class 10-30-08

Today Shauna and I got to present our lesson to the class. I was a little bit nervous, but I was also excited because I felt that we had a good, strong, relevant topic. I feel that overall, our lesson, powerpoint, and activity all went really well. We covered a lot of good information and the class was very willing to participate and answer questions. I think that everyone really enjoyed our tornado in a bottle activity as well. I think that all-in-all our lesson was well thought out and was also received very well by the class.

class 10-28

I thought today was another great day of presentations. Once again, each group did a great job of sharing their specific activity and safety tips. I really like the experiment with the elephant toothpaste, as I believe younger students would as well. I was unaware that the mixture of those items would cause it to foam. I thought that all the groups did a wonderful job of pointing out any safety tips that would be of concern when doing the experiments with students.

class 10-23

I thought that Thursday's class was very fun, interesting, and educational. I learned about a lot of different activities and topics that can be used in a science classroom. I also learned a lot about the different safety tips that go along with those activities. I think that the jell-o activity about mixtures was very good. It would relate to students on a personal level, and there were excellent safety tips about not spilling water and being careful with the hot water. I thought, however, that all the groups did a great job presenting their activities!

Safety, 10-16-08

I think that safety was a very important topic to cover on Thursday. It is important that we are able to educate our own students in the area of safety, not only in the science classroom, but also when they are online. Personally, I feel like I didn't learn a whole lot of new information on Thursday, however, I think it was a good idea to brush-up on what I already knew. Safety is not something that should be forgotten in any classroom. Since the internet is used more and more in the classroom, teachers need to remember that internet safety can also be an issue.

10-14-08

Today in class, I thought we made a lot of progress for our midterm project. I liked that we were given some time in class to work on our projects, because it can be very difficult to meet outside of class to work on projects sometimes. I feel like my partner and I got a lot done for our project, though there is still a long way to go!

Mirror, Mirror- 10/7/08

I thought that the mirror activity we did on Tuesday was very interesting. I think it is an activity that students would really enjoy. It was fun, but also educational. Students would learn to write by looking in a mirror. The task was actually more difficult than I expected it to be. This activity is designed to help students think about how they approach a task and the strategies that they would use to solve the "problem".

Web Seminar make-up activity

I thought that this web seminar was very interesting. I have always been fascinated with astronomy, so it was wonderful having the opportunity to learn a little more about the subject! One thing that I learned from this seminar is that approximately 13.5 billion years ago the milky way galaxy was actually a nebula! I also learned about how stars are classified by using a spectra, which provides information on temperature, composition, brightness, and in some cases, distance. Another thing that I found interesting was the differences between hot and cool stars. An O star is considered to be a very hot star at 20 degrees K. An M star is considered a cool star, coming in at around 3000 degrees K. Our sun is a G5 star, which is close to 6000 degrees K. I also found it interesting that cool stars actually have molecules surrounding their atmosphere; while hot stars only have elements.

Thursday 10-2, Mystery Box

I really enjoyed the mystery box activity that we did in class on Thursday. I thought that it was fun to hypothesize about what was in each of the 4 mystery boxes. I was very shocked to find that each box contained basically the same thing, only in different shapes. I had suspected that in a couple of the boxes there were little toy cars. I also like that each of the members in my group was able to write down her ideas about what was in each box. I think that this would be a great activity to do with children. I believe that this activity would be very fun for students, as well as educational.

Tuesday 9-30, module

I think that the module that we did instead of class on Tuesday was beneficial. It allowed me to go back through the reading material and review what I had already read. I feel that this activity gave me the chance to take a deeper look at the information in chapters 3 and 4.