End of the Year

It's that time of year again- summer is almost here! There is only one week left of this science methods course and there is so much to do! There is still a final based on a plethora of things and an eFolio which is an online portfolio filled with assignments we were told to do throughout the semester...and then some. Our class had to submit things into our "moodle" program and then wait for our professor to grade them. That rarely happened. If the professor was to grade things in a timely fashion, I might have had the time to fix the assignments I did poorly on and successfully add them to my eFolio. Since this didn't happen, I have called out of work twice and skipped school just to finish the eFolio. On top of that, I have to present it. I don't see why we need to present something that isn't finished. Who knows when I'm going to get to that final...

Goodbye, students!

My science class has finally left the elementary school. There is no more teaching to be done there; fieldwork is over. It was a great experience though. I learned a lot about how to teach science as well as how to learn it. The key ingredients to teaching science are 'inquiry' and 'engagement.' When my group taught the whole class by ourselves, we used inquiry to capture their attention. We did this by asking multiple questions to get them thinking about chemical changes. We also played a video for them which was engaging. The video was a great way to engage the class because it was all about chemical changes so they got to see things explode. To their disappointment however, we didn't blow anything up. It was bitter sweet to leave them on Friday. I was going to miss the students but I left with a lot of knowledge about teaching science.