Welcome to a very busy week. I think that the debates are going well...please use the blog to reply to the positions taken on Genetic Engineering, Global Warming and Evolution, especially if your questions/comments were not addressed in class.
We will present our lessons to Jolley elementary students on Thursday. We will meet in the school office at 3:15. Jolley is on University Drive just one block south of Main Street . Be sure to submit your lesson plans to D2L. More to come next week as we prepare for IdeaFest and explore our topics in depth for the technical paper.
Have a great week!
Dr. E
Testing my blog
ReplyDeleteI thought the outreach project was really fun and a great experience. I am glad we had a chance to do our project outside in the sun. We taught the students about competition between the Burrowing owl and the Island fox. We played a game where one group pretended to be foxes and the other group pretended to be owls. The owls tried to flick the mice (food source) into their nests and the foxes hunted mice hidden around on the playground. The owls had a hard time trying the put the mice into their nests and the foxes proved to be great hunters. I was suprised at how well the kids knew about extinction and the endangerment of species. One student told us that the animals would "expire." I was definately not expecting that answer and was very amused. I thought the overall project went well and I'm glad we took the time to do it.
ReplyDeleteI thought that our outreach projects went really well this week. The students seemed to enjoy themselves very much. I was a little worried at first because our group did not have an invigorating activity for the students, but they seemed to enjoy the discussion none the less, and also had fun with the ‘snake riddles’ that we challenged them with. They really enjoyed seeing all of the pictures of the snakes…especially the boys. Overall, it was a great experience and I enjoyed interacting with the students.
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday, my group presented our debate over global warming. We knew that it would be difficult to persuade people to take the con side of the issue, but I felt that we did a good job regardless. We found a lot of useful information that helped make our argument strong and I think we helped to get students thinking about the issue and their own stance.
The outreach project was a good experience. Our group presented the concept of competition through an activity. The kids were divided into owls and foxes; owls had to flick mice into their nest using a spoon while the foxes hunted for mice around the playground. I was really impressed with the kids' knowledge of extinction and endangerment. They were able to grasp the concept from the activity and understand that since the owls had difficulty obtaining food, they would soon become endangered or extinct. I thought this was a great opportunity and I'm glad we took the time to do it.
ReplyDeleteI felt our activity went very well on Thursday. Our group did an activity on competition among burrow owls and island foxes. The kids seemed to enjoy the activity, and understood the concept of competition and some of the outcomes that could result from it. Overall, this opportunity was fun to be a part of, and it gave me some practice teaching science to students, which was very beneficial.
ReplyDeleteTuesday's class consisted of more debates. The global warming topic was interesting and I learned quite a few things that I had not known before which helped to broaden my mind as to which side I would take.
ReplyDeleteThursday we went to the elementary school to show the kids our projects on island evolution. My group did a game that involved moving to different "islands" via the information on a card that was given to them, including traits and features of the environment that would evolve them, as the animal, over time. Overall it went well and the kids seemed to understand the message, and it was nice to get out of the classroom and do something different.
I thought the outreach program was a success. Our group worked well with the children and were able to get our message arcoss as well as have a good time creating islands. Overall it was a rewarding and fun experience.
ReplyDeleteI felt the debates were a great way to relay information about the topics. Although they seemed more like presentation then debates. I would have liked more back and forth from the two different sides. Our group was debating the con side for Genetic Engineering, which I do not support. The other groups debated on Evolution and Global Warming. I have a hard time believing in either of them. I do not believe our planet could sustain life long enough to compensate change over billions and billions of years. On the issue of Global Warming, I am hesitant to take a side because of the lack of evidence. In my mind this topic is tainted by polticians.
The outreach at Jolly Elementary School was a blast. It was fun to see the kids get into the games. It was really surprising how much the kids knew. I didn't expect any of the kids to know the term "invasive species", but one girl piped up with an excellent description. Also I was surprised by the detailed description that a kid gave of Hawaii. I also think that the games were a useful education tool. I think the kids got the basic idea/facts.
ReplyDeleteLater, we worked on our IdeaFest posters. These came together quicker than expected.
As far as the Outreach paper, I was a little confused as to what is required. Length, Style (APA),etc????
The outreach program was very interesting project. I really think the kids enjoyed the activity and i was pleasantly surprised at how much they knew about endangered and extinct species. I think from the activity my group planned for them they were able to see the affects that competition has on species.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great project for both the after school kids and also the idea class. I hope they continue something like this in the future.
The outreach program was very interesting and I thought that it went very well. The kids seemed very interested in some of the material and they seemed to retain a lot of the information. I thought that the debates went very well. It was interesting to hear both sides of the debate and it was a very informative.
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday of this week the debate on global warming between the final two groups took place. Both groups did very well in researching their side of the argument and presenting it in the debate.
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday we did our outreach project. This was definitely one of the more exciting things I've gotten to do in my classes this semester, but that may also be because I'm an Education major. Our outreach lesson went very smoothly and all of our members contributed equally to the project. It was really a lot of fun! It was also fun to watch the other groups in the class give their lessons to the students. I think our entire class did a great job of getting these students interested and engaged in our lessons. All groups had great lessons.
There was one more debate on Tuesday which I found to be informative on a new and interesting topic. Global warming is always an interesting subject because it affects the whole world.
ReplyDeleteTuesday's class consisted of more debates.
Thursday was a fun way to get out of class and move around and to teach kids about the importance of science. We showed the kids our project on island evolution and played a game with them. Our group wanted to give the kids a broader knowledge of island evolution of birds and to create an atmosphere to which they will be excited about science and evolution in the future. The outreach was overall fun and helpful to teaching science literacy to the young minds of Jolly Elementary. It was also nice to be out of the classroom.
On Tuesday, the final debates took place. Both groups did a very good job of presenting their information and had a lot of research to back up their viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday, the class got to present to the kids at Jolley Elementary. This was a lot of fun teaching to kids. I'm an education major so I particularly enjoyed it, but I don't think you have to be in order to have fun teaching kids about science! Our group did a lot of work together and were very well prepared for this project. It was a lot of fun!
Tuesday, my group debated the topic on global warming and I still believe that it is not happening because of the human interaction and my group's presentation convinced half of the class to side with non-human interaction has caused global warming. I had two topics to discuss because the other group had 5 members where we had 4, and it went well over all but there is so much information out there, and so many differences in opinions that it is still a debatable topic as our two groups showed as we had unresolved issues after our debate.
ReplyDeleteThursday was the outreach, I expressed my feelings on the reflection paper. The children were wild and over all the experience was a success with the students learning the material and our groups getting a broader understanding on teaching other students.
I had a lot of fun with the outreach project. I love being around kids and it was cool to see how excited they got when we told them we were gonna teach them about penguins. The kids were also a lot smarted than I think we had originally anticipated. They picked up the information quickly and when asked to decide which environment was best suited for their penguin, they were right on top of it. Not one person got it wrong when asked. Either we're really good teachers, or they were pretty smart.
ReplyDeleteThis week we got to put our knowledge of scientific literacy and biogeography into practices via the action component. Although the kids certainly did have a lot of energy (understandably so) they were surprising attentive turning our brief talk with them. I was impressed at the level of knowledge some of the students had. Almost all of them were able to take what they learned from our talk and apply it to the competition activity we set up.
ReplyDelete