Science in the News

 Wouldn't it be cool if you could go into space? Well, that may now be a possibility! Thanks to Richard Branson, who started Virgin Galactic in 2004, tourist spacecrafts are going to be available. On December 12th, a spacecraft carrying just the two pilots and weight bags to simulate people took off successfully into space. These spacecrafts are going to cost a ton of money to board, so as of now they'll only be for the extremely wealthy. But, if everything goes according to plan for Bronson, soon tourist space travel will be a reality for everyone! “Today, as I stood among a truly remarkable group of people with our eyes on the stars, we saw our biggest dream and our toughest challenge to date fulfilled,” Mr. Branson said in a statement after the takeoff. “It was an indescribable feeling: joy, relief, exhilaration and anticipation for what is yet to come.” This was the second time a Branson spacecraft took off into space, with the first time being about 14 years ago. Branson is trying to lead the charge into space tourism, but he has a lot of rich competition in the form of Elon Musk of Telsa and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He is hoping that the takeoff of this ship will put him in the lead, and one day help him and others reach outer space!

    I chose this article because I'm very interested in space travel. I also chose it because I did a project in class about Virgin Galaxies and thought it was really interesting, so I wanted to continue learning. This article relates to classroom topics and discussions because we dedicated an entire day to space science, and we all did projects on it. You can use this article to teach students science in a variety of ways. You can have the students read the article and then make their own space tourism company and spacecraft. They can name both, and then also pick a destination for his/her spacecraft's maiden voyage! This project could hit a multitude of standards and include a bunch of activities like writing assignments. Space science is a very interesting topic for students, so I would use this article to take advantage of that and complete the assigned project.

Reference to research article:

Haag, M. (2018). Virgin Galactic Rocket Ship Reaches Space, a Milestone in Space Tourism. New York Times.

Semester Reflection!

Wow. What a semester. This class was equal parts fun and stressful, but I can for sure say that I've learned more in this class than any other class I've taken at the Mount. This class made me not only a much better science teacher, but a better teacher in general. This semester was the first time I had ever taught in front of a whole class before, which was nerve-racking to say the least! But, I had a really great group who helped me through it, and I can now say that I'll be comfortable teaching in front of a whole class in the future. Something else I gained this semester was knowledge and insight into the inquiry model of teaching. This model with the "5 E's" of inquiry is really beneficial to student learning. They love this model because they get to immerse themselves in the material, form hypotheses and then explore their hypotheses. I enjoy using this model of teaching because it's way more interactive than just teaching direct instruction. Something else I'm going to take away from this course is the amount of technology I can implement in my instruction. Programs like mentimeter, voki and thinglink are all valuable tools for teachers to use to help 21st-century learners pick up information. I will most certainly use all of these tools and more, and will keep my eyes and ears open for more along the way! Probably the most important thing I picked up on this semester was how patient you need to be as a teacher. My patience was tested inside and outside the classroom this semester like never before, but that's the life of a teacher. I have to learn to stay the course even when the day isn't going as planned. Even if my lesson that I worked so hard on falls apart right at the beginning, there's no time to complain. The students need a strong teacher who won't yell and scream when things go bad, and that is really what I took away from this semester. Patience is a virtue, and no matter what, I will stay patient with my students and guide them towards becoming lovers of science who enjoy learning and inquiring about everything science has to offer!

Unit vs. Lesson Planning

   I had a lot of prior experience writing lesson plans from my previous education courses, but I had never written a unit plan until this semester. Unit planning is a big part of what teachers do, and good planning leads to success in the classroom for all, so it's vital that a teacher has good unit plans going into the school year. Unit plans are long and take a lot of work to prepare, but they are so worth it. A unit plan is comprised of a bunch of different types of lesson plans, all about the same topic. 

   The key to a good unit plan is having a variety of teaching styles and resources within the unit so that every student has the best chance to succeed. You can't have a unit plan filled with only direct or inquiry-based lessons; that is not enough of a variety. Unit plans should also contain a lot of technology for the students to explore and learn with. In this generation of technologically based learners, having a plethora of resources for students to access and use is crucial. To not have this in your unit plan would be a detriment to students in your classroom. A unit plan has an overall goal and objective for the unit, and also has individual objectives and goals for each lesson in the unit to get to the end goal. It's important to keep reminding yourself what the overall objective of the unit is while making the individual lessons. All of the lessons in the unit need to get the students closer to the big goal of the unit. Something else that must be included in a unit plan is a culminating activity at the end. There should be some sort of project or assignment that students have to complete based on a rubric to show that they met the unit goal by the end. This assignment could be something as simple as a test, but I'm going to try to be more creative than that! I'm going to use fun projects where the students can show that they mastered the content in a fun, creative way. Unit planning isn't easy, but it's a vital part of teaching. Students need good, structured units to really shine in the classroom. If you want to check out my unit plan for this semester, the link is here! My unit is about botany and plants in general, check it out! 

edTPA Reflection

For the first time since I've started my journey to becoming a teacher, I was exposed to edTPA this semester. edTPA is an assessment that all teacher candidates need to complete before officially becoming a certified teacher. This assessment is used in over 40 states and tests the skills that all teachers need to have in order to be an effective teacher. This task seemed daunting at first, but once I got started I realized that my class and fieldwork experience prepared me perfectly to answer all of the questions. edTPA is broken down into three tasks that all have numerous subtasks. Some of them are very short in length and some of them are a lot longer. Task one is all about planning and focuses on everything that happens before the lesson. Task one has five subtasks which all describe and explain the planning that went into my instruction. This part is supposed to prepare you to get into the classroom, and make you think about why you're making the educational decisions that you picked. Task two is only two parts and focuses on your actual teaching. Task 2A is just a video of me teaching a direct instruction lesson to the students, and task 2B forces me to discuss and analyze what happened in the video. This task is meant to analyze my own teaching, which was very beneficial. I had never actually seen myself teach before, so it was cool to be able to see myself in action and then reflect and learn from what I did. Task three focuses on student work samples. I had to grade student work from my lesson and reflect on how that showed what the students did or did not learn during the lesson. I also had to think about how student work would affect my future instruction if I were to keep teaching the same class. All of these prompts took me a lot of time to complete but were all worthwhile in improving my understanding of what happened this past semester. I'm going to have to fill these tasks out again for my social studies class next semester, and this time I'll feel much more comfortable filling them out. I'm not going to wait until the last couple of weeks of class to start filling them out; instead, I'm going to start working on them as soon as I finish my teaching lesson. This will give me plenty of time to make sure that they're perfect! If you want to check out my edTPA from this semester, here's the link to my eFolio which contains all of the edTPA tasks and much more!

My Philosophy of Teaching Science!

This past semester was crucial in forming my personal philosophy of teaching science. I never was comfortable with science as a student, so I didn’t think I’d be comfortable teaching it either. I struggled with the subject in school, and didn’t enjoy it much. However, this semester I learned a bunch of new strategies and ways to make science class fun and engaging for students!

In my opinion, the inquiry model of instruction is often the most appropriate way to teach science. You still need to conduct direct instruction lessons as well, as these help students form new knowledge and learn new concepts. But, science is best taught through the 5 E’s of inquiry: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. Through this model of learning, students really get a chance to immerse themselves in the material. The inquiry model should be taught the day after a direct instruction lesson for the best results. This will allow the students to take notes and learn the new information on the first day in the direct lesson, and then think about what questions they still have an inquiry about the next day. This helps students develop their problem-solving skills as well, as a good inquiry lesson lets students explore their questions independently or with peers. A very important part of the inquiry model is making hypotheses. A good hypothesis is the crux of inquiry lessons; the students need to know what essential question that they are inquiring about and they need to provide a tentative explanation before continuing with the process.

Technology is also a great way to get students engaged and interested in science. In 2018, we have so much awesome technology that allows us to see the world like never before. Science teachers need to use all of the technology at their disposal in order to best support these 21st century learners. Students in today’s society learn best through technology, so it’s only right that 21st century science teachers use it to the best of their abilities. This semester alone, I’ve found so many great sites to use in the classroom such as voicethread, mentimeter, voki and many more. These resources are easily accessible, and they really will benefit the learning of all of these technologically based 21st century learners!

Book Trailer!

One of the more challenging but interesting assignments I had to complete this semester was a book trailer. Much like a movie trailer, a book trailer is a preview of the story without giving away the ending! Book trailers are supposed to engage students and encourage them to explore the rest of the book on their own. This assignment was difficult for me because I had to use a brand new program called voice thread. This program allows you to create a mini-video and include a bunch of cool features. At first, it wasn't easy making the voice thread, but once I got the hang of it, it was a simple and fun way to create my trailer. Everybody should check voice thread out!
   For this trailer, I had to pick a science trade book. Something that I had to do for this project that I had never done before was create a storyboard. I used Google Slides to make mine for this project.
I put a picture from the book in the slide, and then wrote my script in the notes. Once I made this, all I had to do was upload my slideshow into voice thread and record my voiceover and then I was done. It was very easy and that is how I would recommend that anybody else make a voice thread. The book I chose was "The Tiny Seed", written and illustrated by Eric Carle. This book was very visually appealing and focused on abstract drawings. This most certainly will catch the attention of students. This book follows the journey of a tiny seed and his much bigger seed family. The book shows how seeds travel from place to place and how plants start growing in places they weren't growing in before. The book is very easy to follow, and really paints a picture of how seeds travel. In my trailer, I play the part of the tiny seed himself and spend a couple of minutes previewing the story and the pictures. Here is the link to my book trailer on voice thread if you want to check it out!
   Creating a book trailer that didn't give away the ending was very difficult, but I'm very happy with how mine came out! I'm using my book trailer in my unit plan for my class, and I also would love to use it in my future classroom as well. Book trailers are fun and engaging ways to get students to connect and get excited about a lesson. All teachers should consider using one in their instruction at some point, and make one themselves if they can!

Shattering Science Stereotypes!

When you think of a scientist, what comes to mind? I was asked this question on the first day of class this semester, and it really got me thinking. I was asked to draw what I think a scientist looks like, and the ugly drawing you see is what I came up with. You can see that my idea of a scientist was a white male with crazy hair, wearing a lab coat, holding a beaker and working over a lab table. Terrible artwork notwithstanding, I think that this is pretty common perception among students of all ages of what a common scientist looks like. Well, in 2018 that is just not the case. Scientists come in all different shapes and sizes, and do a bunch of different work. The following analysis is based on the article “Breaking Science Stereotypes” by Alec Bozdin and Mike Gehringer, in which a similar activity to the one I participated in was conducted with a group of fourth and fifth graders.

A total of 69 students participated in this activity. One day, a group of researchers went to these students and asked them to complete the same task as me; draw what you think a scientist looks like. The students drawings were then collected and looked at. They were graded by the Draw-A-Scientist-Test-Checklist (DAST-C), which is a rubric that looks at typical science stereotypes and how many of them are in a specific drawing. What the researchers found was that most students drew their scientists just like I did; a white man with a lab coat working indoors at a laboratory. According to the research collected by the group, 77% of students drew a white male as their figure for a scientist. This is unfortunate, but not the fault of the students. Especially at that young age, students probably haven’t been exposed to anything else representing a scientist. That is why this group wanted to really work with these students and see if they could show them that scientists come in all shapes and sizes. Over the next few weeks, the students were visited in their classrooms by a female chemical engineer and a male physicist. The scientists talked with the students a little bit about what they do, and then conducted a science experiment with them. These scientists were brought in because they went against what the students pictured as a scientist based on their drawings. The chemical engineer was a female, and since only about 20% of the class drew a female scientist, this was very important. The students needed to see a female figure as a scientist, especially since there are so many of them in today’s world. Although the physicist was a white male, he came in wearing a suit and tie instead of a lab coat. This was also important because 86% of students drew their scientist wearing a lab coat. Although it may be true that many scientists wear lab coats, scientists can wear many different things and work all over the world. After these scientists visited the class, the students never heard another word about them. Four weeks later, the group returned to the students and had them draw their idea of a scientist once again. They were hoping that the visits with scientists would get the students thinking and seeing that scientists can come in all shapes and sizes. After collecting and analyzing the students drawings the second time around, the group was pleased to see that the students artwork was very different. The amount of students that drew a white male wearing a lab coat decreased by about 20%. This is a big change!

The work that this scientist group conducted was very interesting and eye-opening. Based on data, it seems that this was very effective in transforming student misconceptions as scientists. I think that the fact that the students got to see two completely different scientists for an extended period of time. They got to learn and ask about what each one did, which deepened their understanding of what a scientist can be. I think that it’s especially important for young girls to see that they can grow up to be scientists if they want! Girls don’t always get to see these role models in their lives, so this would probably explain why even most girls drew their scientists as men. I also think that is was cool for the students to get to see different types of scientists. Most students drew their scientists in a lab wearing a coat, so it was good for them to see that scientists can work in a bunch of different types of environments. The fact that both elementary aged students and my peers in my class had the same misconceptions shows that teachers really need to emphasize and show examples to students of a plethora of different types of scientists. Students should know that no matter your race, gender or age, science is for everybody!

Article Used:

Bodzin, A., & Gehringer, M. (2001, January). Breaking Science Stereotypes. Retrieved December 5, 2018.

Why hypothesize?

    We're all taught as kids that a hypothesis is an educated guess. This isn't necessarily wrong, but there's much more to a hypothesis than that. A hypothesis is best defined as a tentative explanation. This means that a hypothesis is what you believe the answer to an inquiry question is before you investigate it. It's vital for students to make hypotheses at the beginning of inquiry lessons because this "tentative explanation" provides the guide for the rest of the lesson. The students will inquire about a topic, and then make their hypothesis to get engaged with the material. The student then spends the rest of the lesson trying to prove or disprove their explanation. The students are more engaged in the rest of the lesson now because they have a personal connection to it; they really want to see whether or not their explanation is correct. Hypotheses also help the teacher see if their instruction was effective or not. If a student makes a hypothesis that is incorrect, then can explain why it was incorrect by the end of the lesson, the teacher clearly did a good job and the lesson was beneficial. Always have students write down their hypotheses in the beginning of the lesson so that by the end you can see how student learning has been affected.

 During class last month, my classmates and I participated in a grab bag activity. My teacher showed the class a closed bag filled with something, but she wouldn't tell us what. She passed it around to each student in the class and gave us each five seconds to do whatever we wanted with the bag to try and guess its contents. The only rule: no opening the bag! Most of my classmates held then shook the bag, but others tried more interesting methods. I saw a few people holding the bag up to their face or nose trying to really see what was inside! By the time everyone had their five seconds with the bag, we all had a hypothesis ready to go about what we thought was inside. Personally, I thought it was some sort of dog toy because it felt like there was a small object in the bag and I heard it squeak. My class and I were able to separate our hypotheses into five categories: dog toys, rattles, rocks, balls, and children's toys. After this, Dr. Smirnova got the attention of the class and started to really break down what exactly a hypothesis is and why it's an important aspect of inquiry learning.

   Inquiry lessons are so crucial to science instruction. Science can be so immersive and engaging for students, and inquiry is one of the most engaging ways for students to learn! So, it only makes sense that a good portion of lessons in a science unit are inquiry-based. Students need to be able to wonder and explore the content, and inquiry is a perfect way to do that. This grab bag activity was very engaging and taught me exactly why inquiry and hypotheses are so crucial in science instruction. I will use an activity like it one day in my own classroom to emphasize the importance of inquiry and hypothesizing in science! (By the way, we never found out what was in the bag 😭)

Virgin Galaxies

   Today, I completed a series of tasks about virgin galaxies. I learned a lot about not only that though; I also learned a lot about new technology I can use in the classroom once I become a teacher. I used Google drawing for the first time while completing this activity. I really like this program because I'm not too great of an artist usually, but it's so easy to draw with it. I can use it in my future classroom whenever I have to draw something for my students. This program is also easy enough for students to use themselves. You can check out my Google drawing here. My drawing is of the earth, the atmosphere and the International Space Center. I estimated the distances between all of those things, and then drew Mount Everest on earth, and labeled its height, which is 5.5 miles high.   I also learned a lot about outer space in general while completing these tasks. Something really cool that I learned was that there is a "super-earth" that scientists have recently discovered. This "planet" is next to Bernard's star, which is the closest star to our sun that we know of. We believe it to be very icy and cold. What's really interesting about it though, is that scientists believe that there may be life there. Even though it's really cold, scientists still believe that it could support life. We believe that this "planet" is about 6 light years away, which means it would take over 100,000 years of travel to reach. "After a very careful analysis, we are 99 percent confident that the planet is there," Ignasi Ribas, of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia and the Institute of Space Sciences in Spain, said in a statement. This is fascinating to me, and I would like to learn even more about other life that may exist on other planets. If you would like to learn more about this, the article is linked here.

   Something else I wanted to research after this lesson was dark matter. The last link in the series of tasks brought me to Wonderopolis, which is a website where teachers and students can look up things that they have wonders about and find resources to help learn about them. While on this site, I learned that dark matter is a hypothetical type of matter that scientist believe makes up over 85% of the total matter in the universe. Wonderopolis helped me find this answer very easily, and I would use the tool again in the future to find information about my wonders.   After completing all of these activities, I think that I have figured out my method of teaching this topic to students. I absolutely would teach this in an inquiry lesson following the five E's: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. This would allow the students to explore and learn by themselves about this topic. Virgin galaxies and outer space is most certainly a topic that students are going to have questions about; so it is best to let them explore and answer those questions. Students should also make hypotheses about these questions before they explore their answers. Inquiry is one of the most fun, student-centered ways to learn, and is highly appropriate for this topic.

Teaching Earth Science!

   Yesterday, my class and I all split into groups and presented all about different kinds of earth science! There were presentations about the ocean and pollution, instruments used to measure weather, violent weather and earth's atmosphere. These presentations were all engaging and informative and provided me with a lot of new information on these topics and how to teach them to my future students one day. My group presented to the class about Pangaea and the earth's surface. You can find the link to my groups presentation here. Check it out!
   I gained a lot of new insights on teaching through exploring this topic and creating this presentation. My group and I chose to do this topic because we decided that we did not know a lot about it at all, and it would benefit us as future science educators to learn it now. We decided to focus in on Pangaea as well because Pangaea and other supercontinents that have existed throughout history shift the earth's surface. Something really interesting I learned from this presentation was that there will in fact be another supercontinent one day. A supercontinent like Pangaea forms about every 600 years. Pangaea existed about 300 years ago, meaning that we are about halfway to having another supercontinent exist. This is because the earth's plates are constantly moving and shifting; sometimes the plates shift together and sometimes they shift apart, making the land closer or farther away from each other. I did not know this before our project; I thought Pangaea was the only supercontinent that we would ever know, but that is not the case.
   I also learned all about a new technology that I can use to collect and store student answers during a lesson. It's called mentimeter. Mentimeter is an app or online program that lets the teacher ask questions in a variety of ways and get the responses in real time. It can be used as a pre-assessment, check for understanding or post-assessment during a wide array of lessons. During my groups lesson, we used mentimeter for all three! You can ask basic multiple choice questions or true or false questions, or you can do something like a word cloud, which is a much more interactive way to display the responses and collect student data. This is a great form of technology to use and is appropriate for all ages! Check out this link and see how mentimeter works and how my peers answered the questions we gave them.

Farewell Letters From the Past

Dr. Smirnova was kind enough to give us a chance to read 10 letters from students who were previously in the Science Methods course, which I'll link here. I read them at the beginning of the semester, and they were all very helpful in seeing what I was getting into with this course. While reading the letters, I noticed a few common themes at most of the students seemed to emphasize. Number one, I learned that I must be organized to succeed in this class. This is true for all classes, but especially this one. Dr. Smirnova doesn't always tell you when things are due, but that is for a reason; she wants us to be independent and responsible for completing the assignments on our own. This is kind of different than what I'm used to, but the students from the past assured me that as long as I stay organized, I'll be fine. Another thing that was emphasized in the letters was the fact that this class really prepares you to be a great teacher. That's really nice to hear because I know that even when I'm struggling with an assignment, I have to push through and do it because in the end, it'll make me a much better teacher. Even assignments that I don't necessarily agree with or struggle to figure out, I know will help me later down the line, which makes doing them much more worthwhile. The last point that a lot of past students emphasized was that Dr. Smirnova really will do anything for her students to succeed. That is something that is very valuable to me as a student; knowing that I have a teacher who is 100% in my corner and will stop at nothing to help me succeed. Halfway through the semester, I already have seen that's the truth. When my group and I stayed up late the night before our inquiry lesson, Dr. Smirnova was right there with us, face timing and calling us late at night, just to give us some extra resources or feedback. This was very beneficial to me and my group, just as these letters from the past were. These letters helped me see what I can expect for the semester, and I'm looking forward to writing one of these of my own for the students next semester!

"Scientists are Always at the Drawing Board"

   Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. In the video linked below, he is answering a couple of questions at a science convention of some sort. He talked about how 96% of the universe is still undiscovered and unknown, which is extraordinarily exciting for scientists. Because of this, scientists will absolutely never run out of things to study and learn about. But something Tyson said really caught my attention and got me thinking. He said that "scientists are always at the drawing board". He is totally right. The only thing constant about science is that it's always changing. New information is being discovered every single day by scientists all over the world. Not only that, but we are also learning everyday things that contradict what we thought we already knew about science. Science textbooks and journals are constantly rewritten and edited as we find new information, which makes it so a scientists job is never officially done. This can be frustrating, but with the right mindset is extremely exciting. We will never stop learning about science, and as Tyson said, we'll always be "at the drawing board".
   

My Inquiry Lesson!

   Two days after my direct instruction lesson, my group and I once again presented a lesson in front of a whole class. However, this lesson was a little different; it was an inquiry lesson. The difference between a direct instruction and inquiry lesson is that a direct instruction lesson is very teacher-centered, whereas inquiry lessons are much more student-centered. In our inquiry lesson, our students needed to help out an "alien visitor" that wanted to know what life was like on earth. So, the students took turns reading riddles and guessing what plant organelle each riddle represented. At the end of all of the riddles, the students had to write a letter to the alien, describing to him what they know about plant organelles. Overall, I think the lesson went well.


   The students seemed to enjoy the riddles, and guessing what organelle the riddle was talking about. They guessed and discussed the riddles together as groups, which I think helped the inquiry process. The students were much more engaged doing this process as a group rather than as individuals. I also think that the students liked the "alien visitor", especially the fact that one of my group members actually recorded an alien voice for the students! We played it before the students started their inquiry, and I think it got them even more excited to start the process. During the inquiry process, the students also created their own cells. After they guessed the right organelle, the students would take a cut out of that organelle, color it, glue it onto their piece of construction paper, and label it. My group wanted the students to have something to keep or maybe even take home with them from our lesson, and we thought this was a good way to do that. However, the students cells did not end up going the way my group and I planned.

   The students did not end up having enough time to finish their cells, which is unfortunate. However, they had the supplies to finish them on their own if they chose to do so, which my group and I were happy about. Something else that didn't go according to plan during our lesson was our review game that we wanted to play in the beginning with the students. This game would've gone over all of the organelles we went over a couple of days prior, and activated the student's prior knowledge. But, QR code for the game didn't work, so we didn't get to do the game. I think that playing the game would've definitely helped the students solve the riddles better and more quickly, because it would have went over the organelles and their functions.

   Teaching this lesson was much different than teaching the direct instruction lesson. In this lesson, the students were much more hands on, making it an entirely new challenge. However, through teaching this lesson I realized that these types of lessons are very beneficial for students. They get to be hands on, and research and learn deeply about a topic. I will absolutely use this type of lesson in my future classrooms, especially during science instruction.

My Direct Instruction Lesson!

    On September 18, my group and I had the opportunity to present a direct instruction lesson to a group of fourth-grade students. We taught them about botany and plant oragnelles. I did very well, even though there were a few things that we could've improved upon.It was nerve-racking, but overall an awesome experience that gave me a chance to teach in front of a whole class for the first time. I was a little intimidated at first because my group and I were the first ones in our class to go, and we weren't sure exactly what to expect. We prepared a lot for our lesson, but not seeing a lesson with this class beforehand worried me a little bit. However, I think my group and I did a great job, even though we had some things to improve on.
    I thought my group and I did a good job of controlling the class through a lot of the lesson. The fourth-grade class we were teaching was full of good kids who were ready to learn, but as a whole, could get pretty rowdy from time to time. My group and I did a good job handling this though, and had a few different ways to refocus the class when they were getting a little out of hand. We would clap a certain way, and then the class would clap that same way back to us. There was also a button in the classroom that we used that played a snippet of a song, which indicated to the class that they had to settle down and refocus. I thought we used these strategically and they definitely helped our lesson out. I also thought we all did a great job using appropriate teacher voices and interacting with the students. I know we were all really nervous before we presented, but I don't think that you could tell. All of my group members sounded very confident while they were presenting, which I know was not easy considering this was our first experience teaching in front of a whole class. I also thought we all did a very nice job addressing the students by name, and making sure that we got multiple student responses for each question. Although it was a direct instruction lesson and was supposed to be teacher-centered, we didn't want the students to just sit and take notes for an hour. So, we interacted with the students as much as possible. I also think that the students really enjoyed our rap at the end about plant organelles. By the second time we played it, the kids knew the words and were singing along! However, there were also a few things that I feel that my group and I could've done better.
    I thought that I could've done a better job with time management. I spent way too much time at the beginning of the lesson explaining classroom rules and basic stuff that I should've quickly covered. This led to other members of my group having to rush through their parts so that we could finish everything on time. Every second in the classroom is valuable, and can't be wasted. Next time I teach, I will definitely keep a better eye on the clock, and use classroom time appropriately. I also feel as though I could've prepared my part a little bit better, and next time definitely will do so. I thought I was prepared going into the lesson, but I wasn't as prepared as I should have been, and it won't happen again.
     Although my group and I didn't have a perfect lesson by any means, I thought that for the first group, and for the first time any of us had taught a whole class, it went very well. I learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do when teaching a whole class, and that is very valuable information for me as I continue my teaching career.

Flipgird Presentations

     One of my favorite new apps that I've discovered since beginning the Science and Technology Methods course is Flipgrid. Flipgird is a great way to post personalized videos about yourself, and show them to your students. It's also a place where you can have students submit their work for a project or an assignment, all in one place! My class and I all submitted our own flipgirds, where we answered the following four questions; what's your name and program? If you could pick any superpower, what would it be? What is something awesome you did this summer? Ask a question you want all your future students to answer. We also had to show a "secret talent" in our video. I decided to shoot a basketball as my talent, but there was a big variety of talents my classmates picked. One of them juggled, one of them was a baker, and one of them was a clarinet player. Seeing my classmates "secret talents" was my favorite part of the flipgrid presentations. It really helped me learn a little bit about each of my classmates personalities.

      After watching the flipgrid presentations in class, the presenter would get feedback on eclass from each of their peers. We would give this feedback in the form of three pluses and one wish. This means that everybody would tell the presenter three things they did well, and one thing they could have improved on. I really liked this feedback because it gave me a chance to see what I need to improve upon, but not before it told me a lot of nice, positive things about my presentation and flipgird. The main wish my classmates had for me was that I slowed down when talking, and I think that this is a fair criticism. I was a little nervous before my presentation, and I could definitely sense that I was going a little fast when I was up there This type of feedback was very beneficial, and I will definitely consider using it in my future classroom!

    Flipgrid is an overall great way for teachers to get quick, fun responses from students. And for students, flipgrid is way more interesting than your typical get to know you activity. I will absolutely find a way to fit flipgrid into my lessons occasionally, as I think they are really beneficial. If you want to check out my flipgrid or any of my classmates', take this link here to our class slideshow. On this slideshow, not only do you get to see all of our flipgrids, you also get to see a picture of us, and our drawings of scientists that we made on our first day of class. Check it out!