*Collaboration, Globalness, Invention"

In 6th grade, we are putting together a project called "See the USA." Students are placed in groups of four, and are instructed to plan a road trip across the United States. Students are to create their own routes, given certain perimeters and guidelines. Each student in the group will have a job and they will have to collaborate together in order to complete their route across the country. Groups are setting up blogs to link and embed landmarks, and state research along the way. Hopefully we can get this project rolling soon. It has been a tedious process setting up emails and creating inquiry questions for each day of the trip.

*Information Literacy*

I have enjoyed exploring "destiny" and finding that there are many helpful resources for me to use in my science classroom. I also found it interesting that I can look in "Encyclopedias" and find assessment under "Curriculum Standards" that other teachers have used from around Colorado.

*Self Direction in Science*

It is important that students are allowed to create and generate their own thoughts and ideas, but there has to be perimeters and guidelines. Students must develop a certain level of mastery in the subject area before they can create. There are certain assignments that students do have a choice to create and explore, but then there are some that I have instructed them to do with particular expectations. I just did a project called "My Trip as a Drip" where students could create a project of any type, to demonstrate the water cycle. I found in my assessments that they learned a lot, because they were able to create and explore on their own.

November 5th Reflection

I have been working on my pbworks website for my science classes. I would like to get every kid signed into the website so that I can post assignments, and projects on there. They will also be able to post reflections on this website. I also discovered that there are lots of cool resources online using voice threads. I think voice threads could be a neat reflection tool as well where students listen to each others and learn from each others reflections.

E2T2 October 27 - Blogging

Blogging is a great way for professionals to communicate with each other. I think it might also be a good idea to start a classroom blog for my students to use to reflect on their goals, and successes for the week. I could put a reflection question or prompt on an edublog, and my students could reflect on that question or prompt. This would be a great way for students to become familiar with blogging, and it would also provide great feedback to me as to what they felt successful in or struggled with this week.

E2T2 October 27, 2010

As a science teacher, I think that creating a wiki through pbworks will be a great way to communicate with students online. I would like them to be able to find assignments/projects/labs on my wiki. I think that it is important that I use this in my classroom so that students can become familiar with the internet. When students are absent, they can easily find the assignments. This wiki will also allow students to work collaboratively with each other in projects and labs and upload them to the pbworks (santorosciencerocks.pbworks.com).

Differentiation and Labs

I do a lot of hands on work in my science classroom. I think that it's important to do hands on activities so that students are able to interact with the material. I also try to use many different ways of presentation in my classroom. Delivering instruction can occur in many ways, and it's vital that, as teachers, we constantly direct our instruction to different fields of learners.
I am loving teaching 6th grade, and I can't wait for our next unit. We are finishing up chemistry now, and moving onto human body and biology. I can't wait to dissect pigs!!