Science Inquiry

I'm taking a class on Teaching Science as Inquiry. It's been a real eye-opener to the world of teaching science. I've been learning so many new ways to teach science to students. One of the strategies is to teach science through inquiry (hence the name of the class). This means allowing students to explore science through hands-on experiments and through questioning. The process has its roots in discovery learning and constructivism. It's been really interesting incorporating scientific inquiry into my science lessons. It's a lot less structured than what I was used to when I was going to school. However, I can see that it is very effective in getting the students involved in the learning. One thing Ms. Maria always tells us is not to tell the students the answers, but to let them discover their own answers through questioning and experimenting. This was probably the biggest challenge for me. It is such a temptation to tell the students the answer when they ask or to point out mistaken thinking rather than let them work it out on their own. Creating science inquiry lessons also takes a lot more effort than just going by the textbook, but the results are definitely worth it. Here are some pictures of inquiry demonstrations on our Weathering and Erosion Unit.

These students are shaking a jar with water and some
stones 1000 times to show the process of weathering.

These students are watching an antacid tablet
dissolve as a model of chemical weathering.

Cultural Week

One Monday morning, I walked to Ms. Corin's class and found the door locked. Upon inquiring at the office, I found that the school had begun their annual Cultural Week. For a whole week, regular classes were canceled and students participated in various cultural activities taught by parent volunteers and the Manamko. The fifth graders spent their mornings with Mrs. Sablan making bead necklaces and folding origami. In the afternoons, they were treated to dancing and singing lessons with some manamko as well as story telling. There was also mwar and lei making which we didn't get to try. Oh, well, maybe next time. ;D
One afternoon, we learned how to weave coconut leaves into baskets and hats. It was during this time that Ms. Corin left me to supervise the class while she went on an errand. Two fifth grade classes were combined to do the weaving and the other teacher was there too. Two manamko women were assigned to teach a group of 40 fifth graders how to weave. It was chaos. A group of students would gather around the women and watch them weave for exactly 3 minutes, then they would scatter and another group would surround the women. Those students not watching the manamko were doing all sorts of crazy things with their coconut fronds.
I really felt bad for the manamko women who were really trying their best to show the students how to weave. However, the setup was just terrible. The kids were all over the place and the manamko could only help one student at a time with their weaving. I tried my best to learn the weaving and keep my eye on the other students at the same time so I could at least try to help the other students. I believe weaving is a very important cultural skill for our students to learn. I myself would have loved to learn from the manamko women. Looking back, I think the weaving session should have been structured better. There should have been more manamko as well as some younger people to teach the weaving. The manamko got tired easily. I believe if the students could get proper instruction, they would all just sit down and get busy because weaving is really a fun activity. But it was still an interesting experience.
On Thursday, students from Seisa Gakuen, a highschool in Japan, came to visit San Antonio Elementary School. Seisa Gakuen is a sister school of Marianas High School. What's really interesting is that the students that came to SAES are the special needs students of Seisa Gakuen. Honestly, I didn't even notice any disabilities in the students unless I was looking very carefuly. All of them were very friendly and energetic and the San Antonio students just took to them. The Seisa Gakuen students performed a dance number for us and then had some students join them. The rest of the day, the sixth graders hosted the Japanese students.
On Friday, the manamko performed several dance numbers for assembly. The old folks looked so cute dancing in their various costumes. It was very nice of them to come out to San Antonio for the students.
I really enjoyed myself during Cultural Week. I have to admit that it was a nice break from having to plan lessons. :D Enjoy my slideshow of Cultural Week!

Vocabulary and Classroom Economy

For Language Arts, the entire school uses a curriculum called Story Town by Harcourt Brace. The year long curriculum is divided into themes and each theme has 5 lessons with stories and a ton of activities to go along with them. One of the activities includes Building Robust Vocabulary that comes with each story. Since I was also teaching Language Arts as part of my practicum, I had to deal with vocabulary. The good thing about Story Town is that they don't give a lot of words for each lesson. At most there are 8 words per story, but usually around 5 or 6. So it's easier for the students to learn the new words and then actually use them in their writing or speaking. To help with having the students use their new vocabulary, I started an activity that ties in with their classroom management plan.

Ms. Corin has started using a classroom economy with the 5th graders. They have a bank book and they write in credits for good behavior, finished homework, and other good deeds and they get debits if they misbehave and don't finish their homework. At the end of two weeks, Ms. Corin opens a store where the students can shop using their accumulated money.
I told my students that if they can find an example of the vocabulary word in the "real world", I will "pay" them a "dollar" per word. Examples can come from books (other than the textbook, of course!), television, movies, internet, newspapers, and even from people using them. We also talked about the significance of this activity.

At first, the response was pretty slow. Only a few girls brought in examples. But when the other students saw how much "money" they were "making," they started bringing in examples too. When a student used a vocabulary word while speaking, I allowed the first student who heard it to add a dollar. I also gave the speaker a dollar for using the word. Eventually, I would have liked to create a poster with the samples.

I felt that this was a fun and effective way to have students use their new vocabulary. It's something I'll definitely use in my future classroom. Take a look at some samples my students brought in.

Penny Observations

For Ms. Bobbi's first observation, I did a lesson on one of the science process skills - observation. This lesson had actually come from Ms. Maria Ornes, my ED 433 Science Inquiry instructor. Our class had a good time doing the lesson and I thought my students would enjoy doing it as well. And we were just getting into our Learning Center activities so it was perfect opportunity to introduce students to the skill of observing. Click on the images for a look at the lesson.

Science Quiz

I try to conduct informal assessments with my students as often as I can. Usually I do this through discussion, questions and answers, and reflections. I gave my first formal assessment on my science unit in the form of a quiz. A number of days had passed (due to cultural week) since we actually touched on our science unit so I gave my students a review of Weathering and Erosion before the actual quiz. I went over all the questions on the quiz (7 questions total), without actually letting the students know that they were the quiz questions.

Many times after I have gone over some material, I would ask the students, "Does anybody have any questions? Does everybody understand the material?" Hardly anybody will say anything so I just assume (I know you're never supposed to assume!) that they understand. But it's amazing that when I announce, "We're having a quiz!" students start asking questions. This in itself helps me to assess which students are still having problems with the material.

I did ask the students if they were ready for the quiz, but many of them said they weren't. In fact many of them were afraid they would fail. I, however, felt that they were more than ready. I was proven right - 16 out of 19 students got 100%! The other three only missed one or two questions. I had the students correct their own tests and I really felt that they had mastered the concepts. Needless to say, it was a very good day for me! Here are a few samples of the quiz I gave my students. Click on the images for a closer look.

Science Learning Center

Here are some pictures of the Learning Center I set up for my Science Unit on Weathering and Erosion. I had 5 activities for the Learning Center with 4 students at each center, except for one group of 3. The students worked for 15 minutes at each center before rotating. Four centers were hands-on demonstrations with weathering and erosion and one center was a computer scavenger hunt with interactive models of weathering and erosion. The hands-on activities were all about observing which tied in to our previous lesson on observing pennies.
The whole process went pretty smoothly. The students were used to working in centers (which they do for Language Arts) and were pretty enthusiastic about conducting the demonstrations. I also had set up the groups for the students. I tried to balance out each group with the personalities and abilities of the students I knew. I also assigned each group a leader to keep them on task. Everything went much better than I had expected.

Science Learning Center

Here are some samples of the Observation Sheet I gave my students to complete as part of the Science Learning Center. After we finished the Learning Center, I also gave them a self-evaluation sheet to fill out. We had an interesting discussion about sharing and being a member of a team.

St. Patrick's Day Vocabulary Lesson

For Ms. Bobbi's second observation, I was doing a lesson in Language Arts. We had just started a new lesson which meant new spelling words and new vocabulary. I started off giving them their spelling pretest and then we checked it together. Then we started on the vocabulary. Because it was March 17, Ms. Corin had suggested I do something to tie in with St. Patrick's Day. I think vocabulary is a very important part of Language Arts and not just learning new words, but actually understanding them and using them. I had been researching effective ways to teach new vocabulary to students and came across a technique called Think-Pair-Share. I had heard of this technique but thought it was mainly for discussions. The idea is to get all students to think about the vocabulary word so they can talk about it with each other and with the rest of the class. It also helps to clarify misunderstandings about the meaning or usage of a word. I really do have a problem with getting everybody in the class to participate when discussing the new vocabulary words. I'll ask a question or ask for examples and it's usually the same handful of students answering me. With Think-Pair-Share, I would ask a question, the students would Think about it then get with a partner and share their thoughts. Then I would call on volunteers to tell me what they think. With this technique, students who don't know the answer or don't know what to think have a chance to get some input from their partner and will be ready to share once I call on them. Everyone will be ready and have a chance to participate.
I tried out the technique to review the previous week's vocabulary words. At first, it was hard for the students to resist shooting their hands in the air or calling out the answer as soon as I finished the question. I would just ignore those students and direct them to think silently and then share with a partner.
When we started on the new vocabulary words, I was confident to ask any student to give me an example or an idea because I knew they were discussing with their partner. Eventually, the students got used to Thinking and Sharing with a partner and the rest of the lesson went smoothly. To tie it in with St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to students to apply their new knowledge of the vocabulary words by writing a story. From what I had been reading on teaching vocabulary, it is a little unreasonable to expect students to be able to use vocabulary words right away with out more exposure to them. In this case, it was many of the students' first time to see these words. So I had them just write a story in groups using at least two vocabulary words.
We talked about the history of St. Patrick's Day and then I wrote out a story starter for them about finding the pot of gold.
The students were to work in groups to finish the story starter using at least two new vocabulary words. I told them if they were able to use more than two correctly, I would "pay" them a dollar for each additional word. Initially, I wanted them to do circle writing, where each one of them would write part of the story and pass it on until the story was complete, but it didn't work out that way. However, the stories they came up with were pretty good and had very imaginative uses of the vocabulary words. Take a look at their finished stories below.