Week 5 Post

1. If I’m being honest, the statistics that Dr. Roberts did not surprise me. I am not much older than that generation in the study (especially taking into account that the study was done in 2009), so I am familiar with how people in that generation interact with the media. There are very few moments of life that are not somehow involved with the media. I think that the most relevant part of his presentation was when he broke down the age groups and their media use. It was useful to see exactly how the 8-10 year olds that I will be working with interact with media. I still have questions about how his data varies based on socio-economic status. I would also be interested to know what the implications for education were. He touched on how this study affects the classroom, but I would like to hear more about it.
2. First of all, being a teacher, this article does frighten me a little bit. Not only for my own job security, but also because I believe online education for students previous to college is detrimental for their education. One of the main things that teachers do is individualize instruction and differentiate based on individual students’ needs. Online education simply can’t do that. Online education is one-size-fits-all because the teacher doesn’t know their students. This is especially important in elementary education. However, I can’t really see online elementary education becoming a real thing. I think it is something that is more geared to high school students. One thing that the article pointed out is that many students taking online courses emailed their teacher when they didn’t understand something or needed help. That is great, but I have to imagine that those are the motivate students who are seeking help. Unmotivated students are not likely to do that, and the teacher is less likely to seek them out because the teacher doesn’t know them. In addition, online courses really encourage cheating and slacking. I know this because I took an undergrad course online, and I didn’t work as hard as I would have in a real class, simply because I didn’t have to. The students might pass the class, but are they learning? That is really the most important part of education!
3. Glogster.com- I had never heard of this website before, and I spent quite a bit of time exploring it. I think it is really cool how you can make your own online posters that are educational and fun. I could see myself using this technology in my classroom both as a presentation tool, and giving it to students to have them make their own presentations as part of a research project.

Quizlet.com- This is a great website as well. I like that it’s free, and it is super easy to use. It would be a great resource to use before a big unit test in the classroom, because you can project your own flashcards onto the board. It’s also a great way to encourage independent studying in my students, because this is a tool that they can use on their own to study.

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com- I knew that there were ways online to make your own puzzles online, but this one is much better than the ones I usually use, in terms of how easy it is. These could be used for almost any occasion. The math puzzles would be great brainteasers, any puzzle could be good for early finishers, and I could also design puzzles based on units and use them as an introduction to the unit.

Tubechop.com- This is a really interesting website. Sometimes I want to show a youtube video in class, but I hesitate because the comments are inappropriate, the ads are annoying, and you never know what links will pop up when the video is over. I had no idea that sites like this existed, and I have a feeling I will be using them fairly often. 

Week of July 17th Blog Assignment

A topic that I will commonly be teaching in the future (assuming that I stay in the 5^th grade) will be earth science weather concepts. There are several resources outside of the science content area that can help me teach these concepts to enable students to understand it better.

The first resource that I found is a book of children’s poetry on the topic of earth science. This book is called Earthshake, written by Lisa Westberg Peters. You can look at some of the book at this link: http://browseinside.harpercollinschildrens.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060292652. Not all of the poems in this book talk about weather, but a lot of them do. For example, one poem talks about the wind current patterns on earth. I would use this resource as a supplement to the curriculum after I have taught the basic weather concepts that the poems talk about. I would have students read the poetry about weather, to provide them with another delivery of the information. I would also have students write their own earthshake-inspired science poetry about the topics we are learning about. I could use this book to teach a series of interdisciplinary English-Science lessons.

Another resource I could use is the USA today Weather and Atmospheric science history archive online, at this link: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/whistory.htm. This resource has huge lists of historical weather events. You can use this website to look up the worst Atlantic storms since the 1400’s, all of the recorded US hurricanes since 1900, the history of US floods and droughts, and much more. Since 5^th grade social studies covers American History, I could tie the science curriculum in with US History through this website. Students could find out what the weather was like during major historical events, and speculate on how the weather might have affected those events. Students could also draw weather maps of historical events based on what they learn on this site and what they know about how weather works.

As a multiple subject teacher, I believe that interdisciplinary teaching is incredibly valuable and doable. I think that when the knowledge that students are learning ties in with many different subjects, they are more likely to see the value in it. In addition, when students are being taught content in several subjects and in different ways, every student is more likely to learn and retain the knowledge. Since I will teach my students every subject, I can weave common themes throughout the whole day, and in thematic units. Obviously, there are some subjects that link together better than others, such as science and math, and language arts and history, but it is possible to teach all subjects in a cross-curricular manner. I suppose a challenge of doing this is that it requires teacher to think outside the box of the prescribed curriculum and textbooks they are given. However, I believe that good teachers see this as an exciting and positive challenge, rather than a negative and impossible task.

Commented: Eddie Izumizaki
Read: Ashley Dever and Betsy Varellas

Mind The Gap (session 2)

1.  “Good schools under private management would proliferate, while bad schools would be closed down by market forces (the exit of disgruntled parents) or by a watchful government.” (pg 10)

As a theory, this idea works fine, just as it does in the business world. However, once you think about the fact that these are schools, and not businesses, the idea falls apart. When schools are closed, what happens to those students? Do they go to another school, and over-crowd that school? The most important thing to anyone involved in education should be the students, and closing a school in the middle of the year does not benefit students. 

“I began seeing like a state, looking at school and teachers and students from an altitude of 20,000 feet and seeing them as objects to be moved around by big ideas and great plans.” (pg 10)

This quote is similar to the one above, and I have the same problem with it. I don’t like the idea of looking at schools, students and teachers as objects. When you look at the “big picture”, it is inevitable that individual students will get lost in that shuffle.

2.  On pg. 16 Ravitch says that a well-educated person has a well-furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, arts and politics, and has learned how to explain ideas and listen respectfully to others. I agree with her definition. I would also like to add that a well-educated person can express their thoughts in writing, and can respond to things that they learn in a rational matter. For example, I believe a well-educated person can read a book, form an opinion about what they read based on their background knowledge, and then relate that opinion clearly to others. Lastly, I believe that a well-educated person has a strong moral compass, and can use their knowledge in the real world outside of school. 

3. What stands out for me from the class discussion was the debate about charter schools. I didn’t think that that was going to be a topic that would spark so much debate among our class. I have always been slightly against charter schools, and I had read ahead in the book to the chapter where Ravich talks about charter schools before our discussion, which cemented my ideas on the topic. I don’t think that charter schools are a good idea, because they act like private schools but take public money, which isn’t fair to public schools. However, during the discussion, some of the points that were brought up surprised me, because they were things that I hadn’t thought about. These points didn’t change my mind, but it was very interesting to hear different perspectives.

 During the discussion, I would have liked to talk more about the pros and cons of using a business model to organize and reform schools. I thought the topic was intriguing, and the class was bringing up some good points. I would have liked to contribute more to that discussion.

4. One of the gaps that I found in my subject area knowledge was a 5^th grade earth science standard stating that students should be able to read a weather map and use them to predict the weather. I have no idea how to do this, even though I do remember learning about it in one of my undergraduate classes. I believe all I need is a refresher to bring that knowledge back. I found three sources that I believe would help me deepen my content knowledge in this area.

Book: Weather Map Handbook, by Tim Vasquez

Journal Article: Interpreting Weather Maps, by Smith, P. Sean, Ford, Brent A. In: Science Activities

Website: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wmapread.htm, Webstite title: Reading Weather Maps

I decided to explore the website more thoroughly than the other two resources. The website lists the symbols that are often found on weather maps and what they represent, including high and low pressure areas, cold and warm fronts, ect. For each symbol, the website also goes in depth about what each symbol predicts and how it will affect the weather. For example, low pressure systems predict storms, precipitation and cloudy weather while high pressure systems predict sunny weather. In addition, the website has information about how weather is predicted using weather satellites and radars. After spending some time exploring this website, I feel more confident in my content area knowledge of this subject.

5. 

Space Moves: Adding Movements to Solar System Lessons, by Deborah Jenkins and Brent Heidorn

This article describes ways to make lessons about the solar systems active. It includes miming what actions would look like on other planets and competing in a “space Olympics”, where students calculate the height of their jumps, ect, on different planets using the gravitational force of that planet. This article might be more geared toward pedagogy than content (oops) but I still think it’s really useful, and it does contain some really good content information, such as a table on the gravitational forces of each planet. I like this article, not only because it gives some ideas for a specific unit, but also because it inspires ideas for ways to make other science lessons active. I had thought about making science lessons hands on, but I hadn’t thought about actually making them active and having the students move around. I would be very interested now in looking for more sources that follow this topic and make science lessons active. I think that this author was convincing to me because he herself is a teacher, and has done these lessons many times with her own class. I always trust actual educators who write about their own classrooms more than theoretical research. I would seek this author out for other things that she has written. 

Seizing Up the Solar System, by Heidi Wiebke, Meredith Park Rodgers, and Vanashiri Nargund-Joshi

This article was particularly interesting to me because I had never thought about the accuracy of solar system models before. I always assumed that the models in books and online were accurate. However, this article brings up the point that many of these models are not accurately scaled, especially in the distance between planets. The author also points out how important it is for students to truly understand the scale of the planets and grasp the magnitude of our solar system. I liked that this article gave specific and concrete ways for students to investigate the true scale of the planets, and question the scale models they might see in their science books. However, I don’t think I would seek out any other articles written by this author. The topic doesn’t interest me enough for me to want to read more in depth about it. 

Question for Joan: I've been looking up both content and pedagogical articles. Is that ok, or should I shy away from the pedagogy for now?

Blogs I've responded to:

Eddie Izumizaki
Ashley Dever
Marcella Place

Updated Topic & Guiding Questions

After several weeks of changing my mind back and forth, I think I finally have a topic that I would like to pursue in this program.

I would like to develop a curriculum unit for the 5th grade Science Standard set 4: Earth Sciences (Weather). I chose this topic because it contains content information that can be difficult to grasp for anyone, including adults, and I have experienced the difficulty that many 5th graders have with this subject. In addition, it is possible but difficult to make this topic hands on, and I am interested in researching ways that this can be done. Here are my guiding questions for this topic:

-How can the 5th Grade Weather standards be made accessible, understandable, and hands-on to students?
-How can this content be taught across the curriculum?
-How can curriculum for this topic be designed to interest students who are not typically interested in science?
-What are the specific concepts in this unit of study that are difficult for students at this developmental level to grasp?
-What are some affordable and local field trips that are related to this topic?