Owl Pellets

I really LOVED this weeks science activity of dissecting owl pellets. I have dissected a sheep's eyeball, a worm, a fetal pig and a frog before but I have never dissected an owl pellet. I found it very interesting taking a part the owl pellet and finding all of small bones inside. It was really cool to try and analyze bones that were inside of the pellet. I think the bones that were inside my owl pellet were that of a shrew. I think dissecting an owl pellet is very non-threatening especially for young elementary students. I also believe that students would find it very interesting because not every owl pellet has the same skeleton inside of it. As Michelle showed us there are so many extensions that can take place after dissecting the owl pellet. I really want to use this activity in my classroom in the future so I took a look around to see what else I could find out about owl pellets.After searching it seems as though the average price for an owl pellet is between $1.75-$1.99. This seems relatively inexpensive and I am sure if that many owl pellets were purchased in bulk the price per owl pellet would drop down. In my searching I found a really great website all about owl pellets that is great to use for both students and teachers.

This website has information for students on what owl pellet is, how the pellets are formed, what's inside the pellets, and why they are important to study. The website also has a virtual dissection page,where students can "pull" apart the owl pellet and then place the "bones" that are found inside the pellet onto a blue print of a skeleton of the animal its eaten. I think this would be a great resource for students to use to learn more about owl pellets as well as piece some of the skeletons together. The website it also very useful for teachers. The website contains a teacher's resource page which contains a bunch of FREE materials. The website has instructional materials available, a video, and some extension activities (food chains, flight experiments, and information on bird banding). It also contains coloring pages that are pictures of various owls and facts about them. This is a website that I will be definitely bookmarking for future use!

KidWings Virtual Owl Pellet Dissection

Math Observation

Last week at my clinical placement I saw a really cool math lesson about even and odd numbers taken from the Everyday Math Curriculum. This was the first lesson in which even and odd numbers were being introduced to the first grade students. The lesson first began students counting by twos. The teacher asked the students if they noticed any patterns as they counted by twos. A few students noticed that they skipped one number every time they counted by two's. The teacher then asked two students to come to the front of the room. She told the two volunteer students to face each other and hold hands. She then explained to the students that the two volunteers were a pair. She then put up a T-Chart using the computer projector. One half of the the T-chart was labeled "All in Pairs" and the other half was labeled "Not All in Pairs." She recorded the number 2 in the "All in Pairs". She then asked another student to join the two students in front of the room. She had the third student stand back to back with one of the students already standing up in front of the room. She then counted the number of students in the front of the room along with the students. She then introduced the idea of "odd man out". She asked the students if they knew what that phrase meant, one student explained that it meant the person doesn't have a partner. After a short discussion they recorded the number 3 in the "Not all in Pairs" column. This process continued with every single student being pulled to the front of the room, counting the number of students out loud and then discussing if the number was in all in pairs or not in pairs. The teacher then explained that when the numbers are not all in pairs it meant it was odd, because "someone" was left out, and that all of the numbers that have all pairs are called even. These terms were then talked about and practiced several times. Now after this lesson every day when they have their calender time, they are asked whether or not the number of days they have been in school is an odd or an even number. Surprisingly after only a few days all most all of the students are able to identify even and odd numbers. I thought this was a very interesting, unique, and engaging way for students to learn about odd and even numbers and it seemed to stick with them.

The image below is very similar to the T-chart that was created in the classroom during the lesson.

Mean, Median, Mode, Range (Math Make Up Blog- October 9)

I was absent on Friday, October 9 due to illness. During the math class that day the base group presented a lesson using bubbles focusing on measure the diameter of the bubbles, and the mean, median, and mode of the bubbles. I read through the lesson that they have posted on the D2L site and I found it to be very interesting and definitely inquiry based. I believe that it is very important to completley understand the meaning of mean, median and mode. Media often uses mean, median, and mode in reporting various facts and figures. Many times the media also portrays these figures in a bias ways to benefit themselves. It is important for students to understand the meanings of the math terms so that when they are reading through reports that may be represented to them they can critically think about what the data really means as opposed to taking the information presented to them at face values. Over the course of my education studying mean,median, and the mode has come up many times. We studied these math terms and practiced finding them over and over and over again through worksheets, homework, and tests. We never once explored these math terms and how they really worked or how they are used in the real world. I think for a true understanding students need to explore these math concepts and apply them to real situations.

After doing some searching I found two really cool math lesson involving these math concepts on the NCTM website.

The first lesson I found was titled a Mathematical Cornucopia of Pumpkins. This lesson was in Teaching Children Mathematics journal publish in September 2006. This lesson involves students using and exploring the concepts of mean, median, mode as well as mass, volume, circumference, and diameter. Students collect the data on the seed count and seed mass as well. After students collect the data they sort through it and try to create the understanding of the mathematical data by looking at the data as well as their actual pumpkins. It seems like this would a lesson that students would really enjoy exploring. It also seems appropriate for the time of year seeing a Halloween is only a few days away. This is definitely a lesson that I will consider using in my classroom and one that I have saved on my computer for future use.



The second lesson I found on the NCTM website is titled Generating Meaning for Range, Mode, Median and Mean. This lesson was published in the Teaching Children Mathematics journal in the November 2009 issue. This lesson involved students collecting data, thinking of ways that the data could be interpreted, introducing the mathematical concepts and then using real world examples. I really like this lesson because students are developing their own understanding for the mathematical concepts as they are exploring the data. They are not just given a definition to use to describe the concepts. They use the concepts and then learn the definition. I think that this is a great way to learn because students understand concepts differently and by letting students explore they are able to develop their own understanding to use.

The image above is the way in which I was taught how to use mean, median, mode and range. It can be a great real world example of how these concepts work. However, it can not be the only way we teach these important mathematical concepts to students if we want them to reach a true understanding.

Teaching Science

Last week (October 19-23) we (my clinical partner and myself) taught our science unit on healthy living (nutrition, sleep, and physical activity) to first graders. I had an AWESOME time! Over all the lessons we taught together and as individuals went really well. I was really happy with how well the week really went. Of course there are always things that I will need to continue to improve upon and I am by no means an expert of teaching but I am very happy with how things went. The students understood the material that was presented to them and overall they seemed to enjoy it. One thing that I do want to work on is how to react a little more quickly or have some strategies for when something unexpected comes up. For example the lesson I taught on Wednesday afternoon did not go as well as I wanted it to. One of the students started crying in the middle of the lesson because he felt like he had no friends. One student was complaining about how boring school was (this is a daily occurrence) and one students was very sleepy and not participating. I did my best to especially include these students in the activity by calling on them. But to no avail some of the issues still continued, it did seem to really interrupt the progress of the other students as they seemed interested and in their exit slips even the students that were struggling to follow still correctly identified what I wanted them to. I would just like to have more strategies to help me out in situations like this because I was not sure how I should have reacted. I continued on with my lesson and called on the students to help them to become more engaged and after the lesson I had a little chat with the student who was crying to see if he was okay ( my clinical partner was sitting with him during the lesson trying to solve the problem). I am not sure how to really have handled the situation any different. The students in my classroom will always come first, they are human being with emotions and reactions that will be different day by day. It is also my job as their teacher to guide them along with the content. In order to do that I will need to create a safe place in the classroom where all of my students feel comfort. I found an interesting article that talks about students emotions in the classroom and the best ways to build a safe situation for them.

Taking Account of Emotions in Student-Teacher Relationships

Chemistry Experiments

On Wednesday during science class we played with the "mystery blue liquid". The mystery blue liquid was actually red cabbage juice. I learned that red cabbage juice is an indicator and can tell you which substances are a base, an acid, or considered neutral in regards to the pH. We used the cabbage juice indicator to test some of the substances the students in the class brought from their homes. This was an AWESOME lesson! I learned so much from it, and I am a college student! I loved the fact of not knowing in the beginning what the blue mystery was. Not knowing made me want to find out what it was, and I wanted to experiment with it to see what would happen. I was able to make my own connections and inferences as I was experimenting with the mystery liquid. I guess that is the power of inquiry based lessons. I wanted to know more about it, and no one had to encourage me to learn more about it. I can promise you that if I would have been taught with this type of lesson in high school I would have been much more interested in science. In high school, when we did experiments, we knew ahead of time what was going to happen and what we should be looking for. I understand that there are some occasions that you have to know what you should be looking for as you are experimenting, but always knowing kills the inquiry. I want to use lessons like this in my classroom to encourage inquiry. I want my students to be more interested and engaged in science than I ever was. I will keep my eyes open for more lessons like this and I will know that if I would be engaged with the lesson, there is a pretty good chance that my students will be engaged in it.

The NSTA is a great resource for finding inquiry based science lessons. After only a few minutes of searching a found an inquiry based lesson for grades 6-12 on boiling water. The neat thing about this lessons is that it ties to the International Boiling Point Project. After students have completed their experiments they are able to compare their results with students from all over the world. The ultimate goal is to find which factor (room temperature, elevation, volume of water, and heating device) has the biggest impact on boiling water. I love the idea that students are able to collaborate with other students who are not in their classroom.

Watching the Pot to Improve Inquiry Skills

Math and Science in the Flu

Wow! It is has been a long time since I have blogged and I think that I need to fix that. So last weekend (October 9-11) I was at home sick with some time of cold, possibly the flu, I am not really sure. The side effects of my cold are still present (cough) and are slowly starting to go away, (finally). This week Ashwaubenon high school closed its doors for both Thursday and Friday because 41% of the student body called in sick with reported symptoms of the flu. With the H1N1 flu and other sicknesses going around right now, I started to think about where math and science fit in with the flu.

Last week I decided to stay home sick from school on Friday. I decided to stay home for two reasons. The first was because I did not feel well enough to go to school and the second reason was because I did not want to share whatever I had with others. I started to think about what would have happened if I did go to school, and math popped into my head. If I would have gone to school sick I would have easily come into close contact with at least 10 people. Those 10 people would also easily come in contact with another 10 people, and as easily as that just me and my sickness could have spread to 100 other people (that's crazy), and if all of those people come in contact with another 10 people, which is inevitable in a university setting,that's 1,000 people that could have come in contact with my germs! That's insane! It just exponentially grows. It is no wonder that 41% of the student body of Ashwaubenon high school is at home sick with the flu when last week they had homecoming, and are in contact with each other everyday (it's a giant petri dish!). It is also no surprise that the H1N1 flu virus has spread so quickly around the world. Scientists can use math to predict the spread of the H1N1 flu virus. Today, in the United States alone there are 238,366 probably/confirmed cases of the H1N1 as listed on the FluTracker website created by Dr. Henry Niman, a biomedical researcher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Check out the information gather on the spread of the flu: FluTracker Website

Okay, so now that I have talked a little bit about math and the flu (there is no way I covered even close to every way that math can be connected to the flu) let's talk about how science can be connected to the flu. So obviously the spread of the flu can be connected to science by the way the body reacts to colds and infections, as well as how germs are spread from person to person,and how they are reproduced in the body but what I am really interested in is how scientists create flu vaccines. H1N1 flu vaccinations are just starting to be released to the general public, and there is already a shortage of the season flu vaccine in some locations. So how do they make a flue vaccine? I learned a lot of cool information about how the flu vaccine is made every year from the website www.influenza.com.

First world health officials analyze and choose which flu strains they believe will be most prevalent in the following year. World heal officials inform the FDA of which strains they believe will be most prevalent. The FDA must agree with the decision, and then the vaccines can start to be made. Millions of specially prepared chicken eggs are prepared and sent out to drug manufactures. The manufactures inject the chicken eggs with the flu virus. The chicken eggs are then incubated for a period of several days in order for the virus to multiply. The virus-loaded fluid is then removed from the egg. The fluid undergoes purification to ensure that the virus is no longer active. Different strains of the vaccine are then combined and testing begins. Once testing has been completed and any adjustments have been made the FDA needs to approve it. Once the FDA approves it, the manufactures begins to package the vaccine is vials and syringes and ship the vaccinations out.

Are you a visual person?

Annual Influenza Vaccine Production Timeline

Math Manipulatives

During Friday's math class we got to play with the fraction circles which are used to help students learn and understand fractions. I loved playing with the fraction circles. I really believe that if I would have been given the fraction circles and had an opportunity to explore with them at a young age, I would have a better understanding of what fractions are today. Fractions are a part of math that I have always struggled with, and still struggle with today. I actually do feel a bit more comfortable with fractions after just that short time manipulating the fraction circles on Friday. I think the fractions circles helped me because it was a kinesthetic movement and this type of movement is how I can learn best. It was also helpful for me because I new that all of the pieces were cut out of the same circle so it was easier for me to be able to see which fractions were bigger or smaller because the comparisons were easier for me to make. I think it will be very important for me to include math manipulatives in my lessons for learners, who like me need that kinesthetic movement to enhance their learning. After playing with manipulatives I started to think about different materials that could be used for a math manipulative at a free or extremely reduced price. After searching online there are many websites and forums directed as parents who home school their children, that have many great ideas for math manipulatives.

Math Manipulative Ideas

Environmental Science Workshop

I loved going to the environmental science workshop this past Thursday. I love seeing and experiencing science in the outdoors. I love promoting conservation, especially the protection of sharks and the ocean. I was definitely in my element. There was one thing that concerened me at the environmental workshop, and that was people's overall dispositions outdoors. It really bothers me when people (especially girls) scream if a spider happens to wonder across their hand or lap, or how "dirty" and "gross" it is to play outside in the woods. Now, I am not saying everyone has to enjoy the outdoors observing science. However as future teachers we need to watch the dispositions when we are in front of students. It is no surprise to me that there are fewer female scientists then males, when it is constantly put out there that is really "gross" or "dirty" to investigate the science that is taking place outdoors or in the lab. I think many girls get the impression that they can not like science, and that science is meant for boys. I believe this is especially prevalent in the outdoor sciences. It is important for us as teachers as not to show biases such as these because it may shut doors for some students who may otherwise be very interested in the subject. I worry about those at the workshops who were afraid to get down and dirty, and the impacts that they may have on their students and their dispositions. As a future teacher, I hope to not show my negative biases towards any subject and I hope to encourage all students to find for themselves whether or not they like a subject. There are many groups who have tried to reach more girls and get them more interested in science and math.One group in Massachusetts provides a free hands on experiences with science in after school programs for girls of all ages. In the elementary grades students work on science projects and experiences by having a famous female scientist to focus their projects on.

Science Club for Girls

Math Resources

During last weeks math class many groups presented on the resource materials (books & websites) they found to support mathematics. I found these lists of resource to be very valuable for me in the future. After listening to the presentations, I wanted to find a resource that was on the internet and specifically designed to help teachers with planning interesting math lessons. After doing some searching I found the PBS website for teachers which is broken down into grade level and subject. Within each section there are classroom resources, discussions, and professional development. I will use this site, because I think it will help me find creative ways to teach mathematics as well as improve my own skills by being able to share and collaborate with other.

PBS Teacher Resources