The Grand Finale

This course has given me so much in such a short amount of time. I will take the lessons and knowledge of science from this course and apply it to my own teaching of science in the future. I learned so many skills in this class like how to use a SmartBoard and how to create my own Prezi. I have learned that it is crucial as a teacher to pre-assess at the beginning of a lesson or unit, assess while doing the lesson, and assess once the lesson or unit is done.Or Diagnostic, Formative, and Summative assessment. It is important that we as teachers engage our students in the lessons that we lead them through. 


My knowledge of science has been contributed too by various activities that we have completed this semester. I will such activities like Jigsaw, Science Circus, Balloon Activity, and Float and Sink in my classroom when I am a teacher because these activities helped me to learn about science in a hands-on way. These activities just reignited the passion and zeal that I have for science, and I look forward to creating more science lessons for my students in the future. I really enjoyed reading our textbook  Science Stories, by Janice Koch. I have learned so much through this book especially from the different Science Stories in each of the chapters. I want to integrate the science stories into my classroom when talking about the different units of science and make them my own. My favorite science story was An Edible Solar System in which Mr. Johnston and his students created the planets using different fruits and vegetables, using a pumpkin as the sun!

The most memorable class projects for me were the Science Circus, Balloon Activity, and Jigsaw Activity. My favorite activity was the Science Circus, in which each group created an activity related to either earth science, physical science, or life science. Our group had physical science and so we created an activity exploring the property of gravity. What made it really fun was that we got to go around to the other teams lessons and test them out for ourselves. My favorite station was the one where we had to create the phases of the moon with marshmallows. It was really fun because no one in my group besides myself and Kira liked marshmallows, so we got to eat the marshmallows into the appropriate shapes.

In reality every single aspect of this course has helped me to grow as student and as a professional. I learned how to create a collage of lessons into a science circus, and how  to write objectives for my lessons. I learned how to engage students in an activity and learned that it is important to make the activities something that the kids can relate to and enjoy. I learned how to assess my future students and  how to become more comfortable in teaching science and understanding science through this class. I have learned how to write an inquiry based lesson plan, and how to reflect on myself and how I can become a better teacher.

It was great to be in a school environment, I believe that it is one of the most important experiences a pre-service teacher should have. It was a great opportunity to really see how a lesson is implemented, and how the planned matches up to the reality. Seeing my lesson work out wonderfully did wonders for my self confidence as a future teacher. I give major credit to the students of Ms. Benfers class. I never had an entire gaggle of older females intrude into one of my classrooms and attempt to teach me anything. They took it with stride, however and made the experience truly memorable. We were able to watch Ms. Benfer, and other groups present their lessons, all of which included inquiry. Everyone did wonderfully, the followed the steps of an inquiry lesson, engaged the students in the lesson and responded to any questions that they may have had at the end. 

The e-folio presentations were wonderful. Everyone had a page or two that they were very proud to show, and even though no one had their completely finished, it was obvious that when they finally are they will be a concrete sample of how far they have come during this semester. I really enjoyed the efolios that used the animations, and the ones that used pictures to show and represent their page. I really enjoy perusing through all of them, and I hope that my efolio is as esteemed in their eyes and theirs is in mine. 

This final project is definitely different then taking a final test in the fact that it is a much better way to see whether or not we understood the material and have grown from it. It is a collection of all the work that we have done, showing our mastery of all the skills and lessons we have learned. This project gave us the room to do what we wanted with it, making each one unique. It took a lot of time and effort to finish it, but I am really proud of the end result and I feel that it has helped me to grow as a professional.

I have learned so much about myself through this course. I  learned that blogging is a way of communicating with peers and colleagues and that it is also a means of self reflection. I have  learned that the journey towards improving myself and becoming a better teacher is a never ending process. I have learned to gracefully receive constructive criticism and using this feedback from my teachers and classmates in my assignments to better my future work and presentations. I have learned that we can learn a lot from listening to what others have to say, but that we can also learn just as much from looking into ourself and back at what we've done and seeing room for improvement. Both of these methods together have allowed me to become a reflective thinker in a community of learners, and I look forward to continuing my journey towards becoming a teacher.