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.