10/28

10/28
Let’s continue our lesson plan presentations! Yeah! We had a little difficulty getting started today because Dr. E’s computer and overhead did not want to work properly. It took us a half an hour to get booted and squared away, but the wait was well worth it because we got to see and hear more excellent lesson plans. I was hoping that Natalie and I would get to present ours today, but with the mishaps at the beginning of class I guess we have to wait until Thursday. I think our class is so talented! We have had so many great lesson plans and presentations it makes me really excited to get out in the field and teach!! Whoo Hoo!

10/23

10/23
Today in class we started our lesson plan presentations! I was really excited to come to class today because I always enjoy hearing and listening to other group’s lessons. We have presented lesson plans in other classes and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I think presenting lessons in front of the class is way better than just handing our lessons into the teacher. This way all our classmates are able to listen to new ideas and maybe use them in the future. Some of the highlights from today were the mixture presentations done by Becca and Catie and also Brooke and Megan. During these presentations we got to physically mix together different mixtures. It was neat to see that oil and water don’t mix ! Even though I already knew this it was great to enforce it! During class today, we didn’t get through very many presentations so we are going to have to continue Tuesday of next week! Can’t wait to present ours!!!

10/21

We started off today's class period finalizing and asking more questions about our midterm lessons and presentations. Dr. E made it clear that we must include every component on our grading rubrics to ensure the best grade possible Also in class we all wrote down our tshirt sizes for the upcoming science fair judging experience on Novemeber 25th. I was unsure if I needed to sign up for a tshirt because I will not be able to attend the science fair. I decided that even though I will not be able to attend the fair I am still going to purchase the tshirt. The tshirts that we picked out sound super cute. They are going to be teal with white lettering and they are going to say, "USD Literacy Team!" I can always use more tshirts!! They are so comfy and lightweight!
After discussion about our midterms we moved onto talk about chapter 5 and 6. We briefly covered the chapters and then moved on to our activity for the day. Our activity was called, " The Leaping Egg". This activity was fun. It was very easy and simple to follow. We concluded from our experiement that the force of the air out of our mouths made the ping pong ball jump out of the first glass. We noted that the stronger the air force the further the ball moved. We also concluded that it depends on where you blow on the ball. If you blow on top compared on the bottom the ping pong ball with travel at different distances.

10/16

Today in class we did an activity on Internet safety. To introduce the activity Dr. E handed out an internet safety worksheet that we all filled out. The worksheet covered topics including what we should and shouldn’t do when we are using and surfing the internet. It is important to remember to never agree to meet someone you meet in a chat room or online in general. Also NEVER USE CAPITAL LETTERS WHEN WRITING ON THE INTERNET OR IN EMAIL. It can get to be very annoying! As you can tell from the sentence above it gets to be too much to handle when you write in all caps! The next activity we did in class was to color in the safety stars and write down three important safety tips. I wrote down bullies, emergency, and animal safety. I visited all three of these websites and read the important safety tips each link had to offer! Kids would love this activity!

10/14

Midterm Projects

It’s that time again for a midterm project! On Tuesday the 14th in class we discussed more about our midterm lesson plans. Dr. E was able to get us all on the same page about what is due and what should be included in our presentations. Natalie and I are working on our lesson plan and should be set to go next week! We are really excited about our lesson plan for 1st graders about light sources and shadows! Wish us luck J

Cyberbee

The interactive website Cyberbee is a great resource for teachers. I logged onto this site and clicked around on all the different links and hyperlinks. The link on treasure hunts was by far the coolest one. In order to complete the web treasure hunt you had to use the different websites listed to discover more awesome websites. The first internet hunt I clicked on had you answer questions. The questions were not questions that you would normally know off the top of your head so in order to find the answers you had to use the hints they provided and work your way around the internet to find the answers. I completed the hunt and got the score of a CYBERNUT! I must know my way around the internet! J As for the classroom, the students would get a kick out of internet hunts! You could get the students really interested and have them race to see who can find all the answers the fastest!

Web Seminar

-The National Science Digital Library presented Dr. Cathy Ezrailson and Dr. Susana Deustua in a very interesting web seminar covering astronomy and star formation. The two presenters were very excited to get started and to share their hard work and dedication to the seminar. It was evident that Dr. Ezrailson has conducted a web seminar before. As for Dr. Denustua, it took her a little bit to get warmed up to the presentation, but both did such a great job! The content of this seminar has helped me establish more background knowledge about star formations. I feel by watching and listening to this seminar, I have added to my prior knowledge and built upon what I already knew about stars, astronomy, and star formations. The two professors researched and conducted this web seminar were fantastic. They created such a relaxed and causal atmosphere for the participants. Even though this was an informal presentation, I thought it was such a neat set up. I thought it was really neat that students, colleagues, and other guests could log on and interact with each other and the presenters. Not only were there students and participants from South Dakota, but from nearly ten other states. My favorite part about the presentation was the interaction. As a participant in the web seminar you were asked to answer questions and voice opinions. I thought the live interaction between presenters and participants was so cool! The way technology can connect people is so incredible! I thought overall this was a great learning experience.

Mystery Box

What a fun activity this was! We pretended to be detectives and solve the mystery of what was in the boxes. Our professor passed around four black closed boxes to each group and asked us to find out what was going on in the box. Each box was sealed close so we couldn’t peak inside. Each box was the same shape and same color. I guess my group didn’t pay close enough attention to the directions because we guessed what was in the mystery boxes. We each started with our own closed boxes and tried to guess what was in the inside. The hard part about this activity is that all the boxes seemed to have the same item inside. If we would have listened a little more carefully we would have known that each box had the same item. We also discovered that each box had different barriers on the inside. This threw our group off track because we thought that each box had a marble inside of it and indeed each box did, but each box also had different sizes and shapes of cardboard put inside of them causing the marble to move in different directions inside the box. Once we knew about the cardboard pieces inside the boxes we tried this activity again and drew pictures of where we though the cardboard was inside the boxes. We were right about three of them and missed the location of the cardboard on one of them. I really enjoyed this activity because I’m so use to being able to open things and look at them if I want to. This activity made me think outside of my comfort zone and use my listening skills to be able to locate the cardboard inside the boxes. Dr. E also posted a link to a really neat website dealing with the same type of activity! Check it out!

No Class Sept. 30th

On September 30th we were all excused from class because our professor had prior religious obligations to she had to attend. Instead of meeting face to face for class, we had an alternative assignment online. Our assignment online was to complete a reading guide for chapter three and four. On this reading guide there were nine in-depth questions over the chapter readings. The questions included in this reading guide were not yes or no questions, but were more like short essay questions. I thought this assignment was very time consuming and somewhat difficult. I spend almost three hours on this assignment. I first read the chapters then completed the questions. I wanted to make sure that I answered each question to my best ability since our professor, Dr. E, looks for specific connections from the reading. Looking back on this online assignment I much rather would have gone to class. It seems as though we get more homework when we don’t meet face to face then if we do meet as a whole class. I really enjoy going to class and interacting with my peers. I also enjoy doing the different lab activities and discussing different scientific topics with my professor and class. When we have online assignments I stare at a computer screen and don’t interact with anyone.