Amazing Food Detective

The Amazing Food Detective is a great interactive website. This website looks into the lives of animated children facing health problems. With each child there is a health mystery and it is your duty to review the case and help find a solution to children’s health problems. While working my way around this website, I choose three different children from the lineup. Emily was the first child I choose. She has a good diet, but eats too much. Her problem is her portion control. I helped her by reducing the amount of food she eats in one place setting. The next child I helped was Matthew. Matthew needs to build and work on his endurance. The solution to his problem is for him to workout at a faster rate. He can do this by getting his heart rate up and keeping it up for a longer period of time. The last child I worked with on this website was Enrique. Enrique needs more calcium in his diet. I decided that Enrique needs healthier bones and teeth. He needs to eat high calcium foods like milk, cheese, and orange juice. I really enjoyed playing on this website and I think my students would as well. I also like how after each case they give you options to print activities you can do without a computer! Awesome!

The Acid Test

Last week in class we performed an Acid Test lab. The purpose of this lab was to observe that acid and baking soda react with one another. We used acid from various fruits juices and fruits and tested the acid amount compared to regular vinegar. During our lab, we discovered that out of the seven different controls: lime juice, vinegar, and white grape juice rounded out the top three and reacted the most with the baking soda. We noticed that the fruit juices fizzed the most because they are more concentrated than fruit itself. It is very easy to read the results with the two graphs I created. One graph showed the acids in the juices and the other showed the acids in the fruit pieces. Creating these graphs made it easier to see the results. I came across some complications with this lab because the instructions were too vague. I found it hard to follow these directions and I would rewrite the instructions if I were to use this lab in my classroom. If I had troubles following directions with this lab I believe my students would as well. With this lab, I learned how to understand pattern, interaction and change.

Four Strands of Learning

Today in Science Methods we learned about the four learning strands of science. I think these strands will be very important to note for the rest of the semester and into my teaching career. The four strands include: understanding Scientific explanations, generating scientific evidence, reflecting scientific knowledge, and particpating productively in science. I forecast that we will be going back to these four learning strands throughout the semester so I better commit these to memory.

Nutrition

Nutrition is an important topic to cover with elementary students. I really liked the activity we did in class today(9/18) linking nutrition and the importance of eating healthy, remembering not too consume too many carbs or fat in one's daily diet. We had to fill out a worksheet about calcuating carbs and fat in different foods we eat on a regular basis. My friend Natalie and I took this a step further. We logged onto the Burger King, McDonalds, and Taco Johns nutritional websites and looked at the facts. We were blown away with the amount of calories and grams of fat there is in fast food. We all enjoy eating out from time to time, but after looking at these three websites it has changed my views about whoppers and burritos! Generally speaking I eat over 1000 calories per meal at these locations! That is just crazy!

D2L

2nd blog! During class on 9/8 we cleared up some confusion about D2L and other assingments. I would have to agree with a majority of the class that D2L is hard to navigate around. I know that as I become more and more familiar and comfortable with D2L I will enjoy using it. I thought that WebCT was a great resource. Using D2L is great for students and teachers alike because it gives us the opportunity to have content, quizzes, and other resources all on one page. Having all the course materials in one location is very convenient and I'm looking forward to working with and learning more about D2L through this course.

First day of blogging!

Yes, I was finally able to log on and blog for the first time today! With my first blog I would like to comment on K-8 Science Methods and what I expect out of this class to help prepare me for teaching on my own. I am hoping to get alot out of this class over the course of the semester. My main goal for this class is to learn how to teach science effectively to my students. I believe that one way to teach science effectively is to create a good science enviornment and I belive incorportating labs I also would like to learn a bunch of different fun labs elementary students would enjoy. It sounds like we are going to be doing hands-on activities and labs each time we meet as a class so I should be able to keep the labs and refer back to them in the future.