SCED Week Five

This week, I would have to say that I am most proud of how smoothly our attempt at the Science Fair project went.  Though we did have to change a few things around, the actual process of melting the objects was rather simple.  The main thing that we learned through this process was that often times the process of an experiment has to be retried and altered before it can give us the best results.
This week I encountered the most struggle with my unit plan.  It seemed like I would get a few words out but not like them and have to start all over.  The part that I was really having the most trouble with was the EU's.  However, today in class Dr. Parker compared them to generalizations and explained that they are basically the same thing.  This also helped me with the EQ's, of course, because they are tied so closely to the EU's.  I think that now that I have at least somewhat of a grasp on these and the Conceptual Lens, I should be able to get a move on my unit!
The aspect of my thinking that I am most satisfied this week is that I was actually enjoying exploring teacher pages on twitter and finding the articles related to education more interesting and more fun to read than any of the other things on twitter.  I have found myself clicking on articles just cause and really enjoying this form of "research."  It's almost like I actually am beginning to think like a teacher!
Over the next week, I hope to get the direction of my Unit exactly pinned down.  It is really time to move past the backspace and rewrite stage and move into the building off what I already have stage.
This week I tried to be a little more on top of tweeting things that I found to be beneficial to my classmates and wrote rather specifically above each retweet how that would be helpful.  I believe that using networking and social media is so important for me and my colleagues and I would love to see us improve in that area!
This week for my outside research, I found PDFs that contain examples of essential questions, and they are really helping me get my thoughts in order in regards to my unit plan.   They are http://pcs4thgrade.pbworks.com/f/EssentialQuestions.pdf and http://sbo.nn.k12.va.us/science/enduring_understanding.pdf
One of the most influential tweets I found this week was this one:

because it really shows the difference in how we used to ask our students to think and science class and how we like for them to think now!  This link takes us to an article that gives an in depth view of how we are able to take students' minds and shape them into thinking critically and scientifically.
Another great tweet I saw was:

This tweet was brought along because apparently it was talk like a pirate day! However, what the people did in this tweet was rather remarkable and quite creative.  They made some wonderful analogies to how our classroom should be run much like a pirate ship.
The final most influential tweet was:

As I said on twitter, we were literately just discussing the topic of this tweet earlier this morning.  We were discussing how we may find wonderful materials that give us the best ideas for learning experiences or just for different ways to teach, but unless we can align them very well with the standards for the grades we are teaching, they are essentially useless.

This week, I have personally really felt like we have been drilling on the fact that "Teachers know the content they teach" because I have learned a lot this week about the water cycle and even last week about hurricanes that I would have never known before.  This standard also goes on to say that teachers make learning relevant to their students.  How can we make learning relevant?  We make it apply to them as individuals in their lives.  We have discussed this over and over again in class this week.  We must make the students want to care about learning something by making it relevant to them!

One very interesting and health related aspect of science that I found myself looking into this week was how important it is for us to get exercise.  An article claiming that 1 in 12 lives could be saved with just a little physical activity.  The article can be found at 

https://www.livescience.com/60490-physical-activity-prevent-deaths.html
On my last note, I would just like to mention how shocked I am that so many students have no idea what science even is!!! I am just now having my eyes open to how very evident it is that science is a part of everything and everyone!