Lauren Abrams
Clark Creek STEM Academy
GA

The Early Years: The Nature of Science in Early Childhood

Fri, May 01, 2015 1:58 PM
Inference supports Inquiry!

This article was a very classic opinion on all the things that great teachers already know! It simply reiterates the fact that the sometimes less prompting, leads to larger student inquiry. In the first paragraph the author actually references on what parents actually need to be asking of their children, and it is to simply go out and explore your world! Children need to have the opportunity to explore their surrounds, whether they are in nature or not. Children that are given the opportunity to present questions and make inferences from their experiences I feel have the most ability to grow! The lesson that was presented as a sample, was a simple, yet effective way to show younger aged children a way to explore small pieces to a larger puzzle. In this case, the author chose to give students precut pieces of a whole picture of a dandelion. However the students had to examine only small pieces. Students looked and petals, stems, etc… and had to make inferences to what was being presented to them. Scientific inquiry at times, needs to be as simple as a picture investigation, allowing for students to draw clues from what is being explored. Which can be easily applied all grade level materials! Maybe we need to rather, take a step back, and leave the exploration up to the kids!

Sun, Nov 09, 2014 6:54 PM
Great Activity that can be used so many ways

The probe that I investigated was a formative assessment probe aimed at debunking the germ theory. The teacher notes explain what a “germ” is and ways that we make it very easy for them to be transmittable. The article begins with how viruses attack your respiratory system and how certain symptoms you can display if exposed to viruses. This probe analyzes the misconception that cold weather triggers these “germs.” Through multigrade level applications students are able to understand health factors to keep you well, all the way to understanding different systems in the body and their interrelated functions.

In Praise of Performance-Based Assessments

Tue, Nov 04, 2014 10:35 AM
Not all Assessment if Bad :)

I loved the fact that the author was a teacher! I know personally that at the school I work at we strive to do a lot of performance based assessments. The testimonials are there, you can achieve the same results if not better integrating the hands on approach versus paper and pencil assessment. I know that there are still many professional educators that are scared of implementing this, and this article reassures that is not hard to do! In today’s student market it can be beneficial to almost “trick” them into their assessment, rather than making the “Let’s take a Test!” announcement. The author reiterates this by noting that simple observations of journaling where able to give her the insight to seeing whether content mastery was met.