Sept. 30, 2008

Sept. 30, 2008
We did not meet in class on this Tuesday but we did a Module 2 Reading Guide over ch. 3 and 4 of Ready, Set, Science. The reading in these chapters discusses helping students become critical thinkers. We should not just teach children facts about science, we need to help them expand on the ideas of science. Young children are observers of the world, and chapter two discusses how we can help students grow from misconceptions they had from simple observation. Chapter 4 discusses teaching over a long period of time. I like this idea because the students become life-long critical thinkers, and the content of science can be looked into much deeper. This chapter did a good job at explaining this idea through the case studies. In Ms. Winter's class, she did a Mystery Box experiment. This taught the young children about wood, metal, and plastic, as well as listening skills. They also learned reasoning skills by taking educated guesses about what was in the box. As the grades progressed, the material was more difficult and in depth, but student had a framework on which to add more information.