Marquetta Strait February 14, 2013 CU Life Science Strategies Training Reflection: 1 On the first day of Claflin Universitys

Learning Improvement for Future Excellence (CU Life) mathematics training, we were introduced to Mrs Robinson. Mrs. Robinson is a science teacher and science coach at Whittaker Elementary School. Whittaker Elementary School is one of the top schools in Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5. Mrs. Robinson has completed several years as an educator in Special Education and ventured to Whittaker Elementary School to try something new. She also has a myriad of instructional strategies that will better our teaching experience with our students. For our first training, session, Mrs. Robinson gave us an overview of what we would be discussing throughout our science sessions. One of the topics that we discussed was the 5Es by Karl Surplus. The 5 Es are engage, extend, explain, explore, and evaluate. She also identified the five science strategies, which can also be applicable to other subjects as well. Throughout every lesson that is taught, there should always be a hook, access to prior knowledge, identify misconceptions, state the expectation for learning, and create a sense of why do I need to learn this. The hook is just a way to engage students and get them prepared for the next lesson. I was very intrigued with a hook that Mrs. Robinson used to prepare her students on how the environment plays an essential role in the well-being of the animals and humans. For her hook, she created a classroom hopscotch on the floor. She had the students to pretend that they were geese and to make the geese sounds. After the students played a regular game of hopscotch, she then used a marker to eliminate some spots and had the students play hopscotch again. This

M. Strait|2

time, if the students landed on the eliminated spots, they were then eliminated from the game. She then eliminated more spots to make the game more challenging. After playing the

hopscotch, she began her lesson on how the environment can be harmful to animals and will cause animals to move to a new location. This could be due to smog, forest fires, or floods. By accessing prior knowledge, the students will be able to review concepts that will hep build the foundation so that the new concepts will fall on good ground. Having student discuss their prior knowledge can also allow the teacher to identify any misconceptions the students may have. In our session, Mrs. Robinson had a list of twenty different objects, such as a mirror, cotton ball, and a rusty nail. We had to identify which objects reflected light. Of the twenty objects, two of us had listed nine items and the remaining students listed six items. Mrs. Robinson questioned how we chose the items that we listed and many of us said that we were taught that metal reflects light. After we gave our reasoning, she explained that all of the items reflect light because they are visible. The expectation of learning is to allow students to form their own hypothesis and test whether there hypothesis was correct or incorrect and why. Lastly, the students often question the reason why they have to learn these concepts. Teachers should make an effort to get the students to comprehend that science can be used daily and that their future careers will include conducting some form of research and experimenting in some type of fashion. Being in CU Life has caused me to reevaluate how I will approach my instruction. I was always concerned about teaching science. After being in this session, it proved to me that I am only going to be an effective science teacher if I take the time to study science so that it will perfect my lesson and make me more informative on how I can better explain the scientific

M. Strait|3

concepts to my students. With the assistance of the CU Life Program, I will become a more effective teacher and be more creative in the way that I introduce my lessons.