Maddy's Science Methods I Blog

                                                                        What did I learn this week?   I learned more about ecology by examining the differences between food chains and food webs. The difference is that food chains follow a single path of how energy and matter move through an ecosystem. Food webs are more detailed and show relationships between each level of the food chain. We created our own ecosystem in class and my group decided to choose the Marine biome. I have attached our created ecosystem starting with the algae as our producer and ending with the shark as our apex predator.  Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew?  I kinda already knew about food chains and food webs but going over the definitions resolidified t...

  I What did I learn this week?  This week in lab, we learned about 5E modeling and were able to delve into what each part entails for science instruction. Below, I have attached our group's slides for the presentations we did in class, summarizing each of the 5 E's. I enjoyed learning more about the evaluation portion as we discussed traditional and non-traditional forms of assessing student understanding at the end of the unit, my favorite being concept maps or group projects! 5E Modeling   Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew?  After learning about each of the 5 E's in 5E instructional modeling, I was able to reflect back on my own experiences in science education and could think of several instances in which I, as a student, felt like I was a part of each stage. Being able to break each E down with my group helped to foster my understanding of my role as a teacher for each, as well as what my students' roles would be.  How can you...

  What did I learn this week?   This week in lab we talked about different life cycles for plants as well as different insects. We talked about a variety including fast plants, lentil seeds, mealworms, butterflies, and were able to create our own with play dough.  It was cool to see how they differentiated from each other and in what ways they were similar. It was nice to actually be able to partake in some experiments as it brought me back to the days when I was a student learning these things for the first time.  What can you relate to what you've already learned?  I felt that these topics this week weren't things I was unfamiliar with but I was nice to see a variety of experiments that I can use in my own classroom. It was nice to go more in-depth about the germination process and do an experiment with our own seedlings! How can you apply this to your future teaching?  After our group conversed about the reading we talked a lot about the importance of ea...

This week I learned about the different characteristics of living things. Before relearning this information, I was aware there was a set of characteristics that made up living things but I was unsure as to what all 8 of them were. It was nice to draw each characteristic out on paper and discuss how we wanted to represent it in our model and engage with a more hands-on learning experience.  When participating in the seed activity, talking about dormant vs active seeds it was a bit confusing to me as I felt like I was still unsure as to what I was looking for. The video did help but I felt like another model or diagram would've been more helpful for us to make sure we were observing what was needed.  Overall, I felt like this lab did a great job of emphasizing the use of models and diagrams when showing students new materials. Models are definitely something I want to frequently incorporate in my classroom as they were extremely helpful for me as a student and are a good visual...