Megan - Elementary Science Blog

 This week in class, we learned a lot about genetics and the DNA. We learned about how DNA strands are created and how it affects us. We also learned that DNA is part of the making of proteins. In class, we also had an activity to create our own baby. We would flip coins to see whether we had recessive or dominant genes. In the end, we made the entire face of a baby. I think that this is a good way to have students understand the idea of recessive and dominant genes because it is also a fun hands-on activity.  Lastly, we also observed our flowers again this week to see the growth once again and our flower is still growing beautifully.  Observing our flower once again.  The baby that we created from flipping the coins.  The DNA strand we created with twizzlers and gumdrops. 

This week in class we learned about turtles and how only 1 out of 1000 baby turtles make it to the water from the sand. The turtles take 3 days to get from the water to the sand and so many natural and human activities stop or kill the baby turtles on the way to the ocean. Some natural factors include weather or animals like raccoons. Some human activities are plastic bags in the ocean or jeep tracks that block the turtles from reaching the water. We also got to view our plants again and use the dried bees to pollinate the flowers to continue to grow bigger. I thought it was really interesting to see how much these flowers have grown over the past few weeks.  Using the bee to place pollen on the flower.  The whole flower after growth from another week. 

 This week, we started out by observing the plants that we created. It seemed to have sprouted much more than last week. Our other plant has started to grow as well. In class, we also learned about food chains. The idea we learned was about the transferring of energy. The secondary only gets 20% of the energy from the first animal. We also got to create our own food chains with a different ecosystem. My groups ecosystem was the Desert. We got to show how smaller animals start at the bottom of the food chain as the go up the 20% changed to the next one. Overall, it was really interesting learning about how a food chain works.  Our Food Chain. This is the plant that has sprouted.

 Through this class, we learned the ideas of the 5E model. The 5 parts of the 5E model are engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. Each of these 5 parts has ways the student and the teacher can be engaged and how each person plays a role. For example, when talking about evaluating, this is to see how well each student is doing and asses them either informally or formally through different types of assessments. This helps the teacher know how well the students are doing and how well the teachers themselves are teaching and also helps the students understand how well they are understanding what is going on in class. I think I can use the 5E model in my future classroom by incorporating it into my everyday lessons because each one brings in a different part of teaching. Another thing we did in class was look over our seeds from the last class. This was really interesting because they grew so much and I was not expecting this. I can use this experiment in my ...

 This week in class, we had many different hands-on experiences. We learned a lot about the life cycle of certain insects and how that works. We got to use play-dough and create the stages of a life cycle of our choosing. I thought this was really interesting because it was a hands-on learning experience and we were able to pick our own thing to create the life cycle. The one that me and my partner created was the butterfly. So we had the egg, the caterpillar, the cacoon, and then the butterfly. Being able to lay it out and see it on through play-dough was really interesting. From past elementary classes, I did know how the life cycle worked but I never did it as a hands-on experience so that was really interesting and fun. I also enjoyed planting the seeds in two different forms. One of the forms we did was with cotton balls and the second was with soil and fertilizer. I want to be able to have my students when I am a future teacher to use these hands-on experiences in the real wo...