See the USA Week 2

Last Friday, we posted our week 2 blogs for our "See the USA" project. The students moved to the second state that they are traveling through for their road trip. They were instructed to go to my website: santorosciencerocks.pbworks.com to get the information for their state. I emailed them the science table that they used to complete their week 2 blog entries. Each team has a team Gmail account, which makes communication between the teacher and teams, very easy.
I am noticing, they the students are getting more familiar with blogging, but I still have a lot of practice to do until it's smooth.

Technology Unit

For E2T2 I will be doing the "See the USA" project for my technology unit. As a team, we are taking on certain parts of this unit. For science, students will blog each week throughout their travels around the United States. They will have a different requirement each week for their blogs. Students created team blogs on edublog, and they will individually post their responses to the requirements on my pbworks web page. For this project, not only am I intending to get my students familiar with blogging, I also would like them to become more comfortable with navigating important internet resources. On my pbworks web page, they have to click on specific websites to get information required for each week. Students have many resources to use for this project, and I'm excited to see how this project progresses after break.

Blogging in Science

The last week before break, we started our sixth grade team project called, "See the USA." For this project, student have to individually blog about what they see along their travels across the United States. For the first week of their travels, they had to blog about what scientific sites they saw, and how weathering and erosion have affected these land marks. I have a website called . There, the students find requirements for blogging each week for science. It worked out pretty well getting them familiar with the blogs, and I'm hoping that the more I practice with them, the faster it will go.

*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.