding of how it works, for both the teacher and the student. This type of open ended inquiry is completely feasible to do in an elementary classroom as long as the students have been exposed to the investigation process ( just as we were in our course).
Rationale 3: Out of all of the inquiries we had through the course this one was my favorite. I felt for one of the first times at least in a very long time I was the main participant in my own learning. I was able to find what truly interested me and then conduct an investigation to find my own answers. I got to go through the process of inquiry to really get a better understanding of how it works, for both the teacher and the student. This type of open ended inquiry is completely feasible to do in an elementary classroom as long as the students have been exposed to the investigation process ( just as we were in our course).
darkling_beetle_inquiry_.pptx | |
File Size: | 248 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
Goal 4: Resident will understand a variety of assessment strategies related to students outcomes in science.
Artifact 1: 75 Science Formative Assessment Classroom Techniques (FACTs)
Rationale 1: This list of assessments are something that I have referred to a few times. I have not yet planned or implemented an assessment in science but I have seen my CT do so. When I see her do some I have found that many of the ones she uses them are on this list of science FACTs. It is helping me to see them in practice and where to apply them in practice.
Artifact 2: STEM Lesson Plans
Rationale 2: Within planning my STEM lessons a huge part of both of them was the summative assessment. I had to look at what I need my students to know than decided the best why for them to show me what they learned. In both of these though I use a few formative assessments along the way, I choose mainly to have a summative assessments at the end just to see what the students learned through the whole unit. I know this isn't best practice and I know that I need a variety of assessments along the way so that I can help the students with where ever they may struggle.
Artifact 1: 75 Science Formative Assessment Classroom Techniques (FACTs)
Rationale 1: This list of assessments are something that I have referred to a few times. I have not yet planned or implemented an assessment in science but I have seen my CT do so. When I see her do some I have found that many of the ones she uses them are on this list of science FACTs. It is helping me to see them in practice and where to apply them in practice.
Artifact 2: STEM Lesson Plans
Rationale 2: Within planning my STEM lessons a huge part of both of them was the summative assessment. I had to look at what I need my students to know than decided the best why for them to show me what they learned. In both of these though I use a few formative assessments along the way, I choose mainly to have a summative assessments at the end just to see what the students learned through the whole unit. I know this isn't best practice and I know that I need a variety of assessments along the way so that I can help the students with where ever they may struggle.
native_florida_plants_stem_.zip | |
File Size: | 665 kb |
File Type: | zip |
stem_parking_lot_2.docx | |
File Size: | 396 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Goal 5: Resident will demonstrate the capacity for collegiality, reflective practice, and professional growth in regard to science teaching.
Artifact 1 :Rebecca Fiore (Resident) and Natalie Vonderheide (Math and Science CT)
Rational 1: My placement is in an ELA departmentalized classroom, this has made it very difficult to plan science. It is to the point now where it isn’t a problem any more but in the beginning of the semester it was. I felt as though I didn’t get to plan for science and I wasn’t able to put into practice the things that I was learning. I started to work with my peer Rebecca Fiore a lot more frequently and then she began to ask me for help on what she was planning for her own classroom. It has been through her that I have gotten to assist in planning out many different science lessons. Because of this I felt that I was comfortable enough to get more involved in my own classroom and began to work with the teacher next door. Though she isn’t my assigned CT I have adopted her as my math and science CT and I have began to get more involved in her classroom.
Artifact 2: Collaboration Document
Rational 2: "Science is…. confusing. I feel like every time i get close to understanding what it truly is I take three steps back and one step forward." This was my response to my thoughts in science towards the end of September. Through the semester my thinking shifted many times. I won't say that I am an expert on the topic but I have built my foundational understanding of what science is and what my role is as a science teacher.
Artifact 1 :Rebecca Fiore (Resident) and Natalie Vonderheide (Math and Science CT)
Rational 1: My placement is in an ELA departmentalized classroom, this has made it very difficult to plan science. It is to the point now where it isn’t a problem any more but in the beginning of the semester it was. I felt as though I didn’t get to plan for science and I wasn’t able to put into practice the things that I was learning. I started to work with my peer Rebecca Fiore a lot more frequently and then she began to ask me for help on what she was planning for her own classroom. It has been through her that I have gotten to assist in planning out many different science lessons. Because of this I felt that I was comfortable enough to get more involved in my own classroom and began to work with the teacher next door. Though she isn’t my assigned CT I have adopted her as my math and science CT and I have began to get more involved in her classroom.
Artifact 2: Collaboration Document
Rational 2: "Science is…. confusing. I feel like every time i get close to understanding what it truly is I take three steps back and one step forward." This was my response to my thoughts in science towards the end of September. Through the semester my thinking shifted many times. I won't say that I am an expert on the topic but I have built my foundational understanding of what science is and what my role is as a science teacher.