Research Assessment (RAR)

For my (RAR) assignment I decided to take a look at Julie Luft's article about building a rubric for your classes.  As educators we can't escape constantly monitoring our children for progress.  We have to test them and we have to test them and we have to, you guessed it, test them.  However when we're not being task masters and assigning quizzes we need to give them something to do, and we need to grade them on it.

Julie Luft's article talks about some of the best and basic ways to construct a rubric for your classroom and for a particular assignment.  She lays out her plan in four easy steps:

1. Know your goals for instruction.
2. Decide on the structure for the rubric.
3. Determine the levels of performance.
4. Share with your students.

To me the last part of this strategy, share with your students, is the most important. As teachers I feel you need to be upfront and honest with your students about how they are being scored.  Being a teacher shouldn't be like being a dungeon master in D+D, pulling out random punches just to screw with the player, education isn't suppose to be a rigged game.  Far to many time in my life I have had to answer to a rubric, only to have the whole class wonder, "There was a rubric?"

In my classroom there will not always be a rubric for everything, sometimes an assignment is very cut and dry, but when the time comes for a rubric I will be sure to give one out to my class, go over it with them, and answer any questions that they might have.

Blog Finale

Over the last few months I've had quite the time reflecting on this class here in this blog on an almost weekly basis.  It's helped me deal with the stress that this class causes and allows me to unwind when the overload of work has gotten to me.  This however is my last blog post of the semester, sort of, and figured I would take the opportunity to reflect back on the whole process.  

Writing a blog has been very relaxing for me and while I was a bit confused about how to do it at first, the process became much easier as I went on.  As for topics, I was able to just simply talk about what we did in class each week and by doing that I was able to reflect on what I had learned and was able to absorb and rationalize what just happened.  Overall I found the experience very rewarding and will continue to use this blog in the future, however I have to write this post for a blog finale grade, however I'm sure I'll be back soon enough, as I know I missed some assignment somewhere that will require me to talk about it in a blog post.  So toodles for now, and before I exit, I want to shout out to everyone in my class who also had to do a blog, and you can find all there blog posts here:

http://catherinesscientificdiscoveries.blogspot.com/

http://colleensdiscoveringtheworldofscience.blogspot.com/

http://sciencethroughdiscoverylearning.blogspot.com/

http://dnamandasdiscoveries.blogspot.com/

http://johnosscienceblog.blogspot.com/

http://nowitsscience.blogspot.com/

http://myjourneyofscientificdiscovery.blogspot.com/

http://caitlinsscientificlearning.blogspot.com/

http://discoveriesthroughteachingscience.blogspot.com/

http://discoversciencewithmshynes.blogspot.com/

Good luck everyone and congrats on finishing the course. 

Final Thoughts on the Science Fair

Awhile back I posted a blog on the science fair, and about my history with science fairs which was none.  That was also before my project was finished, and before I saw the results on what I had gotten.  So, for the final time I will go into the depths of the science fair; the experience, the process, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First, my project:

My project was the self-inflating balloon project, which came with the following hypothesis: The mixing of vinegar and baking soda will cause a chemical reaction that will cause the balloon to inflate.

It took me two days to make this project and if you couldn't come down the science fair to show your support, I have my full project on display in the picture above.  When the baking soda, mixes with the vinegar, the balloon inflates on its own, as you can see in the pictures attached to my project.  

Overall my project went over well, however there were area's where I could have easily improved the experience.  First, I could have offered a variable as in when telling the user to add more or less baking soda/vinegar to the project to see if the results will be the same.  Second, better questions for the reader to look at and answer probably also would have help me out.  Finally, the pictures weren't the best either, I should have taken some better pictures, or better yet, filmed myself doing the experiment and shown it during the science fair so the kids/parents could have done the experiment themselves.  

Through it all though, I accept the work I did for this project as it was my first ever experience with the science fair.  I explained in a previous blog post that I had never done a science fair before and that this was my first time.  Overall I found the experience to be rewarding, but also kept me wondering.  Prior to this, I understood how the science fair worked, I'd seen enough about them, yet never actually participated in one before, but still understood the overall process.  As someone looking to teach science to young kids, I question how this activity helped me out in furthering that goal.  Judging the actual science fair was something I really enjoyed, and as a teacher that is what you will be doing for the most part, judging the science fair, not participating in one.  

However, who am I to judge, I did get a half way decent grade and as I said before the experience was worth it.  Plus I can finally say I competed in a science fair, something I couldnt't say when I was a kid.  Although, the ironic part about all of this is that kids had way better experiments than I did, and when you really boil it down, that's the important aspect. 

It's to late for me to launch a love for science, but it's not to late for some of these kids, who have a bright future ahead of them.  

Science in The News

One of the assignments that we had to do in our ever evolving science class was an assignment on science in the news.  Briefly, we had to gather a bunch of articles, talk about them, and share them with the rest of our class.

For my the topic of my articles, I choose space/astronomy.  I chose these articles because, while I find science to be my least favorite subject, I have always found space to be engaging.  They call it the final frontier for a reason and that's because it's the part of science I feel we know the least about.  From looking at the different articles I collected, there seems to be something new, a new claim or discovery, almost everyday.  As we unfortunately watch our own planet fall apart scientists have been looking toward space more and more in an effort to save humanity.

Space is probably the most relevant topic to teach in classrooms these days, and unfortunately I don't think it gets the air time it deserves, even in the secondary level.  Exploring space and finding a suitable home for the human race, or saving our own planet is the defining topic of our time and as teachers we need to implore this onto our students as best we can.  The articles that I have pulled out work well in talking about a number of the different planets, and former planets for that matter, and talk about what the future holds for Earth, Mars, and beyond.  I have gathered these articles for everyone to look at, and can be found here.

Book Talk

Today I finally completed my book talk for my science methods class.  This was not my first time doing a book talk.  I recently just did a book talk with 10 different children's books for my Literacy Methods course, so the topic was not unfamiliar with me.

Producing a trailer, however, was a totally new experience.  I had never made a movie in my life, save for a couple 15 second ones captured on my phone in my high school days, so this was all new to me.  I used the website Animoto to create the trailer and it was very easy to use.  As you are well aware if you've been following this blog, I am not the best with technology.  I've probably made a reference to your great-great grandmother being able to use Facebook better than myself and its totally true.  Animoto however was extremely easy to use, and it created my trailer in just four steps. They just require an e-mail address to sign up and it's free.



There are watermarks on the sides of the film when you use the free version, however its nothing grotesque that ruins the quality of the film.  If you want them to go away, you just have to upgrade.  Overall this was a very fun experience and surprisingly quick.  If you want to check out the video I made for my book talk you can check it out here.

My main man Copernicus

While doing our space project in class a few weeks back, I stumbled upon an interesting fellow by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus.  

Now many of you have probably heard of Copernicus, however, do you really know the man?  He single came up with the solar system.  That's right, THE solar system, the one we so wrongfully use to pick on Pluto.  

In 1543 Copernicus wrote a book titled, " De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" or as it's simply know today, "The Book".  In this book, Copernicus makes bold statements, that we today would laugh at the very notion of being thought of as balderdash.  In his book he stated the Earth was round, and that Earth was not the center of the universe.  Again, these are things we would replay with a simple, "Duh" today, however those comments were so flamboyant at the time, they landed Mr. C in jail, where he would die within a few months.  

Thankfully his students, most notably Galileo Galilei, continued to carry on his work long after his death.  As we all know Copernicus was right, the Earth was indeed round, and we revolve around the sun, not the other way around.  As a famous rapper musician once said, haters gonna hate.

Astronomy

Over the last couple weeks, our class has had to gather together 7-10 different articles about astronomy.  I've always liked astronomy, and found space to be incredibly interesting.  The fact that we can look up into the sky and think that it could essentially go on forever, really makes you think.

Ever since I was a kid I've always been fascinated with what happens above us.  Each year in school I'd pretty much bomb every science test with the exception on two: astronomy, and weather.  Weather always interested me, simply because of where we live.  In the northeast, we experience every season, and very rarely is the weather the same, even two days in a row.  Also as a child you tend to watch the weather channel more cause you just have to know when the snow is coming for an all important snow day.

Astronomy on the other hand was something that wasn't as accessible in the realm of facts.  As a child, all I could do was lay out on the grass and night and simply look up.  All you could see was stars and the moon, so it was up to your imagination to figure out what else was there.  As I got older, my questions began to be answered, however those answers usually just led to more questions.  The unique thing about astronomy is that it is the only scientific field that will never be complete.  Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science all have questions remaining, however those questions will be answered.  With Astronomy, and space, it never ends, and so questions will always remain.