A thematic unit of study in science can be an amazing unit to teach, when you included other content areas of study in that unit. As you teach a thematic unit, technology can be a great asset for schools that do not have the access to buy products for teacher to do different activities. Therefore, technology can help teachers and students to experience more activities and lessons. When a unit is created many supplies and handouts are always needed. As a teacher you need to go through the information you obtain to teach the unit to make sure it is what you want your student to learn. As the unit is create a teacher needs to relate the unit to the science standards for their state. Differentiated instructions should be used depending on the students in your class and levels of the students learning ability. Clearly, teaching a thematic unit is beneficial for the students and using cross curriculum disciplinary helps you to have the time to teach several things at one time.
During, the observation the teacher’s science lesson was amazing with the different units of studies that the teacher added to this unit. The teacher did a thematic unit on the state of Arizona because of Arizona’s celebrating it entrance to statehood on February 14. The school that the teacher works for does an Arizona Enrichment day with different activities. This unit that the teacher taught gave the students an introduction to what they would be learning on Thursday for their Enrichment activity along with learning science at the same time. I thought this was very creative. The teacher incorporated very little technology in this lesson, she had math, reading, social studies, and writing in this lesson on living and nonliving things in Arizna0. For th...
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...into a PDF to show as a slide show as I read the story to the students because the pictures in the book were great for the student to look at showing the different parts of Arizona. I believe this would help the students become more involved because it would be easier for them to see the pictures if they were on a larger scale. All in all, this was a fun lesson to observe and learn from watching the teacher incorporate all the other aspects into.
Reference
Kirschner, Angela & William (April 2010). Marshall Explores Arizona. Surprise,
Arizona. Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publications.
Teachers. (n.d.). Marshall Explores Arizona. Retrieved February 9, 2014, from http://kirschnerbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=64.
"The Science Standard Articulated by Grade Level." K12 Academic Standards. N.p., n.d.
Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
How does this relate to how you see yourself as a teacher? I appreciated how the teacher was spontaneous in reading to the children. For example, in the story Otis makes a noise putt puff putted chuff and she asked the students to mimic the noise that Otis made. I think that by being spontaneous and being sensitive to the environment and atmosphere learning will be fun and more memorable for the children.
...ing at the book together as a class, the teacher could have students come up with their own words to the illustrations. This will teach children how to look at the illustrations and develop word associations. This book also teaches about friendship. Another good idea is have students create their own story through illustrations about friendship. This book is ideal for non-readers who are just beginning to show interest in reading books. They can read this story on their own without help from an adult. It could also be used for older readers who are working on building their skills in written expression. With this picture book, teachers can introduce the concept of helping students deal with disappointments in order to gain solving problem strategies for dealing with sadness, loss, and disappointment. This shows them that things usually turn out all right in the end.
...thods, as both approaches could be used in conjunctival. The mixture of thematic teaching and disciplinary teaching would enable the successful delivery of the core National curriculum subjects. Not only does theme- based units helps support the learning across many areas of the curriculum, but it enables children to find and make connections with subjects and between subjects. This idea of teaching suggests that skills, knowledge and experiences could be made transferable and the notion of continuity of learning within the school and children's wider life experiences outside school. Very often, the thematic approach tends to lie on children's interests which then in turn branches out like the ripples from the stone thrown in the water. Cross-curricular learning is a creative approach which allows the flexibility for both teachers and children to become creative.
After I finished my observation I learned lot things I hadn’t realized by how they interacted with each other. I've been around children before but never analyzed their behavior or explained it using psychology. I have a newfound appreciation and sympathy for elementary school teachers, the kids still have a lot of cognitive developments growth to do and it takes a benevolent person to do such a work. Overall I found the experience fascinating and enlightening.
Day 2: The teacher will begin the instruction period with a short review of the previous day’s lesson. The review will be student centered, with the teacher asking students, “What were some important points from yesterday’s lesson?” “Who were some of the key oilmen of Oklahoma?” “Why was Tulsa called the Oil Capital of the World?” “What is the largest oil reserve in the Southwestern part of Oklahoma called?”
Technology enables students and teachers to have a fast and easy way to acquire unlimited access to tons of information. With all of the useful technologies, the curriculum is bound to change in endless ways, creating more opportunity for learning.
The curriculum focused on skills and objectives from several sources. The first are the Technology Applications Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for middle school (Texas Education Agency, 2009). Secondly, the curriculum integrates concepts from the Framework for 21st Century Skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2004). Also included are learner objectives from the National Educational Technology Standards by the International Society for Technology Education (2007). Finally, the TEKS for middle school social studies (1998) have been integrated into the sample unit of study.
I really enjoyed this weeks science investigation about shadows and light. In my experience, this science work doesn’t look like the science courses I have taken in my K-14 education. Generally, my science courses were focused more on memorization rather than exploration. In my elementary science class, I remember memorizing science concepts, looking up words in the glossary, writing reports, and reading and answering questions from the book. Also, we had science magazines, where we had to read the articles and fill out the answers. In my experience, I found that most of the students in my class simply skimmed for the answers at the end instead of reading the whole article. I think that these science magazines would have been more useful if my teachers discussed the article in detail rather than just the answers at the end of each article. As a child, I thought of science as a boring and difficult subject. My teachers would rarely take the time needed to make sure that I understand the concepts, and as a result I believed that I was not good at science. My bad experiences with scienc...
I have ensured that I meet my students’ science needs by assuring that the material needed to be cover in the class was covered. Furthermost, the students are able to learn from exploring, which is different from teaching the students how to and giving them the information needed. The students were still able to learn the material needed to be covered by discovering the content.
As a teacher understanding the student progress can determine whether or not the student is doing well in a class. In addition, based on what the results are, teachers can change their teaching methods or review over what the student is missing in their work. By examining and analyzing Haley work I will be able to see the development of her writing, word choice, content information, and drawings.
This class has opened my mind to the incredible impact that STEM Education can have on our society. I do not work in an institution that has a STEM program. I work at a preschool; this makes my practice of any type of STEM program extremely limited. However, it is a private school. All my students come from households where one or both of their parents are professionals. These professionals want their children to be academically prepared for school. This means we must academically, mentally, and emotionally prepare them for their future schooling. I teach my students how to be a functioning participant in a classroom while exploring mathematics, science, art, history, literature and pre-writing. Puzzles, counting, shapes, measuring, etc. are on the daily agenda. Science is a huge part of our curriculum. Science in the
First, I thought it was nice that the teacher started off by referring to the students as meteorologists. It was a great introduction of vocab and put the students in the proper mindset. During the science lesson, I thought that it was good thing that each of the students were given a copy of the textbook. The students could follow along and look at the great pictures while the teacher read. The students were extremely polite and attentive. I also thought it was effective that the teacher didn’t focus solely on the textbook, she had the students make real observations right from their classroom window. This clearly deepened the students understanding of the connection between the sky and weather. It also allowed students to reflect on other times that they have noticed a connections between the sky and weather in the past. At a few points in the lesson the students got a bit loud and off topic. When this happened, the teacher would simply have the student move a card. It seemed to be very effective. The behavior system in the classroom is having students move cards based on their behavior. The teacher also had a bucket of prizes for “good” behavior displayed by the
The teachers were giving the students positive reinforcement throughout the day. In class we talked about how positive reinforcement helps the students to succeed in their classes. Another ah-ha moment was the environment of the classroom. The classroom had no windows at all. In class we talked about what kinds of things are distracting to students with ASD in classrooms and one of those things are the windows in classrooms. The third ah-ha moment was the parent sheets that the teacher and the school provide for the parents. In class we talked about how parent involvement is very important for the students with disabilities. The teacher fills out the parent involvement paper that lets the parents know how the child did in school this week and what their child needs to improve on. The students must give their paper to their parents to look at when they get home. The things that I had learned during my observation experience that I will use in the future for my classroom will be including student learning objectives in the classroom, using positive reinforcement, and get the parents more involved in their child’s education. I will go over with the students what the student learning objectives are in the beginning of class so the students will know what they will be doing and what they will be learning throughout the day. I also will use positive
Evidence from both educational journals and personal interviews suggest several different possible approaches to successful science integration. Many of the lesson plans dealt with integrating science with technology or with mathematics. For example, a fifth-grade teacher had his class record weather observations for an entire year and then used their data to teach graphing concepts including bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, as well as concepts such as mean and mode (Chia, 1998).
It is important that I stay on the right track with the framework for the 21st century learning process. My lesson plan relies on this learning process. “A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future” (P21, n.d., para.7). While this project and lesson is made for students to have fun with learning, it also has a way in teaching them life lessons. This is what education is all about.