Resource Blog Post 5 (CROSS CURRICULAR)

The resource I have chosen for my cross-curricular subject area works perfectly in both math and science classrooms when a teacher wants to give students a great hands-on, learn-through-doing experience. PhET simulations (found at phet.colorado.edu) offer hundreds of simulations built to explain key and important concepts to students through trial and error. PhET’s website boasts that their simulations have been used over 557 million times, which goes to show how prominent and well-made they are for the classroom.

PhET’s simulations range from science (where they have different sections for Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Biology) to math, with intentions to help students with concepts relating from middle school to university-level physics. These simulations are perfect for creating an environment in the classroom where students feel responsible for their own learning and can truly engage themselves in a topic. This beats a traditional classroom setup of a teacher telling students information as-is, and having students memorize the information and regurgitate it back without truly understanding it. Instead, students encounter a simulation without much background knowledge, and begin to tinker with the different options until they find one that works. After that, students can work on increasingly difficult simulations, up until they have a firm grasp of the topic at hand. PhET simulations are a great resource to have in order to further student learning and have some fun in the classroom!

Word Count: 232

Synthesis Blog Post 5

I really enjoyed reading Subjects Matter Chapter 7 because it talks about all of the non-concrete factors that affect student learning, such as the classroom environment and attitudes towards learning itself. Something as small as an attitude change can have a massive affect on how a student feels about an assignment or a subject as a whole, and it is crucial as a teacher to lift your students up in order to make them want to succeed. I also appreciated the authors including the study about the meta-analysis on social skills training--the quoted 11% jump in scores shows that it's not always about teaching the test, but teaching success.

The strategies listed to help us make our future classrooms more inviting and build a stronger sense of community are extremely helpful, even to a current teacher--there is always room to improve. Feeling comfortable enough to take risks, to me, was the most important diagnostic in showing that students have a strong sense of community, and it directly relates to learning. If a student isn't comfortable trying new things, how are they supposed to learn new things? I believe that the two go hand in hand, and it is our job to create an environment that promotes students' own desires to push into new territory.

Word Count: 214

Resource Blog 4

The resource I found for this blog post is an academic journal by the name of Social Education. Social Education prides itself for being at the forefront of social studies global discussion and its publications serve to help social studies educators learn new ways to serve their classrooms. While the journal itself is a paid resource, the academic journal has free articles that it releases to the public that do not require a membership. Social Education also has deals for current students and beginner teachers, cutting the cost of a yearly membership by around a third.

Social Education is an important resource to have because it constantly provides social studies educators with resources and data backing up how to best utilize educational strategies in the classroom. One of the resources that I read detailed the importance of knowing how and when to lecture in the classroom in order to keep students not only focused, but also constantly learning. Social Education also has numerous entries emphasizing the importance of content area literacy in the social studies classroom, through primary source documents and critical thinking strategies when it comes to reading historical documents. Social Education is a great resource that is worth the money and can help social studies educators everywhere expand their pedagogical repertoire.

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Strategy Lesson Reflection

Overall, I think that our strategy lesson went well. Our group was lucky to have an activity that was interesting to students as well as could be replicated pretty easily in a "classroom demo" setting. Off the bat, we were able to combat time management problems by posting a short URL to the projector so that every student could engage with the text without passing out individual papers or having them dig for a link. When it came to dividing into groups, our (college aged) middle school students were able to do so quickly and quietly, which might not be the case in an actual classroom. If we were to do this in a real setting, it would help to have pre-assigned groups or some kind of "get with your table" plan ready.

When it came to the Password activity, there were a few ways to improve. First, while it was nice to have the entire class involved on one game, it made the actual activity drag on time-wise if we were to try to get through every student. Instead of having one student go in front of the entire class and play the game, it would help if we had some sort of rotation system set up between groups so that every group could participate simultaneously. While that solution seems pretty general, it also leads to a louder and more difficult-to-control classroom--nothing impossible, but definitely requiring an active role from the teacher to ensure everything goes smoothly. Overall, I enjoyed demonstrating our strategy lesson!

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Synthesis Blog Post 4: Science Article

Summary:
Westcott and Spell's article is all about tearing down the "wall" between science and language arts. Off the bat, the authors talk about how neither side of the fence is really set on becoming an expert in the other field: science teachers don't really want to become English teachers, and English teachers don't want to do experiments in their classrooms. The article tries to create an expectation that science texts can not only be great texts overall, but also intrigue students into learning more about science through its presence in novels.

Connections:
When the authors mentioned Carl Sagan's Cosmos, I immediately thought back to the hit mini series that was re-released by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I loved watching it in middle school, and it definitely opened my mind to embracing science and seeing it as "cool", rather than just something I had to learn in school. All of the literary examples that Westcott and Spell use are meant to lead students down a path to realize that science can be interesting and worthwhile.

Critique:
Overall, I thought that the article had a good intention and the authors did a great job of describing how utilizing science-related materials leads to higher student interest in the subject. However, the one bone I had to pick with the article was its introduction: the reference to a certain Robert Frost poem (to which I was unfamiliar) confused me, and I found myself stuck on the opening sentence for a few minutes. It was only later, when they directly referenced Robert Frost, that I googled the poem, which led to some clarity. For language arts teachers, it may be a well-received introduction to the article--for science teachers with limited knowledge on poetry, not so much.

Importance:
This article is important because it stresses the importance of content-area literacy and mends a disconnect between multiple subjects. The implication that every area of knowledge in school has to be distinct and independent is a notion of the past, and it is important that we begin to blend different paths of knowledge together so that students can be more well-rounded in their learning.

Word Count: 356