Standards

I really like what we read in Ready, Set, Science! and the Inquiry PDF this weekend.  I also liked our discussion about it and one thing in particular stood out to me: Standards aren't what make students learn or not learn: teachers do that.  It is up to me as a teacher to make sure my students are learning and progressing, even if that means more work for me, and even if that means I will have more things to do it should be worth it if it means kids are learning.

Honestly, I don't really have a problem with Common Core...I kind of like it!  

Before you hate me and come up with all the reasons why you believe Common Core sucks, just hear me out!  I know teachers who like it as well.  Because there are teachers out there who see Common Core for what it was meant to be; a way to make learning more efficient for a child starting in Kindergarten and going through 12th grade.  Common Core is so hard for teachers and students currently because they're in the middle.  They have already learned all the "shortcuts" and easy ways to memorize facts so they can test well, and move on to cover more topics; Common Core has them learning basic theories and elements in Kindergarten--like algebraic thinking--so that when they get to 9th grade Algebra, they are truly extending and building on their prior knowledge, not learning a whole a new idea.

I did a lot of reading up on Common Core because the fact is, I will probably be teaching it.  I think if we stick with Common Core for 12 years, to see the kids who started with it graduate, and see their achievement levels and how well it worked for them, we will see that standards such as these can have a huge benefit!  I know that this system isn't perfect, but I think the good far outweighs the bad!  I think if we stick with it, and actually TRY to make it work, we will see how good it can really be once it is perfected!

I have included a few article links below that I read and that have really helped me understand more and get more on board with the standards train.  I am excited to see how I teach with common core, and if nothing else, my positive attitude about it will be the thing that makes it a success in my classroom!

National Education Association News

Common Core Blog

Teach Hub

Plant Food

So what do plants eat?

If I was a child in school my answers would probably be something like--dirt, water, Miracle-Gro. Plants live in the dirt, and they need sun and water to grow, so it makes sense that I child would think that is what their food comes from.

In actuality, plants make their own food. They need several things to make their own food (including light, water, and nutrients) and it is very important to us that plants grow! Everything in the world depends on these little plants! We eat them, the animals we eat eat them, and we breathe in the oxygen they emit.

I knew this...obviously, I lean red it as a child. But that didn't stop me from answering it incorrectly on the quiz. :( I guess all those Miracle-Gro commercials got to me, because it made perfect sense to me that the plants would need those extra vitamins and nutrients to grow big and strong.

Media is one of the ways science misconceptions get spread, so knowing now, I can be more aware in the future and can better educate my kids on what is true and what's not!

The Ocean Floor

There are a lot of diverse and interesting places in this world, and I will go out on a limb and say the ocean floor may be one of THE most diverse and interesting! There are mountains (the tallest on earth), there are trenches which form the deepest valleys on earth, there are volcanoes, earthquakes, and plateaus. On the ocean floor there are crustaceans, plant life, rocks, sediments, fire, and all sorts of interesting things that can't be found anywhere else!

I think the ocean floor would be a great lesson to do with students. They can study the diverseness that is the ocean floor and how the environment at the deepest depths only lends life to a few creatures.  What a great way to teach children about pressure and how that affects life down there.

"At the deepest point of the trench (and the deepest point on earth) the pressure is over 8 tons per square inch, or the equivalent of an average-sized woman holding up 48 jumbo jets."

Wow...I'm just saying, if you wanted to find a unit that could be used over and over again and bring in all kinds of subjects and really lend itself to creative liberties...you have it in a study of the ocean floor!

What I Learned Today

I already have so many ideas on what I want to do in my classroom, and the reading we spoke about today in class just reinforced all of the things I have been learning and that they are positive things to do!

One of the things we talked about that I completely agree with and did all the time while I was teaching preschool, was the idea that every child can take control of their learning and make choices that can either positively or negatively effect their success.  I think it is very important for students to understand how well they do is completely up to them! THEY decide whether they will work hard and do the work or if they would rather not do it and do poorly.

Another thing we talked about was how children are born curious, and will naturally take the roles of scientists.  What a blessing! Children love to learn about new things whether they know it or not! For me personally, that means when I am teaching science lessons in school, part of my job is built in! My main responsibility is to encourage and empower them in their inquiry--to make sure they have not only opportunities to express that, but plenty of stimulation to build that up and strengthen it.

I am so ready to make science fun, to have hands on experiments and lessons that make the children feel confident in their abilities to be little scientists! Science really can be fun, and I am thankful for readings like today's that enable me to build on my knowledge and prepare to make learning a reading experience for everyone involved!

How Children Learn

Okay, so I will be the first one to admit that there are days when having my own classroom seem intimidating and waaayy overwhelming!  I can't see myself doing it, I just know it will be way too hard, and generally I talk myself out of it.  However, reason takes over before long and I am back to what I know, which is that teaching is my calling, my passion, and what God put me on this Earth to do.

I bring this up, not just to talk about my fears and insecurities, but to bring up an important point that teaching is hard! There hardly seem enough hours in the day to teach kids everything they are supposed to know by the end of the year.  the more I think about it, the more I can see what so many teachers "lecture" in the traditional way we have all come to hate...it requires very little preparation on the teacher's part, you know the kids will at least "hear" all the information they are supposed to know, and you can't possibly mess it up because it is straight from the book! WRONG!

No matter how time-consuming and difficult the work may be, I hope I will always be the kind of teacher who has a passion for teaching and children and a desire to see them enjoy learning! I know that days will come when it will be emotionally, physically and mentally exhausting to do activities and hands on learning experiences for the students, but letting them learn and giving them time to understand and really excel is a thousand times worth the temporary tiredness I will feel.

I am so excited to start teaching, and I really want to encourage all of my fellow pre-service teachers as we stuff ourselves full of information and become overwhelmed at the responsibility we will have soon, that our job is worth it.  And being the kind of teacher our students will remember for years down the road, and measure all their other teachers by, will be payment enough!

Our Oceans are in Trouble!

All the things we have been learning about water pollution made me want to do some digging about how pollution is affecting us on the larger scale. I have a friend who still lives in the Marshall Islands, and she has made it her personal mission to educate everyone about the harm pollution does to our oceans.  Now this is a big concern for me because the highest point in the Marshall Islands is only 6 feet above sea level. All it takes is a rise in the ocean level by a couple inches, and my islands could be in real trouble!

My friend, Carrie, recently posted an article to her Facebook page that explains how troublesome our oceans' condition has really become! Trash that starts on the side of the road can eventually end up in the middle of the ocean, and once it gets there and starts to change the ocean's ecosystem, the damage can be irreversible.  It seems hard to imagine that in Murfreesboro, TN, hundreds of miles away from any ocean, our trash can have an impact on them and that the oceans' overall "health" would be even an issue. But if the ocean's health changes, our entire world changes.

I don't want to beat anyone over the head with this topic so I'll just leave you with a quote from the article, and encourage you to read it and see how you can make a change.  We are already so deep into this, but if everyone took small steps to reduce their waste, we could see the change begin to happen!

"If we are doubling what we are putting into the ocean on a ten-year basis, there's no way to keep up," says Chris Wilcox, an ecologist at CSIRO. "It would be as if you were vacuuming your living room, and I'm standing at the doorway with a bag of dust and a fan. You can constantly keep vacuuming, but you could never catch up."

Quiz

Well...I took the quiz and am feeling not too smart right now! I got a 13/25. As I started reading through the answers though, I realized that my score doesn't have a lot to do with being intelligent, it's just simple misconceptions I had about science! There are a lot of things I was told as a child, the main one I remember is that when your foot falls asleep it is because the blood flow is blocked--apparently that is not true! I am not sure who told me that, but it stuck with me! I'm glad I am learning more about misconceptions I had while learning because it will help me correct them and make sure my students don't have those same misconceptions!