Let's Make a Plan!

Lesson planning is such an important part of a teacher's job. Carefully planned lessons can really benefit both teachers and students.

We all know that writing is an important task for students. It helps their communication skills, but beyond that it also helps them to focus and develop their ideas. It's the same for teachers! Writing a lesson plan can help us to really think about our goals for the day. If we reflect on those objectives it's more likely that we're planning meaningful experiences for our students instead of just filling up the day with activities.

Planning lessons can also help us to stay organized. In the middle of a dynamic classroom, it might be easy to lose sight of our goal for the day. With a lesson plan we have a road map that can help us to get back on the right track. It can also serve as a quick last minute checklist to make sure we have all of our supplies- that way we won't be standing in front of 20 seven-year-olds who are ready to see a volcano explode and realize we forgot the vinegar at home...

There are a lot of important parts of an elementary science lesson plan, but two that stand out to me are safety considerations and assessment tools.

First, safety considerations. It's easy to take some basic safety rules for granted as adults, but for kids these ideas may not be so obvious. In the last few weeks I've seen students try to taste their glue sticks on the sly and one particularly enterprising boy try to add some holes to his shirt with a pair of scissors- and this was during a reading lesson! In science, we do a lot of hands-on work with different materials, chemicals, and even living organisms. It's really important that we think about our lessons from a safety point of view and keep reviewing safety procedures with our students.

The second piece is assessment. Maybe I planned the best science lesson in the world, but how will I know if my students really learned from it unless I plan some good assessment too? There are a lot of ways to assess kids (observing them, using a checklist, having a discussion, asking them to do a little writing, etc.). For each of our major objectives, we need to make sure we have a way to see how our students are doing. Using assessment also helps us to revamp our lessons when we need to and to see what we need to go over again tomorrow in a different way. Assessment should inform our teaching decisions.

So make a plan!

A Great Science Resource

Today I have been looking around the National Geographic website, and I want to share it as a great resource for science teachers!

There is a lot of great information on this website. In the Education section, there are resources to help plan lessons around different themes like "Summer Learning." You can find ideas for teaching about beach ecosystems, summer weather events like hurricanes or thunderstorms, and links to information about the night sky all clustered together. You can also create maps of ocean currents or tectonic plates.

National Geographic has a lot of social studies information too, so if you want to create some interdisciplinary lessons this is a good place to start!

The other great thing about this site is that there is a whole Kids' Section where your students can explore science topics on their own. There are great videos about all kinds of animals, and on the Fun Stuff: Science page there are some experiments that kids can try by themselves.

Between the education resources for teachers and the fun activities for kids, I think this site can really be a useful tool!

My Science Story

If you asked me to describe myself, "scientist" is not one of the first words I'd use. It probably wouldn't even make the list. I never would have claimed science as a favorite subject in school. However, I think that if I expand my definitions of "science" and "scientist" I might change my mind. So, I gave this blog an optimistic name (plus I do think science is awesome!) and I have made it a goal to come to think of myself as a scientist by the end of this semester.

I actually don't remember much about science in elementary school. I remember being good at measuring liquids (because I put the measuring cup on a level surface) and good at writing middle school lab reports (because I used the phrase "and/or") but I don't remember being really excited about science.

In college, I was a psychology major. I was suprised to realize that my psych classes counted towards science requirements- I really thought "science" was what my chem major roommate was doing, not what we did in psych. We were even relegated to the basement of the science building.

When I think about it, though, part of what I loved about psychology was the science aspect of it. I liked creating experiments and working in the psych lab. I liked trying to test hypotheses and figuring out the "why" of things. In addition to psych, I have always really liked nature and being outdoors. I think this could be a part of science, too. Going hiking, you can't help but think about how long the trees have been around and how the mountains came to be. I'll call my mom to come outside and see the flock of wild turkeys crossing our street, and marvel at how the little babies have grown into big turkeys now (and what weird noises they make!).

So when I think about these things, I realize that there might be a scientist inside of me. I'm looking forward to going back to elementary school science this semester to redefine how I think of science and to think about ways to make science memorable and meaningful for my students!