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My favorite science topic that I've taught has been Inheritance and Environment in 3rd grade. The purpose of this unit was to get students to understand that traits can come from inheritance, the environment, or a combination of the two. The students were given a situation of a wolf born from one pack but growing up with a neighboring pack. As the students studied this wolf, they were given more and more data to use for evidence to support whatever claims they came up with. For example, we did an activity about why the wolf was medium sized when his parents were small, but the pack he lived in had larger wolves. The students analyzed flamingo family data cards and looked for patterns and they were able to notice that the flamingos who ate shrimp had pink feathers, and the flamingos that ate small fish were grey. This was regardless of what color the parents were. The students were then given the hunting style, type of food, and the amount of food that each wolf pack ate, and had to apply what they learned from the flamingo data (food can influence and inherited trait such as feather color) to the data about wolves to come to the conclusion that the wolf is medium sized because of his inherited traits and his environment; he was born to smaller parents, but due to what he eats he was able to grow larger than that. 

My favorite science topic to teach is the solar system. I had the opportunity this semester to teach fifth grade students about it. I love how engaged the students were during the lessons and the curiosty they all had about it. The best part for the students was the arts that were integrated into science. At the beginning of the unit, they were able to construct a project of all the planets on a piece of paper to better understand the sizes and planet order. By the end of the unit, they got to construct a diorama of the solar system. It was something fun that they looked forward to and kept them engaged throughout the entire unit.

I just recently taught a unit in 3rd grade over different types of forces! The students were very engaged and I had a lot of fun teaching the lesson. The lesson followed the 5 Es and was done over about 5 1/2 hour sessions! To teach about forces, we focused on Rube Goldberg Machines. I introduced the machines through different videos of Rube Goldberg Machines that I had found online. This got students really engaged in talking about forces. After watching the videos, we really focused in on different types of forces and how a force can effect an objects motion. We also talked about balanced and unbalanced forces. Students were then able to build their own machines using different types of forces! They also were continuously assessed to check for understanding through completing different force activities such as drawing a diagram of part of their machine and labeling the forces. They also were able to share how they knew that force was happening!