AMSTI Preservice Training - Science
I completed AMSTI Year 1 science preservice training for the fourth grade the week of January 30th through February 3rd, 2017, with Mrs. Tara Hood. We started training Monday morning by dissecting the Next Generation Science Standards as well as the practice standards for fourth grade. I found it beneficial that Mrs. Hood took the time during the week to also point out when and where we were addressing the practice standards because it helped me to visualize them as activities and processes instead of simply a list of abstract skills. This has also helped me in planning my STEM challenge for my practicum class in that I can more easily implement these skills in multiple ways now having seen them both in AMSTI training and in class with Dr. Troncale.
In addition, we spent time Monday morning discussing the science journals we would be using throughout the week. We were provided with composition books to use and Mrs. Hood modeled for us how to set up multiple features within the notebooks including the table of contents, entries, and pockets. The notebooks became very personal and useful to us during our training and it was extremely valuable to be on the student side of setting up a notebook in order to really see how much time and planning they would be to implement in a classroom. While the notebooks are certainly a large endeavor to set up in the beginning, they are invaluable forms of differentiation and formative assessment. Mrs. Hood modeled for us a comfortable level of freedom to give students in creating entries in the journals as well; she determined the name of the entry and what, if any, recording sheets or materials needed to be included but let us as students take notes in ways that were conducive to our own learning styles, such as jotting notes or annotating drawings and diagrams. Occasionally she would model a drawing that she described as a way to help her think of or remember the activity, but never explicitly told us how we needed to create it. I desire to have both math and science journals in my own classroom one day and it was very meaningful to see how to approach this aspect with students. Notebooks can easily be used as formative assessment in that each student is responsible for documenting his or her learning in a way that others can understand but also make sense to them which, in my opinion, lessens the opportunity for assessment bias in teacher-made assessments.
Both our dissecting and observing of the process skill standards and the undertaking of manipulating science notebooks supported our conceptual understanding of constructivist practices in the classroom. Following in the path of educational theorists such as Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, and John Piaget, Mrs. Hood provided an environment in which we as students could make our own connections to the materials and implement the process skills in ways that connected to our own personal knowledge and experiences. She encouraged us to have an on-going dialogue with our peers in order to discover their prior knowledge, which may help build our own learning. Throughout the week we used cooperative learning strategies with the purpose of strengthening our understanding of how these types of activities and learning look like on the student level. This really left an impression on me because it is one thing to see strategies and practices from a teacher’s point of view, but they may fall flat if one does not consider how the students approach them. I feel that I have a much better understanding of how to aid my students in the construction of their knowledge after having it modeled to me by Mrs. Hood in AMSTI training.
In addition, we spent time Monday morning discussing the science journals we would be using throughout the week. We were provided with composition books to use and Mrs. Hood modeled for us how to set up multiple features within the notebooks including the table of contents, entries, and pockets. The notebooks became very personal and useful to us during our training and it was extremely valuable to be on the student side of setting up a notebook in order to really see how much time and planning they would be to implement in a classroom. While the notebooks are certainly a large endeavor to set up in the beginning, they are invaluable forms of differentiation and formative assessment. Mrs. Hood modeled for us a comfortable level of freedom to give students in creating entries in the journals as well; she determined the name of the entry and what, if any, recording sheets or materials needed to be included but let us as students take notes in ways that were conducive to our own learning styles, such as jotting notes or annotating drawings and diagrams. Occasionally she would model a drawing that she described as a way to help her think of or remember the activity, but never explicitly told us how we needed to create it. I desire to have both math and science journals in my own classroom one day and it was very meaningful to see how to approach this aspect with students. Notebooks can easily be used as formative assessment in that each student is responsible for documenting his or her learning in a way that others can understand but also make sense to them which, in my opinion, lessens the opportunity for assessment bias in teacher-made assessments.
Both our dissecting and observing of the process skill standards and the undertaking of manipulating science notebooks supported our conceptual understanding of constructivist practices in the classroom. Following in the path of educational theorists such as Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, and John Piaget, Mrs. Hood provided an environment in which we as students could make our own connections to the materials and implement the process skills in ways that connected to our own personal knowledge and experiences. She encouraged us to have an on-going dialogue with our peers in order to discover their prior knowledge, which may help build our own learning. Throughout the week we used cooperative learning strategies with the purpose of strengthening our understanding of how these types of activities and learning look like on the student level. This really left an impression on me because it is one thing to see strategies and practices from a teacher’s point of view, but they may fall flat if one does not consider how the students approach them. I feel that I have a much better understanding of how to aid my students in the construction of their knowledge after having it modeled to me by Mrs. Hood in AMSTI training.
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