Spectacular Space Adventures with Becca

An Apple a Day Keeps the Dr. Away , but What Keeps the Apple from Turning Brown ? What causes apples to turn brown? Apples turn brown when they are cut or bruised because their plant tissue becomes exposed to the air. When this happens an enzyme that is found in apple tissue, called polyphenol oxidase, reacts to the oxygen in the air and oxidizes the phenolic compounds to o-quinones. The o-quinones are what create the brown color by forming amino acids ( McLandsborough, 2017 ). The amount of polyphenol oxidase varies from fruit to fruit. The type of apple, as well as the maturity of the apple, make a difference in the amount of this enzyme the fruit has. Growing conditions can also affect the amount of this enzyme an apple contains. The lower the level of polyphenol oxidase, the less likely the apple is to brown after being cut. Similarly, potatoes contain an enzyme called catechol which reacts with the oxygen in the air to turn the flesh of the potato brown as well. With both ...

Poverty in Schools? A few weeks ago, I had attended a poverty simulation at our school. This was a very eye-opening experience that I will never forget. In the simulation, everyone that came in was assigned a role to play. A person could have been made a father, a mother, a child, or even a grandparent. I was a ten-year-old boy living in a family with a mother who had a job, a father who was recently unemployed, a sixteen-year-old sister who was pregnant, and an eight-year-old little brother that I was meant to babysit during the day. There were a few other families set up similarly to ours and many others with unique situations. The key to the simulation was to stay as true to your role as possible. I found this really hard to do because I wanted to help my family figure out how to get us money and food to survive. Some of the rules to the simulation was that to go anywhere you had to bring a transportation pass, you had to go to work if you had a job, the kids had to go to schoo...

Recently, I had read an article on the website newsela.com  called " Astronaut Links up with Kids to Share his Love of Science ," by  Marylou Tousignant. The astronaut featured in the article is named, Randy Bresnik . He is an American living on the International Space Station about 250 miles  above the Earth along with two other Americans and three other astronauts from around the globe. He had started his six-month mission aboard the Space Station in July of 2017. He will be returning to the Earth in just two months. In the meantime, the video calls the Smithsonian to talk to hundreds of children and answer any questions they may have about astronauts. When he calls into the Smithsonian he does about a 30-minute show showing off all of the exciting aspects of his job to entice children to develop a love for math, science, and technology. He the children the freeze-dried food he eats and how any liquids that get loose bubble up and float around the cabin. Aside from f...

Earth Science!   Eath Science was one of my favorite sciences to take in high school. I had a 100 in that class for pretty much the whole year. Some of my favorite things to do in Earth science were learning about the different rocks and mineral because we got to do fun hands-on learning with them, and weather. I remember watching a video about Hurricane Katrina and while it was very devastating and sad to watch, the videos from inside the eye were wild as this destructive storm was completely stopped for a short period of time. Over the weekend, I had read chapters 10, 11, and 12 in our textbook Teaching Children Science: A discover approach , by Donald Derosa and Joseph Abruscato, which all pertained to Earth Science. Reading through the chapters brought back many memories. I read about things like the layers of the Earth including the mantel, which is just below the crust where earthquake waves move the fastest, and the core where hot molten metal with a str...

Science Teaching and Me!  My group, Group 4, finally got to teach our lessons about week ago. I was very nervous and excited about teaching to the whole fourth-grade class in front of all of my colleagues, but I felt more at ease in the moment. Planning is key when it comes to making a successful lesson plan. In our direct instruction, I believe we planed the content well, we planned for behavior management well, but we did not plan for hiccups. What I mean is we didn't plan for the unexpected to happen. To begin, we did not plan for our powerpoint to freeze. Bishop Dun did not have Google Chome on the computer, so when we opened our Google Slides on Firefox, it did not work. When we then converted the slideshow into a Powerpoint presentation, the formatting was off and some pictures overlapped the words. We also made the mistake of not double and triple checking our note sheets before printing them out. Some of the things we wanted the students to fill out were on the sheet tw...

Outer Planets!  Group three's direct instruction was all about the outer planet. The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranius, and Neptune. When I was younger Pluto used to be included in the outer planets, but now it is in a category all its own and is called a dwarf planet. Group three did a good job of covering all of the different planets. I really liked the texts that came in from Astronaut Annie to ask the students some review questions and to prompt them to write a letter describing the outer planets. I thought that was very creative.  I thought the Vortex game was very fun and engaging for the students as well. I think the students were excited to get up out of their seats to interact with the board. However, when the students were not working at the board, they were very loud. I think I would have tried to make the game seem more like a game show where the students in the audience could hold up numbers that corresponded with the planets so they were involved ...

Half Way There! Group Two's inquiry was very creative. I liked their use of the mystery bags to help the students explore the properties of the planets. It was very impressive that they included hot packs and ice packs in their bags because it showed how far they were willing to go to create an effective lesson. The lesson was introduced by a Voki who told the class he was lost in the Galaxy because he couldn't tell which planet was which. Again, I really like the use of Voki and think it is a very engaging tool. However, I think Voki is more effective when a person's voice is recorded because the cadence of speech is a bit weird when the computer reads. I think if one of their group members had recorded their voice, it would have made it a bit more engaging, however, the students still seemed very engaged the way it was. I think Group Two's modeling was very good. They went through each step of the Scientific Method before having the students begin on their mystery b...