The Penguin Project

Today in class, Dr. Smirnova discussed one great activity one of her past students is doing while student teaching to a second grade class.  The class she is teaching is currently learning about penguins and the class had many interesting questions about penguins.  The student teacher decided to write a letter to an author who wrote a book entirely about observing penguins, asking him the questions proposed by the students.  He replied to all of their questions and even provided pictures!  I thought this was a great idea to show students that the classroom walls should not stop their learning about any topic at all.  I will use this idea in my future classroom to teach my students about various topics that they are not familiar with.

What Wacky Weather!!

Spring has been trying to move in during this past week.  During the day, while the sun is out shining, the snow has been melting, but at night, the melted snow turns back into ice because of the temperature drop when the moon replaces the sun.  On Friday, February 25th, it rained all day long but once it got dark out it, the rain turned into heavy snow.  There must be a correlation between the time of day and the temperature by the way I am observing the snow, rain, sun and moon.  I'm just looking forward to the warm Springtime weather during Spring Break next week!!

Since the temperatures outside have been very unpredictable lately, I have been relying on the Internet to help me decide on what to wear every morning.  In my future classroom, I would like to incorporate websites, such as http://www.weather.com/, to aid in my teaching about weather patterns and weather observations.  I could have my students watch daily forecast videos everyday to show them that the weather is constantly changing around us and how it affects people worldwide. 

This week, meteorologists and farmers are having concerns regarding crops blooming too early in the Southern states of America because of the early warm weather they are having due to the jetstreams.  The Morning Forecast Can Be Found Through This Link where I could have the students reflect upon the weather through this forecast website everyday.

Using Wordle in My Future Classroom

In class this past Wednesday, Kira had an opportunity to Micro-Teach.  She used the online program, Wordle.  This program can take any group of words you want to display and put them in a cloud-like form that looks interesting to the eye.  You can also put blog links into the program and it will point out the words used the most throughout the blog in the "Wordle cloud."  I thought this was a great idea to get students thinking about any type of vocabulary, even for science!  I decided to create my own Wordle that corresponded with my very own science blog to test it out and see how it works.  This is the Wordle that was created by posting the link to my blog in the designated area on Wordle.  So, here is my Science Blog Wordle!  Enjoy! :)  Try and make your own Wordle for your blog, it is a lot of fun playing around with the "randomize" button to see all the cool designs.

Introducing Children to the World Around Us

In first grade, I remember taking a field trip to our town's post-office.  This may seem to be a lesson about the postal service, but my teacher made it a fun-filled day where we learned about science, also.  Since the post-office was down the road and around the corner from my school, my class had the opportunity to walk there.  My teacher pointed out to her class the leaves that had fallen to the ground because it was during the fall season.  Most of us enjoyed crunching through the crispy leaves on the ground, but we also learned that leaves lose their chlorophyll, which makes them apt to fall to the ground.  I thought this was a very clever way to introduce a scientific topic that was related to our local envrironment to a class of first graders.

Making connections to students' daily lives is a vital part of the process of learning science.  The only way I remember learning about chlorophyll in the first grade was because we had the opportunity to have a hands on experience where we got to see and play with the leaves that had fell off the trees during the fall season.  According to the constructivist theory, this promotes learning by actively constructed by the learner as they come to experience the world.  My first grade teacher took my prior knowledge of leaves falling during autumn and a new personal experience of walking to the post-office to create an all new experience of stomping around town in the crispy, crunchy leaves.  After we had the opportunity to play in the leaves, we reflected upon it, which led to the understanding of the term and idea, chlorophyll.

I believe it is very important to teach children about green science for many different reasons.  They need to be aware of the world around them and it is important for them to know that these resources us humans use to make goods may not be as readily available as they are now.  Children need to learn that it is important to conserve the natural resources we have.  This could by done by taking the students out of the classroom to observe nature.  Through this, students will create a bond with nature and will have more respect for what is around them.

I believe that my classes always took meaningful field trips.  We were always aware of the world around us and we learned about things derrived from nature.  I couldn't think of any other way to improve the trips I have taken in elementary school because they were all filled with science, just like my first grade class' trip to the post-office.  I know it is important to take children outside of the classroom to build a respect for the world around us.

This video is of a pre-k class taking a trip to observe and learn about reptiles.  It seems a little hectic, but I believe that is because of the age lvel.  Pre-k children cannot concentrate as long as third and fourth graders can. 

This video is a great example of how students can learn about the environment around them by taking fieldtrips to fun and exciting destinations.

Its Gettin' Warmer!!

This is it!  It feels as though The Mount community has been counting down the days until warmer weather.  We've been hit by extreme winter weather this year and I can say that I am totally ready for this snow to melt, observe the birds chirping, and not have to bundle up to walk to class every day!  Today, the temperature got to about 55 degrees and tomorrow it should reach to around 60.  I can't wait for the snow to completely melt but I am dreading walking through the muddy slush that will be intruding the sidewalks for the next few days.  This sunny, warm weather we are currently having is making my oh so anxious for the summer time, but for now, I am excited to soon be able to sit on the grass, under under a shady tree reading some books in the fresh, open air.  Go Outside and Enjoy the Wonderful Weather!! :)

Science in the News

Today in class we had group discussions about science articles we had written reviews about.  I thought this was a great idea because we each used our listening and communicating skills.  It was great to get the opportunity to listen to the varying articles my peers had found.  I will use this strategy in my future classroom so students can share their work with their peers.  This was a great assignment to get better related with the science world around us.

Searching for an interesting article to use with an elementary science class can sometimes be difficult. It is important to keep in mind to find a topic that is both relatable and interesting to children. While searching for an article to review for my Science Methods class, I came across a great article from yahoo.com. It is titled, “Germany sells vision for ‘green toys’ to world.” There is a particular issue involved in this article. In this issue, the author explains how we need to teach children about the future and the importance of living a green lifestyle. I chose this particular topic because children can easily relate to having toys and learning how they are eventually going to evolve into becoming green toys. This article could be introduced to the class during an eco-friendly introduction lesson. I could read the article to the class or have the class read it aloud or independently. We could then brainstorm ideas of why going green is important and what we could do to make our lives more eco-friendly.

You can follow this link below to the article I reviewed:

Green Toys in Germany 

The Best Teamwork Around!

After being hit with snow storm after snow storm, my car was buried in a winter-mix of ice, snow, and slush.  I knew digging out my car was something impossible if attempted alone.  I asked the help of my peers in my Methods of Science class to give me a helping hand.  It took us about an hour to get my car out and onto the road.  I am so thankful for thir help because my car would still be stuck in the snow if they weren't willing to help. 

Here was my car before digging it out.  It went through a few blizzards before I decided to brave the cold and dig it out.

This is a picture showing the layers from each blizzard.  I thought it was pretty cool because you can see the first blizzard as the bottom layer, then the ice storm and topped off by the final and most recent blizzard!  It seemed like a pretty interesting and cool observation that I wanted to share with my blog followers.

Finally, all dug out! The final result after spending an hour digging snow and scrapping ice off.


Jess Wood and Catherine Lipsky were a great help and I just wanted to thank them on here as I show a few pictures from our adventure in the snow with my car... Thanks so much, girls! :)

Class Reflection and Severe Weather!

While this blog was mainly created for my scientific observations and discussion questions to course readings, I will also discuss and reflect upon our class instructions.  For me, being a future teacher, it is important to reflect upon what we do in class so I can incorporate it into my future classroom.


On the first day of our class, Dr. Ludmila Smirnova had us first create name-tags so we would get to know the names around us.  This was a great idea because there was not much time to introduce everyone to the class one by one.  On these name-tags we also did an ice breaker activity.  We wrote down one name of a science teacher we had during elementary school, three adjectives that describe science, and our definition of learning.  After completing this, we shared our answers in our group of four then we created a team name to show that this class is all about team work and helping each other out. 


I enjoyed this ice breaker activity in many different ways.  It was a great way to get to know about our group, as well as having a bonding experience with sharing our thoughts and sometimes having similar responses.  Creating team names had our class becoming creative while working together as a team.  I will definitely use this idea in my future classroom to have my students create a bond and so that I will get to know everyones names a little faster by reading their name tags.


The weather lately has been crazy!  In Newburgh, NY there has been many blizzards and an ice storm leading to two consecutive snow days for Mount Saint Mary College last week.  Since our class is so technologically advanced, we had the opportunity to have a virtual classroom so we didn't have to miss classtime.  This was a great experience for me to have.  It kept our class up to date with our lessons and we didn't fall behind like all of my other classes.