Week 1 SCED 330 and EDUC 410

Well this is my first blog for the semester. I did blogs last semester for my Social Studies methods class, but I did not do very well with them, in my opinion. These blogs are really hard for me, it is always hard for me to cover everything from the rubric that I am supposed to. I am hoping that I can get better at it this semester. This semester I am taking Math Methods, Science Methods, and EDUC 410 which is an integration and assessment class. These blogs are for Science methods, and EDUC 410. This was my first week of classes, so far I am optimistic about them. Math and science are both my favorite subjects and I am looking forward to these classes. Most of this week has been introducing class, orientations to the courses, and pre tests. So mostly I have just learned how the classes work and their expectations. I was surprised about my confidence on the 410 pre-test, I felt confident in my answers for most of the questions before the course has even really started. In Science class, we did an experiment with tin foil boats, trying to see what designs worked the best by seeing how many pennies they could hold before they sank. I enjoyed it a lot, and was pretty proud of our boat designs as they held up a large number of pennies. This experiment provided a great beginning to class. My biggest struggle this week has been getting myself to do the assignments, I am still in the summer mode and it has been hard to get myself back in the zone. Because of this my action steps for this next week is to work on focusing on these assignments and scheduling out times to do them where nothing else distracts me and I have to do them. My job at the after school program at the local elementary starts next week too. I am looking forward to it but I am also worried about it because of the changes that it is going through and how that will pair with my classes this semester, as well as next semester. This week and next week are the beginnings of the new semester and I will be learning a lot of how they will work and how that will set up the rest of my semester.

Side note: One of the most popular science phenomenons that happened this week was the Solar Eclipse. I viewed this from an area that had about a 98% coverage and I thought I would share a couple of my pictures.

Outside Learning/Twitter:

I thought that this was a profound idea. It is a very strong point, what if students and teachers viewed their work through this lens of not stopping until they were proud? Don’t just stop when you think that it satisfies the requirement, or is “good enough”. Stop when YOU are proud, because that will be your best work, and it will mean the most to you.

I just thought that this was a good thought. This is really how everyone should look at people, especially teachers of their students. I mean this is the whole point. All students have their particular strengths and weaknesses, and what makes them who they are. Every student is different and we need to see that they are the best them.

This is a link to an article where a teacher discusses how she learned how important and effective formative assessment tools were. She included a list of good tools that could be used in the midst of a lesson, and help show how the students are understanding and getting the lesson being taught as it goes. This way the teacher can see when he/she is on the right track or when he/she needs to change it up as the students either get it or are having trouble. I already use Plickers and Socrative which were both included in the list and I absolutely love them.