Week One Done!

The first week of Science Methods Completed!

Yesterday was the last day of week one classes for Science Methods. It has been fun so far and I am really excited to start teaching lessons. Reading over the letters from past students has made it very clear to me that I will have to keep myself on task and not procrastinate more than I ever had to before. It sounds like it will be a tough class, but I am ready to get back into what I love, working with students. I excited to be teaching science as a bit of a contrast to the English curriculum I had been working with in my past two methods classes. I am super happy that our topic is the solar system. Space is a very fascinating topic.

I am also really excited about the Google Drive folders! I never knew that I could organize my drive like that. After seeing how simple it was to create folders, I feel a bit silly never using them before. I think this will really help me stay organized. I am glad I won't have to worry about accidentally not naming a piece of work and losing it in a sea of unnamed documents because it will be in a labeled folder. I was excited learning about Google Forms as well. I never knew how to make one of those either. I think that would be a very engaging way to not only introduce my lessons for Science Methods and science in general, but for all subjects. It would be a quick and interactive Do Now that the students should enjoy. This blog should also be interesting to keep up with. I will be able to get my ideas out when they are fresh and share them with others with each entry.

Aside from what we did in class, I tested myself this week with a pre-test. The pre-test covered many different areas of science. After taking it, I realized that I did not remember as much as I thought I did. I need to brush up on some more facts before I begin conducting lessons. It is a good thing that I have kept all of my work since middle school to look back on! I have become very good at memorizing facts, so after a little refreshing, I will gain my confidence back. Science was never my all time favorite class, but it was close to the top. I had some awesome teachers along the way that made the subject really enjoyable. My favorite of all the sciences would have to be biology. I thought it was really exciting to learn how the different parts of the body function and what made human beings run. My least favorite science was physics. A lot of what we learned didn't make sense to me at first and it always took the help of my lab partners and my teacher to get an understanding. My physics teacher was one of the nicest people I have ever met, so that made the class go much smoother than it could have gone. I think my favorite thing about science has always been doing labs and experiments. Labs allowed me to get out of my chair and problem solve with my fellow classmates. I have always been a quiet and shy person, so it is almost ironic that I would like to work with others, but I did. It was also satisfying to be able to bounce ideas off of one another and having the results come out the way you hoped. I'm would like to include experiments into my lessons where I can because I believe the students would enjoy doing so. The major thing that I hope to bring to my lessons this semester is enthusiasm. When the teacher is into what he or she is teaching, the more likely that the student will enjoy it too. Even if the students we work with have never liked science before, I am going to try my best to get them to thoroughly enjoy what they are learning. I hope to do so by incorporating the technology that they love and hands on activities.

I'm ready for the work to start next week and hope for a great semester to come!