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Hello,
My name is Maria Guadarrama. I am currently studying Elementary Education at Dominican University. I am reaching out to others who may have any suggestions for retaining student engagement when teaching science, especially during this time of remote learning. I believe science can still be taught in a fun and engaging way. However, some students can find it difficult to understand the scientific concepts since they cannot physically interact with the scientific demonstrations. Are there any suggestions that may help me retain student engagement and interest when teaching scientific concepts? Thank you in advance for your time and attention.
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Hi Maria! My name is Paige Morrison and I am studying Elementary Education at Wartburg College in Iowa. To begin getting students engaged in class, I think it could be really fun to use emojis sticks. In my Science Methods class, we had a presentation about ways to get students engaged. The emoji sticks could be used to check for understanding, develop connections between class members, and create a fun base environment to begin science learning. What the emoji sticks are - they have printed out emojis placed on a pencil that can be made simply and help up to check for understanding, celebrate when something goes well, and to see how students are feeling. Beginning with checking on students seems like a way to get them invested in what will happen throughout the class, given that learning is a bit different during this time.
One way that I think science could be engaging would be to allow the students to use the world around them to learn. Of course, using the world and making connections to the world around them is what science is truly all about. A lesson idea could be to ask students to find objects outside - objects that you think all students would be able to find. For example, if you choose to do this during the fall, you could ask students to find a colorful leaf outside. Then, on zoom, you could ask students to share what their leaf looks like and possibly journal and compare with other leaves. This is an opportunity to talk about seasons, plants, and how we share connections within our environments even if we are not all at school.
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I think that even while they are at home, try to come up with lessons that can still be hands on or get them doing something outside. Something we do in my current science class is take wonderwalks and observe and think about what we see. I think that would be a great way to get students engaged.
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Hi Maria! I am also studying Elementary Education! When I was completing an online observation, a teacher was doing a science lesson and she went outside her house showed the students how to complete a nature scavenger hunt before she allowed them to do it. I thought this was a very simple but effective way to get students moving around and have a hands on science lesson without actually being in the classroom.
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Hi Maria,
I am also studying Elementary Education at SIU and one thing that our teacher does and I am sure you can do with your students as well as have them do or gather materials for an upcoming class and then do the science experiment together virtually and share how everyone's experiment went. This was fun for us to do in break out rooms and try to make our experiment work. I would just take into consideration that these are safe materials that they may not need too much supervision while doing it at home. There is also some fun videos for science on this site you can use in class also separated by grades.
https://www.generationgenius.com/trial-B/?gclid=CjwKCAjwoc_8BRAcEiwAzJevtdCn3nitt68sld68Js8OOXRB7ljwQxoPOqpl63o4NSXn15yWvDFyZxoCeSkQAvD_BwE
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You can visit https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-lab-activities/ and students can conduct entire experiments virtually. This could be helpful for students who cannot come to class, or even those in class. If you have iPads available for students, you can allow them to pull up the experiment on individual iPads and just walk around and monitor. This will help to keep them separated from each other.
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Jessica Jones,
Thank you for these wonderful resources! I have worked with Mystery Science and NOVA Labs previously and am thrilled to add some new virtual lab activities to my digital teaching toolbox for my current online STEM classes. Greatly appreciated!
Best regards,
Jennifer Hoffman
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Hello! Teaching science during this pandemic can be very tricky. Science is all about learning through hands on activities and collaborating with peers. A great way to have students interact while distance learning is by using interactive websites. In order to make these lessons interactive for students the teacher could use websites such as Mystery Science that provides lesson plans designed for distance learning. There are also great websites that provide a virtual field trip which can be very engaging for the students as well. Teachers could also use breakout rooms and other resources that will allow students to collaborate with each other. Hope this helps!
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Hello! I also have found, especially during this time where we are mostly educating students online that engaging students can be quite difficult. In the classroom we are accustomed to engaging students with experiments, activities and videos. However, over the past few months I have done my fair share of tutoring and observng first hand though zoom classes what it takes to engage students. Moreso, it takes more to engage students online. That being said, I have found that students enjoy and engage most when they are given the same oppotunities as though they were in the physical classroom. That means play the videos, introduce interactive websites, have students collaborate in breakout groups and give them whiteboard access. Zoom has whiteboard feature where students can engage on it with the teacher, just as they were in the classroom.
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Hello Maria!
I understand where you are coming from, but their are such solutions for students to be engaged when teaching science. Try to add activities where the students can use what they already have around them. This can simply be arts & crafts, websites found online or their own backyard. For instance when using seasons, they can do a craft of trees throughout the season, or when studying the Earths core they can use different colored clay that represents different layers of the Earth. On a website, they actually get to see and get a better understanding of the material since it provides more information. In their backyard they will be able to feel and also naturally see the different seasons or the water cycle, maybe even understand the process of growing a plant. I think these tasks will help students have fun and be engaged.
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