Week 7 Readings

1. From my experience I agree with the view of constructivism. I believe that we create our own knowledge and make sense of new knowledge by using our own personal experiences to construct our opinions views and ideas on a certain subject. I believe that a teacher can stand at the front of a class and teach a lecture and two students get to completely different things because of the background knowledge of each student.
2. I think that it is important for every student to know about disequilibrium because it would allow them to understand that everyone goes through similar experiences as they learn new unfamiliar material. It is this disequilibrium that allows us to strive to learn so that we can restore balance.
3. The idea of assimilation is really interesting to me because it shows that students can somewhat categorize things into general groups with out much instruction. I also think that it is important for us to place new items into these already existing structures so that we might eventually understand the difference and push the information towards accomodation.
4. It is amazing to me at how many different "folders" or schemes the human brain must have. There aren't very many computers out there that can automatically evaluate, restructure, and create new groups in order to fit all of the new information into system correctly.

Science Activity Plan

Tours that I watched

1. Terrains -http://laurencr.blogspot.com/
2. Ecosystems- http://katherinekerript287.blogspot.com/
3.Comparing Communities http://laurynblog56.blogspot.com/

This is My link to my tour:

http://techbretteled.pbworks.com/f/Utah%27s%20different%20Terrain%20.kmz

Google Earth Virtual Tour

I think that there are a lot of great things about Google tours as well as some downfalls. I think that it is such a great idea to give students a better background knowledge and understanding of placed that otherwise they normally wouldn't get to go.

However, it was pretty complicated and difficult to deal with and I can see it getting pretty frustrating in the classroom.

Science Activity Plan

1) Content- Science Core 3rd grade Standard 2 Objective 1C "Classify living and nonliving things in an environment."
2) Pedagogy- Using an aquarium, identify which objects are living and which are nonliving. The aquarium could include plants, rocks, fish, and water. It is a good fit with the content because it clearly demonstrates the difference between living and nonliving things.
3) Technology- Use an electronic microscope to have students collect living and nonliving objects from outside and observe them in a microscope. This fits well with the content and pedagogy because it helps students observe more closely the characteristics of living and nonliving things.

Modules 20, 21

1. A cooperative learning I remember from elementary is working on a science project where we had to build a bridge. After a couple days we then had a competition in the class to see who's bridge could hold the most weight.
In university I remember working on a research project in my Bio 100 class.
2. I believe the cooperative learning can enhance learning as long as ALL five elements are properly functioning. I think it is so important for students to help each other but if one student is doing the entire project both parties fail.
3. The similarities between reciprocal questioning and instructional conversations is that they are both working towards the same goal, comprehension or explanation of ideas. They are different in that IC believes in conversations because each student has something important to say while reciprocal questioning is use questions to provide explanations.
4. Ability grouping would be important to implament into the classroom with guided reading. It is important that each student in the group is at the same level so they can read an appropriate book. A mixed-grouping would be more appropriate in science projects where it would be important to have a variety of learners so that they can help each other out. The effective learners can help the stuggling learners.

Modules 11, 13,14

1. The two instructional strategies that I believe would be very important in the classroom would be understanding the best ways in which children learn as well as finding ways of helping students solidify them in their long term memory.
2.Low-road transfer involves the spontaneous, automatic transfer of highly practiced skills, with little need for reflective thinking.This results for extensive practice of a skill in a variety of contexts until it becomes flexible and developed to automatically. I think that an example of this would be if a student can learn behavioral skills in the class (raising hands, taking turns,) that transfers to their everyday lives.
High-road transfer is when a person purposely and consciously applies general knowledge, a strategy, or a principle learned in one situation to another situation, it is defined by mindful abstraction. I think that an example of this would be in math classes when they use previous knowledge to help them with a more advanced problem they are working on.
3. I believe that high-road is used more because teachers that I have observed tried to intertwine lessons. They used what they were using in social studies to help with their art project or science project. This allows students to draw on their previous knowledge to create further knowledge.
4. I have used both heuristic and algorithms when solving problems in math class. There are some questions that you know an algorithm that allow you to get to the answer faster but there are some problem solving questions in math classes that cause you to reflect on previous knowledge and just common sense to complete.

Google Earth Virtual Tour

Location	Activity Description	Google Earth Content
1. Arches National Park	View three photo's of the Arches	Panorama and Terrain layer is on
2.Utah Lake	View the size of the lake in comparison to a football field	Use Ruler layer
3.Uinta National Park	View the pictures of the forest and see if you can recall the two types of trees shown in this picture.	Panorama layer on
4.Pine Valley Forest	By using the pictures in the panorama view each student is going to view the two different types of environments present at this location.	Panorama, terrain and Weather layer on

This is for Grade 4 science Standard 5 Objective 1C "Locate examples of areas that have characteristics of wetlands, forests, or deserts in Utah."

I decided to do my virtual tour on this standard because I know that I learn with visuals better than any other way. I also felt that literally showing students that these three environments all exist in this state is a pretty rare and incredible thing. It also allows students to better understand the terminology because of the hands on visuals.