Private Universe

How the phases of the moon occur?
The phases of the moon occur twice a month in other words there are two new moons every month. The shadow of the earth causes the moon to look like it is getting smaller or larger.

How do the seasons occur?
The earth is rotating around the sun. This is not related to the moon. The path that the earth takes is not a perfect circle and since the earth is not on a 90 degree axis the seasons change.

What causes a lunar eclipse?
When earth aligns in between the sun and the moon. It's shadow passes over the moon making it disappear for a few seconds.

I had seen this video before a year ago. I still got them all wrong. It is confusing but I guess I have had proper instruction in this but just chose not to accept it or keep forgetting it.


NOTES
Galileo heliocentric "sun center"
Church believe geocentric "earth center"
Receive more indirect sunlight when 23.5 degrees tilted away from the sun = winter
Opposite is summer
Tropic lines are the lines that are furthest north and south parts of the earth that receive direct sunlight
Equinox = equal amount of sunlight and darkness in a day
Earth always tilted to north star

Misconceptions

Colby Wegter

Misconceptions

I thought this article was interesting because when you are asking questions or testing students on their understanding there are not always clarifying questions to help with following up. Perhaps students had and idea of what the answer was but if they weren’t asked to clarify they could have simply guessed wrong and vice versa. Maybe they guessed right and had no idea what they were answering. This is wrong. Students should have to back up their answers in almost any setting so a teacher can clarify whether they have gotten understanding or not.

I like the idea of keeping track of misconceptions by noting them in the textbook margins. You can never get rid of misconceptions by just choosing and up to date textbook. But if you find the misconceptions and write them into the margins you can give warning to future classes about theses misconceptions.

Labs were also a good idea. If you are closer to your students and explaining things yourself it will help you as a teacher to cut down on these misconceptions. If the words are coming out of your mouth then you might have a better chance of answering questions.

Finally, I thought it was very interesting that just because a student’s scientific vocabulary increases does not mean that they understand in full the words they are using. With the results from the test in the article that is clear. So there has to be a better way to teach terminology. While terminology has never been my strong suit I would be interested to see if there are more effective ways to teach this terminology to students. Perhaps more experiments and interactive activities would help with this.

Theoretical Foundations for Constructivist Teaching

Colby Wegter

Theoretical Foundations for Constructivist Teaching

Piaget and Vygotsky are pioneers of constructivism for a reason. I agree with their thoughts and ideas about how children learn. While they both agree on a lot of things I am more inclined to side with Vygotsky because I personally believe that learning does lead to development and that spontaneous concepts when paired with schema that the student already possesses actually leads to further development of that student.

Students have to interpret their surroundings and they don’t just add to their personal knowledge by simply looking at things. They have to use their previous schema to look at something and compare it to something they already know and if they have never seen anything like it they have to somehow make meaning of it by whatever means necessary.

I agree with the constructivist view simply because of learning leading to development and because of all of the sharing that is involved. Sharing before, during, and after the phenomena helps students predict and reflect and make sense of things. They remember things better with constant discussion about what they are seeing or hearing. This would be great to be paired with science notebooks so that they have all of their thoughts at their disposal. It would really enhance discussion, which means it would enhance their learning.

The Social Constructivist Model of Teaching

Colby Wegter

The Social Constructivist Model of Teaching

When I look at the constructivist way of teaching in the Krajcik article it lines up a lot with how I plan on teaching. I believe wholeheartedly that it is very important to show kids and let them interact with the information as opposed to just telling them the information. This is supported when Krajcik talks about using concrete materials.

One hallmark of social constructivist teaching is that students mindfully interact with concrete materials. Children retain more of what they are taught if they engage in more active, concrete types of learning. In fact, it is estimated that the more active and concrete their learning, the more they retain.

Using manipulatives and experiments in the classroom allow for students to get a visual idea and an interactive idea. I was a big fan of the features of the social constructivist model of learning as well. It reminds me a lot of the scientific method. A student being able to discuss and predict what will happen is a vital step in the process. They can hypothesize, see the experiment happen, and then reflect on whether they had a good hypothesis or if they were completely surprised.

Finally, the thing I was the biggest fan of in this article was the idea of improving their own world. For elementary kids this idea is not an international one usually but one to improve the world around them in their own community. I liked the idea of a litter clean up day or putting up bird feeders. I really do agree with the article when it says, “When learning includes taking action to improve their world, children see the importance of it and the action solidifies their knowledge.” Well put.

Five Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks

Five Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks

For this I just made comments on each of their bullet points.

1. I agree with their argument about science notebooks that it encourages students to “use writing for thinking and empowers them to be interactive in their own language.” I can see the notebooks as a good tool because students can write down exactly what they are thinking when they are thinking it. If they wait to speak up until you’ve asked them they may have forgotten how they felt and what they thought at the moment.

2. Including what I said in part one it is also true that this benefits not only students but teachers as well. If the notebooks are collected by the teacher the teacher can see if there is a common question and branch off from there. Making use of a “teachable moment.”

3. Notebooks do have a benefit for students’ literacy, I agree. I believe that writing is a fantastic tool to use in any subject. By getting students thoughts on the page right away it is easier for them to communicate it later. They will have more detail and emotion in their sharing and there is nothing bad about that.

4. Maybe one of the best parts is that if I’m teaching a science class that utilizes notebooks then I know that those notebooks do not discriminate or not allow anyone to use them. It is simply the individual students thoughts being written down and if it is in another language or illegible as long as there is a way after for me, as the teacher, to find out what it is they were thinking then there is a great benefit to that for both sides.

5. I liked that all of the teachers of the school got into the effort. They all realized that notebooks were a simple and effective way to understand what the students were thinking and it allowed the teachers to collaborate about their findings. Personally I would like to be a part of something like that. that made me feel valued and made me understand my students better.

Environmental Education in the Schools

Environmental Education in the Schools

I didn’t really understand that environmental education had branches such as conservation and outdoor education. I assumed environmental education was about nature and how we can keep it from being destroyed.

When the article said that environmental education is not only science but “economics, math, geography, ethics, politics and other subjects.” I guess I don’t fully agree on these. I understand each of them but I feel that some of them are loosely associated with environmental science. I understand that sometimes it gets destroyed for economic purposes and numbers are involved when people fight over it [politics] and some people will think it’s terrible or not terrible [ethics]. But this is only if something gets torn down or is argued to be torn down for buildings or factories or something. I ‘m not sure that it is much more than science and geography, in my opinion.

I do agree with experiential learning. While many subjects that people take in college require a lot of preparation in the classroom before they go out in the world it makes sense that those interested in environmental studies get outside and experience it right away. Obviously knowledge of what you’re getting into would be good also but I do agree that you’re not going to learn as much if you’re just sitting in a classroom.

All in all I have no complaints about environmental science. I think it is very important but also broad. I want my students to believe that they are helping the community when they see trash in the grass and they pick it up and throw it away. I guess I’m struggling to decide, (besides a hike or nature walk or some sort of else outdoor activity) what is the best way to teach them about environmental science besides saying that littering is bad.

Initial Vision Statement

Initial Vision Statement

Colby Wegter

When I look at science and my experiences of it, it helps provide me with some ideas for the how I want my future science class to feel. As I’ve never been an expert in the science area and have never been that successful in it there are a few things that I enjoyed about science in both elementary and high school. When I pair my experiences with the Methods of Science class I am taking I’m sure I will be better prepared and more excited to present it to students in my classroom when I become a teacher.

To sum up my science background really only one word comes to mind. That word is average. I would consider science to be one of my least favorite subjects but I would also attribute that to the teaching I received. In elementary my best memories are of Marsville, this is where we were assigned committees in groups of three or four and the entire class was to be a large group that would inhabit Mars. I was on the recreation committee so we created magnetic checkers so that the board and pieces wouldn’t float away in outer space. We also had an egg drop experiment in sixth grade where we put an egg into any device we wanted with hopes that if dropped from a ladder it wouldn’t break. We also made catapults in sixth grade that enjoyed. In high school it was biology and chemistry and the instruction was lack luster. The teachers themselves didn’t seem interested in the subjects they were teaching making the experience less than memorable.

Some of the major components of a science education would be to understand how science can explain almost anything and using real life examples to help students understand. For example, if in chemistry all you do is talk about elements and compounds but don’t apply them or compare them to something in the real world, chances are only the people who want to use chemistry in college will enjoy what they are learning. Also an important component, partnered with ways to make it more understandable, would be making science fun. There are so many experiments that can be done to make kids get close and say, “That’s awesome! How does that work?” It is after you have their interest that instruction would be most effective.

I anticipate that I will teach my science class in a fun oriented way. My goal as a teacher is not to overwhelm them with facts that after I’ve lectured they maybe have absorbed one or two things that I have said. Science is a very visual subject and I personally learned best when I could use my hands and manipulate things or use my eyes to see the actual things that are being spoken of. I think experiments are key and if you are going to have an interesting science class you can’t have one experiment every couple weeks. In my opinion there has to be an experiment every other day at the minimum. This doesn’t have to be a large-scale thing. Even the simplest and smallest visual aid can make understanding so much easier.

By making science fun and interactive I believe my students will be able to not only understand exactly the message I’m trying to teach them but also be able to practice safe and exciting experiments outside of the classroom. By showing why things are, instead of just explaining why things are, students will have a much better chance of actually being able to understand the importance of science and everything that it provides them.

Rise to Greatness

Colby Wegter

Rising to Greatness Blog

There were a lot of concerns for me about this article because it has so much impact on me as a student of the system my entire life. As I prepare to be a teacher I had a lot of questions as to how Iowa could have fallen so short in the last 10 years and as I think about the future words I write I still don’t know. These were my thoughts:

There is a over a 20 point difference in proficiency for students that don’t qualify with a free and reduced lunch and for those that do. So if kids are eligible and they can technically not have to worry about if food is on the table then why is there still such a big difference? What are the possible other factors? Does the parents marital status effect it, or the amount of children in the household, maybe the neighborhood in which they live in, their race, or if they are from another country, or is it a combination of some or all of these things.

Some questions that I don’t know the answers to but were thinking as I was reviewing the article were: Is Iowa not doing well educating minority students because they are 82 percent white? Is it that there are few role models that are of the same ethnicity or race of the minority students? Is it because crossing races, as a teacher is less effective than if a teacher was of the same skin color as the students they are teaching? Have the results not caught up with the numbers yet since minority students are rising and their test scores are not?

When Jason Glass said “… [it’s] not embarrassing…it’s intolerable” that says to me that there is not enough effort of Iowa teachers on the classroom as a whole. This makes Iowa teachers seem lazy. The gaps in proficiency for race and those with disabilities is annoying and pathetic that Iowa has fallen so much in the last 10 years. Especially with reading, when I saw that Iowa was leading in fourth grade reading in 2001 and are now 13^th I couldn’t believe it. Since reading is my focus I don’t see how it could have dropped so much in 10 years. This makes me wonder if this is for lack of schooling for prospective teachers. It could be that or it could be some form of jurisdiction or legislature is faltering but it shows that there is not nearly enough resolve in the Iowa school system to begin fixing things like this. A steady decline for the last 10 years is pitiful. NCLB was 10 years ago so maybe it does have some form of a legislative issue but as a student of the Iowa school system for the last 16 years and a future teacher this has a lot of concern for me. I don’t want to be a part of a state that can’t keep up with a changing world because it’s only going to continue to change.