Teaching with Tradebooks

This week, we finished up completing our trade book projects and then, we presented them to the class. For this project, we had to chose a book that we could use to teach for our lesson plans. After completing this project, I've learned a lot and will teach with trade books in the future.

The book I chose for this project was, Will We Miss Them? This book discusses the types of endangered animals living in this world, why they are becoming endangered, and how we can save them. The book fits perfectly for my unit plan. My unit plan is on The Changes in Ecosystems. The unit plan teaches students about extinction but doesn't teach about endangered species. It think it's important to teach students about endangered species because these if these animals do become extinct, other species may be effected by this change in the ecosystem. As a community, we can save these animals and students should be informed of the ways in which we can help them. 

I planned out my trailer to be persuasive and descriptive without providing too much details. I created my trailer using iMovie. Creating a trailer using iMovie was challenging and it took awhile for me to finally get the hang of it. I wouldn't suggest to use this tool unless you have worked with it before and have had an efficient amount of practice using it. Creating my trailer enhanced my knowledge of using iMovie. The images I used are free of copyright violations as I downloaded them from websites that contain free, useable images. After I finished creating my trailer, I uploaded it to YouTube. Here is my trailer. 

After creating and uploading my trailer, I had to focus on my book talk. We were provided with a template to use for presenting our book talk. Here is my completed book talk worksheet. To present my book talk, I wanted to use a digital tool that I have never used before. I decided to use one of the tools that Dr. Smirnova suggested, Screen-o-matic. This tool records your screen and either your voice or a video of you from your webcam. I decided to create a slideshow using the information from my book talk worksheet to present. I recorded myself present my slideshow with my webcam. This tool was very simple to use and I definitely recommend this tool. I enjoyed it and will use it in the future. Here is the link to my digital book talk. I was very content with the way my project came out. 

I first learned new presenting tools that I can use in my own classroom. Each project I complete using a digital tool, my learning of integrating technology in classrooms increases. I really liked the idea of creating movie trailers for students to pique interest and grab their attention. In my classroom, I will create trailers when I introduce a new book to the students. Many of my classmates used Animoto and their trailers looked great. I will use that and iMovie. Teaching with trade books enhances learning. It gives students better understanding of the content as they are provided with different ideas that teachers may not have pointed out to the students. Teaching with trade books also integrates science and literature. Students' reading and comprehension skills and knowledge of specific science topics increases as they are reading a trade book. There are so many benefits of teaching with trade books as it connects reading and science. Students can get a lot out of this and I will teach with trade books in my own classroom whenever students need to get better understandings of specific science content. 

Science! Science! Read All About It!

This week, we completed our Science in the News projects. After last week's class, we were given a homework assignment where we had to search for seven to ten astronomy-related articles from the popular press. We were suggested to use Newsela. I have used Newsela in the past for Social Studies Methods, and I enjoyed using it. I found seven articles and created a Glogster poster to share my article collage. I read all the articles and provided summaries of each on my poster. Here is the poster I created that contains the articles I found and descriptions of each.

 Here is the link to access the poster and the links to each article. A lot of the articles dealt with Mars and certain discoveries. This is a big issue in current issues in astronomy. I was always fascinated by astronomy and I am very interested in the discoveries of Mars so I enjoyed this project. One article that stood out to me was one about how astronauts will be traveling to Mars in 2030. This stood out to me because 2030 is in 14 years and my students may be old enough in 2030 to actually travel to Mars. This would be a great article for students to not only inform them on this current issue in the world, but to pique interest and inspire students. This current issue relates to the classroom discourse since it deals with space and planets. I can use these articles whenever I teach lessons on space to students. I think it's important for students to see that the content they're learning does matter as it can be a current issue in the world. In my own classroom, I will provide students with Newsela articles on topics that we are learning about to have the students become knowledgeable of what is happening in the world that relate to the curriculum. Using news articles will also give students a better understanding of what they are learning as they can see it being applied in the world.

We came into class on Tuesday and were provided with an inquiry lesson on teaching space science. To engage us, we were given a list of planets and aspects of the Solar System and had to choose one to define and create a slide on a class slideshow. I chose meteors and created two slides describing meteors. Here is the link to the class slideshow. My slides are 28 and 29. After we created our slides, we had to create a list of astronomy-related words that appear in each scrapbook item. Using the words from the list, we had to design a word cloud. We were provided with a list of word cloud tools including wordle, tagul, WordArt, TagCrowd, ABCya, and Tagxedo. We were put into groups of three. I worked with Keilani and Jack. First, we created our list. We found many words in our articles, including galaxies, asteroid, NASA, Mars, space, astronauts, and many more. Then, we created our word cloud. Wordle was pretty simple to use and it was nice because you didn't have to create an account to use it. You simply click on create and you type in your words in a text box. We included all of our words and then clicked, "Go". Our wordle popped up and we saw that asteroid was bigger than the rest. We went back to our list and saw that asteroid was on the list twice. This taught us that if you add a word twice to list, it will come up in a bigger font than the rest of the words. Here is our wordle. 

After we created our word cloud, we then had to create a timeline of discoveries associated with the astronomy-related words we found in our articles. We were given a link to timeline makers. Here is the link we used that contains many free tools to create timelines. We chose TikiToki to use to create our timelines. At first, we struggled with figuring out how to use it and we needed some help. As we worked on our timeline, we got more familiar with the tool. We added five events to our timeline. We included when the first asteroid was discovered, when starts were approved to have similar characteristics of the sun, when NASA was formed, when the term "astronaut" was created, and when the first astronaut went to space. We didn't have a lot of time to create our timelines and to make it more presentable but we added a stars background. Here is the link to our timeline. We presented it to the class and also, got to see all the other group's word clouds, timelines, and the tools they used. 

This project was a great way to learn more about space science. We got to explore to deepen our knowledge of astronomy vocabulary and different discoveries related to space. This project also provided us with different tools to incorporate technology in our own classroom. We now know different tools to create word clouds. Using word clouds as an introduction can be a great way to assess students' background knowledge. You can provide the word cloud of the words that will be presented in the lesson and see which words the students know or have heard of. I enjoyed creating timelines of discoveries. Instead of having students create timelines by hand, they can digitally create timelines using the tools we were provided with for this project. This project also demonstrated to me the importance of informing students of the current issues of the world. I will most definitely use Newsela in my future classroom. Overall, I enjoyed this project and learned a lot about space science and how to teach it to students. 

Learning to Teach Earth Science Week

This week, we learned about teaching Earth Science. Dr. Smirnova provided us with an inquiry activity to expand our knowledge. As well as learning more information on earth science, we got to learn new tools to us in our own classroom. 

To engage us, we completed a Google Forms quiz that included topics of the Earth's surface, atmosphere, and weather science. We had to choose our content confidence level for each topic. To explore and explain, we were given three questions and had to answer them with a partner. These were the questions. 

I thought that question #3 was helpful for us as future teachers to deepen students' understanding of earth science. I worked with Keilani and we came up with four resources. The first one we came up with was Time for Kids. This resource provides articles that address curtain issues that are happening in the world and this can make students more knowledgeable. Time for Kids also provides magazines for classrooms. I remember these when I was a student and I would definitely want to use these in my own classroom. Our next resource was BrainPOP. This website provides videos describing certain topics and can also give students a better understanding of the content. It also provides quizzes and activities that teachers can use in their own classroom. Next, we have Discovery Kids. This resource provides informational and kid friendly games, activities, and videos for students as they can get more practice understanding certain topics. Our last resource is National Geographic. This website provides users with current articles and videos about what is going on in our environment. There are separate sections for teachers and kids. I enjoyed exploring resources for teaching earth science and I will use these resources in my own classroom. 

To elaborate, we had to choose a topic from the Google Forms quiz and create a poster for the class to address the content. Keilani and I chose Violent Weather and the tool we chose was Glogster. We used content from our textbook to create our poster. We addressed what weather was and the different types of violent weather. We both enjoyed using Glogster. We both thought it was engaging and easy to use. I also thought that it would be a great tool to use for students to present projects. They have different templates including book reports, autobiographies, science experiment, and many more! Here is our poster. 

To evaluate, we had to create a quiz for our class to see how well they understood the content. We linked the quiz right onto our poster. 

We got to see every group's posters and it was interesting to see the different tools they used to present their content. I enjoyed this project and I thought it was a great idea to engage us in an inquiry lesson to learn more about earth science. This was very beneficial to my learning as we got to learn more about earth science and also learn different digital tools to use in the classroom.