Katherine Tierney

Organisms: Grades K-4

Thu, Nov 17, 2011 8:24 PM
Organisms (K-4) SciGuide

The Organisms (K-4) SciGuide is an excellent resource composed of three separate parts: community, ecosystems, and environment. It is further broken down into themes; Animals Species, Life Cycles, Plant Species, Behavior, Food web, Population, Biomes, and Habitat. Within each theme there were lesson plans, case studies (vignettes), audio clips, and samples of student work. Also provided in each theme were online web-based resources. In reading through the SciGuide they focused on specific environments, animals and plants, but an underlying theme that was an “aha” to me was caring for the environment. This is a theme I will carry into my life science lessons and will tie in with other standards I am teaching in the future. After completing the SciGuide I began thinking about assessment. I would like to see some assessment ideas attached to the lesson plans and websites. This would help me gain a perspective on how other teachers are using the data and assessing it.

Earth and Sky: Grades K-4

Wed, Nov 16, 2011 12:37 PM
Earth and Sky (K-4) SciGuide

The Earth and Sky (K-4) SciGuide was an adequate resource for integrating the solar system into my teaching. The SciGuide was broken into two sections; Changes in the Sky and Objects in the Sky. From here it is broken down farther into five themes, gravity, seasons, moon, sun and planets. The site includes lesson plan ideas on the seasons and the planets with rubrics and student work. Other teaching resources are current data, vignettes, web-based resources, simulations and video clips with instructional videos as well. The web-based content and simulations were the most helpful resources in my teaching. I used the simulation in my classroom and the students were very captivated and learned a lot. I felt that the site could have offered more lessons and more websites. The lessons were limited and narrowly focused. I also found that several sites were outdated and no longer functional. I wanted the SciGuide to help cut down the time I spent searching on the Internet for credible sites, but I didn’t feel that I acquired as many sources and I still had to find many sites on my own our through the collaboration of the online discussions.