Activity 8: Integration of Knowledge and Application to Teaching

1.       Work with any of the Chemistry Simulations and/or develop a demonstration to create your own Teaching Ideas. The criteria for this is as follows:

a.       Must Identify and meet three next generation science education standards within the K-12 grade band.

·   2-PS1-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.

·   2-PS1-2. Analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.

·   3-PS2-3. Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other.

b.      Must be original work.

·   The Teaching Idea that I decided to go with is magnets and materials. For this lesson I would have magnets for all the children and 10 different objects that they will first predict if it is magnetic or not magnetic. As soon as they are done making their predictions they will then take each object and test their prediction. Each student will have a worksheet where they can record their prediction and their answers.

c.       Must be scientifically accurate and appropriate for the directed grade level.

·   Second Grade

d.      Must have an accompanying worksheet with at least 7-10 questions related to each activity/simulation. Answering these questions should be related to meeting the science standards identified.

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2.       How do you feel your understanding of science, and chemistry in particular, has changed due to your experiences in this class?

·   When going into this class I was a little nervous, because Chemistry has never been an easy subject for me, but this class was definitely not what I was expecting. All of these experiments were easy to relate to and easy to conduct as well. You never really know how much chemistry is around you and taking this class got me to notice that and made me more interested in the experiments that we did. The simulations were a great tool for me to understand for example the liquids, solids, gases, and states of matter in a way that I could fully understand what I was really doing.

3.       What was the most challenging concept covered and why?

·   I think that my most challenging concept covered is the Acids and Bases Activity because that is something that I have never truly understood why the acids are acids and why the bases are bases. The basics were easy for me to understand even before this class, but when it got down to understanding the technical definition and aspects of this activity, it was a little difficult for me, but as the activity went on it was great. The simulation helped a lot too.

4.       How could you facilitate future learning to your students who might also find learning about science and chemistry challenging?

·   Being and Early Childhood Education major I will be covering a lot of the basic chemistry points. What has always been important to me as a student learning to educate young children properly and positively has been the students learning by doing. Hands on activities are important to me and allows the children to be creative and where they get a little room to experiment. Knowing that Chemistry was never really my strong point even when I was younger really makes me want to make it enjoyable for those students who might find it challenging just like I did. So I think it is important to be aware of those students and make it so that they are taking away just as much information as any other student.

5.       As you think about your future in education, give three ways you think you’ll be able to implement the skills you’ve learned in this class.

1.       Learning by doing. Like I said above I think that is a great way to learn and that it is also important. The more hands on the students are the better. When teaching young children I know that they will have a hard time sitting in their desks listening to me talk and talk, so experiments like we have done in this class would definitely be something I will implement.

2.       Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There were questions that I had during this class and getting help is not a bad thing. Implementing that in my classroom will be important to me because I want my students to be comfortable in asking questions that they may have when dealing with something that they are not sure about.

3.       Using the simulations. Like before I had said that the simulations really helped me to get a better understanding of how some of the experiments worked. Using simulations in a classroom is a great way for some students to learn, because they all learning differently.