Wild Fires

Wild fires have been rampaging across California for some time now. They're extremely violent and dangerous and have caused many homes to be lost throughout the state. In California there has been a massive drought due to climate change. It's too dry so when a small fire breaks out the wild fire takes on a mind of its own. They have mainly been in Southern California and there has been mass destruction from these fires.

People are being forced to evacuate their homes, and they're being torn apart by the these fires.

Pictures of the fires in California.

Project WILD

Project WILD was a very informative experience which included many different lessons that could I could see my self teaching in the future. They taught us many lessons and it was a very interactive experience. They had us do the lessons throughout the course and had us even had us go outside. One of the my favorite parts of this development was while we were outside. There was an activity we all stood in a circle and they scattered poker chips with numbers or letters on them. They then gave three people in the group disadvantages; being blind, having one leg, and having two cubs. Then, we had a few minutes to pick up as many chips as we could until they were all gone. When it was over we had to count up our chips and if we had a certain amount of each chip that meant we survived. Also, we needed to pick up a water supply. All the bears with disadvantages died and many without disadvantages died as well. They mentioned that there were probably too many of us and that's why not many of us survived. It was a very fun and interactive lesson, and teaches the kids about how these bears would survive. They even said that you can  make the lesson more local. For example, say you lived in a school district with many wolves they could do this for wolves, It was very interesting lesson and I could see myself doing something similar to this as a teacher. At the end they gave us a big book of all these science lessons and it was such a good resource I'm so excited to use it in my classroom one day.

Inquiry Skills

Today in class we talked about inquiry skills in the class and the whole class did presentations on the them. We as teachers want to develop the students inquiry skills.

We focused on how to properly make a lesson plan for a science class.

Objectives are statements made at the beginning of the lesson. Objective is more involved in the criteria. If you write a good objective they will understand the lesson.

A goal is statement that should be accomplished/learned for the end of the unit/year.

engage

This phase of the 5 E's starts the process. An "engage" activity should do the following:

1. Make connections between past and present learning experiences
2. Anticipate activities and focus students' thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students should become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.

explore
This phase of the 5 E's provides students with a common base of experiences. They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.

explain
This phase of the 5 E's helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring. They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate new skills or behaviors. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviors.

elaborate
This phase of the 5 E's extends students' conceptual understanding and allows them to practice skills and behaviors. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest, and refine their skills.
evaluate
This phase of the 5 E's encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students' understanding of key concepts and skill development. 

Digital Me

For my digital me project I made a WordArt describing my life. WordArt was a pretty easy program to use and I can 100% see myself using it in my classroom. It's a perfect way to show vocabulary words. It is a great pre assessment as well. It's so simple I would probably have my students make some throughout the year and we could post them outside the classroom. Not even just a science project, maybe an adjective project as well.

Scientific Method

Today in class we focused on the scientific method. We had to squeeze a mystery bag and guess what it was. Then we went over the steps of the scientific method to test it. First we had a hypothesis of what we thought was in the bag. Most people thought the bag had a dog toy, a rattle, or a maraca in it. Then we had to devise a method on how we could support this hypothesis. We thought of poking holes in the bag, opening it up, or spending more time feeling the bag. Then we would have to do these tests. Then we would have to restate the hypothesis and see if the data from out test supports the hypothesis. This is to support not prove. More tests would help support the theory more. 

 Steps of inquiry

1.        Formulate a question

2.       Make predictions

3.       Design steps to investigate the problem to generate data that will allow you to evaluate the hypothesis

4.       Communicate the results 

Why this activity? It's a good intro to get the ball rolling on experimenting. By guessing what was in the bag the students made a hypothesis without even knowing what a hypothesis is. By nature we want to have a specific answer, but science is different and uncertain. Do NOT look for one perfect answer, keep looking and keep testing. 

Climate Change

Today in class we have a guest lecturer named Dr. Mike Edelstein who is going to talk to us about climate change.

Sustainability: How do we live our lives, so that people in the future can live healthy lives? How do we not use everything up?

Fossil fuels are the root of many of the problems of climate change.

Making the comparison to Newburgh, Dr. Edelstein talked about how some people had to get their fat tested to see if there are any toxic chemicals in their bodies from the water.
Al Gore: Former Vice President and environmentalist. After losing the presidency he went back to teaching about climate change. Al Gore is a person that we as teachers can use as a resource for proper climate change lessons.


He showed us the first picture of the Earth ever taken from space. Then asked us to talk about things we noticed.
             1. Clouds
             2.  Land
             3. Ocean

We then talked about the Laws of Thermodynamics. The first one being you can't create new matter you can only transfer it.
The second law says that the world moves from a state of order to a state of disorder.
Ex. When like a room goes neat to messy.

This picture shows us that we live in a finite Earth. That the Earth is not never ending. The Earth is simultaneously an open system, things enter it and leave it, and a closed system, matter can't be created. The sun creates primary productivity, giving the Earth the energy it needs for the day. The sun produces no pollutants, and doesn't run out. Fossil fuels however do run out, and harm the environment. We're changing this energy in to something that was just there into something that is detrimentally bad.




Then he started showing slides. There was a picture of the atmosphere, and we talked about the stratosphere, and how polluting that correlates to climate change. High ozone levels have been shown to cause lung problems to people working outside in some areas. People exposed to more UV rays have been known to develop skin cancer. These UV rays are stronger closer to the north and south pole.

Everyday we are polluting 110 million tons of waste into the Earth's atmosphere. There's more CO2 concentration that is trapped in the atmosphere.

Positive feedback loo: The more that occurs, the more that can occur.

The biggest source of green house gas: Airplanes, forest fire, cows farts and burps ruminate gas.



Global temperature is being increased and it is an anomaly. There is a rapid increase of temperature throughout the world. A simple 1 degree difference in Celsius will effect the world drastically. The coral reefs especially are being effected and a dead coral reef means a dead ocean. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon happening at an insanely rapid pace.



Hurricanes have become more intense, and are larger (category 4-5) and is devastating the planet. Some areas will never be able to rebuild after these horrible hurricanes. Everything is contaminated ruining life in the area for years and years.

Climate change will lead to food and water shortages, pandemic diseases, and an influx of refugees from devastated areas. A problem with refugees is that people are usually unwilling to accept refugees causing more problems.

Back to School

The first week back at school was great this year! It's exciting to get back in the groove of things. The idea of being a junior in college is such a crazy concept. I'm nervous for Science methods this semester because I've heard it's probably the hardest methods course. In class this week, we made our made our own versions of what we thought a scientist looked like. Then, as a class, we noticed some similarities and differences about our scientists. Many of us made our scientists male and with wild hair similar to that of Albert Einstein. It opened our eyes to the many stereotypes that revolve around Science. I loved seeing the way everyone drew their scientist, and different ways people interpreted the assignment.  I'm so eager to learn new ways to teach children the wonder that Science has to offer. Below is a picture of my scientist. His name is Dr. Atom!