Course Synthesis

I thought this course was full of useful instruction strategies.  I’m most excited to incorporate critical literacy into my teaching.  I think it’s critically important to teach students to evaluate sources for bias and whose voice is being heard, especially in science.  The media often has a slanted view of scientific issues, but will likely be many students’ main source of information about them.  Many of these issues are topics that students will one day be voting on and it’s critical that they are given the tools to make their own decisions about controversial science topics so they can act in their own best interests.  I plan to incorporate critical literacy instruction by adding scientific articles and videos, such as the video included here, and have students evaluate them.

I also think representation instruction will play a major role in my classroom because many science concepts are somewhat abstract and using representations and having students create their own representations can really help students understand what’s happening.  Right along with that, comprehension instruction can help students understand the concepts better just by giving them the tools they need to understand the text.  I also think that comprehension instruction leads into vocabulary instruction (or vocabulary instruction into comprehension).  Science is incredibly vocab heavy and exposing students to the words in the text and helping them understand context clues can help them piece together meanings.  Vocabulary instruction will also have to happen outside of comprehension instruction, however, because there are so many terms with similar sounds or meanings.  I really liked the balderdash activity for teaching vocabulary and can see myself using it in my own classroom later.

Finally, I find writing instruction to be nearly as important as critical literacy instruction.  No matter where my students go after leaving my classroom, writing will help them.  I had a geography teacher who incorporated weekly essays into her class.  I hated it at the time, but I am so grateful for it now.  I already had the writing skills I needed to be successful in high school, college, and beyond because she put in the time to read and provide feedback on every single essay.  I think writing is an important skill even for the students that pass through my classroom who don’t intend to go to college.  It keeps doors open to them that would otherwise be shut in their faces.  I don’t think I’ll be able to fit a formal essay into my science class every single week, but I hope to incorporate smaller  writing assignments and maybe one or two formal papers that help students become effective communicators in print.

Blog Assignment for ITLS 4015

I believe that is important for all students at the secondary level to receive science education.  Secondary students should have a basic knowledge of the workings of the natural world that they live in so they can make informed decisions about it. 

The skills students learn in science classes are valuable in so many other aspects of life and should be treated like they are valuable life skills.  Communication, questioning, problem solving, evaluating sources, writing, and planning are all skills that will come in handy long after the students have left my class. 

Student interest in science should be encouraged.  In my class, I hope to be able to allow students to explore and find aspects of science that interest them instead of me telling them only what I feel is important.   Students may even find that they like science if they’re given a chance to do some.

I think I've always been interested in teaching science- biology in particular.  I used to teach everyone around when I went to the zoo as a kid and instructed my brother in the correct behavior of our plastic dinosaurs before age 5.  I knew I wanted to teach as a career when I was able to help my roommate pass her biology class my freshman year.  I love seeing the light come on when students get it :) 

Educational Blogs:
http://edublogs.org/
 http://www.edudemic.com/
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

These educational blogs can be used by educators to create classroom pages, find new technology, facilitate class discussions online, incorporate social media in a positive way, and much more.  Blogs are fast becoming one of the most useful and accessible tools for teachers, in my opinion.

What She Wrote

I definitely don't think of myself as a writer, even though I think I do a pretty good job when I do write.  I don't consider myself a writer mainly because pretty much the only thing I write for myself is the grocery list and the super rare Facebook comment or status update.  I used to keep a journal sporadically but when I'd go back to read my entries later, I ripped out the ones I thought were embarrassing and proceeded to place them in the nearest trash receptacle.   I found them embarrassing because I usually only wrote when  I had something to rant about.  Other than that, I did write a few notes back and forth to some of my friends and letters to my cousin who lives in Texas, and play MASH with my buddies, but I think that's about it for recreational writing as a kid.

I like to express my ideas verbally, if I have the chance.  Most people think I'm not a big talker, but my friends and family will tell you otherwise.  I've found that unless there's something that really just gets to me, I don't speak up until I'm with people I know well.  I consider myself lucky that I know people who will listen to all the ideas I have all day while I'm at school.  While I'm holding my comments in, I often draw pictures-  not necessarily about the ideas that I'm having, but what's being said definitely has an impact on the mood of my doodles.  It helps me keep things organized in my head, but a lot of teachers think I'm not paying attention when I doodle.  I suspect that I lost points on required notes and assignments in certain because there were doodles all over the margins.  Drawing helps me organize my thoughts.

My favorite writing assignment ever was in the fourth grade.  We were given a dinosaur to research and write a one page report on, complete with illustration.  I got to write about Ouranosaurus, which was cool, because I was (and still am) pretty knowledgeable about different kinds of dinos but didn't know a lot about Ouranosaurus. I'm pretty much a dinosaur fangirl if you didn't know by now :) Later, I liked research papers okay, whether they were informative or persuasive, as long as I got to choose a cool topic.  I've never liked writing short stories.  It doesn't matter if I try to write fictional stories, or stories from my own experience, I'm bad at them and I know it.  If you want to hear my stories, ask me in person and I'll gladly tell them to you.

I want students to be exposed to a little bit of scientific writing, without overwhelming them.  I think that I'd like students to write two research papers for the year in my class, if I teach high school.  I think there's valuable skills that happens during the writing process, and I'd love to really spend a lot of time developing those skills the first paper and giving students a chance to use them for the second.  I don't feel that these papers need to be more than three pages or so, and I remember on longer papers trying to just take up space.  I also want to do some less formal writing in the form of quick writes, RAFT prompts, etc for the students who don't thrive on research based writing. 

All I Want for Christmas is Some Fish

I mentioned my love for biology as a kid in my introduction post, but I'd like to expound a little on my really early experiences in this one.  I had quite a bit of experience with biology growing up, and all of it made me more interested in it and definitely influenced my view of the subject.

One of my earliest memories was sitting on Santa's lap when I was two or three years and asking for "fish," which my mom had to explain meant an aquarium.  Santa gave me a weird look, but told me that if I was really good I would get it.  I was so excited when I came downstairs that Christmas and found a lit up fish tank that I got to fill with fish that I chose at Petsmart.  I loved watching them swim around in their underwater world and I rarely forgot to feed them.  I even helped my mom clean the tank when it needed it.

I spent my free time reading books from the library about animals and watching animal planet.  In fact, one of the first books that motivated me to read (which you know wasn't easy if you read my last post) was a book that my family still has called Great Snakes.  In my early studies, I was definitely influenced towards a conservationist viewpoint.  This made my family's trips to the zoo and various aquariums a dilemma for me.  I loved the chance to see the animals I cared about up close, but at the same time hated to see them kept caged up.  By the time that I was eleven years old, I'd decided that zoos were valuable tools for education even though the conditions were not always ideal for the animals that lived there.  I remember the Hogle Zoo particularly well.  For as long as I can remember I knew that the concrete enclosures that most of the animals were kept in were not good.  I can still remember the wall of things people had thrown into the hippo pool and the horrid smell.  It made me sad.  When I was in preschool, I wanted to be a hippo when I grew up so it was always cool, but a little disturbing to see the hippo kept in a concrete pool.  In more recent family trips with my nieces and nephews, I can tell that the Hogle Zoo is making huge improvements to the enclosures.  The rhinos which I remember as lethargic and laying down almost all the time seem to be spending more time on their feet and walking around since their enclosure was renovated.  The hippo was traded to a zoo with better facilities.  It makes me happy :)


Okay, just a few more stories and we'll call it good.  I love writing about this, probably way more than you love reading it.  Every February, bald eagles congregate in an area near where I grew up.  I have lots of memories of driving out to the bird refuge to count eagles.  It used to be that we'd see about eight eagles in a good year.  Now that count is up to around thirty and one year we counted nearly sixty.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) as the number of eagles has climbed, so has the number of people that know they come.  We used to see maybe one or two cars per trip, now there's tons.  I still go out the the refuge every year that I get a chance.  We also used to take trips to Yellowstone National Park.  I loved it because the animals were wild and the scenery is beautiful.

I love biology because I was able to explore the aspects of it that interested me.  I hope to give my students that same chance when I'm designing my lessons and assessments.  I want to allow my students several angles and perspectives to choose from when I give an assignment so I can hopefully pique some of their interest.  I know it won't be easy, because my husband loves music and has other strong feelings towards biology.  I'm interested in the conservation side of things, but students with other interests will be interested in different aspects.  For example, a student who is interested in agriculture might be more interested in  how conservation laws or invasive species affect farming while a students who is interested in technology might be more interested in how knee replacements are developed.  I want to allow students to explore their interest through my class.  On a somewhat unrelated note, I'd also love to have an aquarium in my classroom if possible.  I still keep an aquarium, and I think it would be nice to have some live organisms in the classroom.  I'm a little afraid that it might distract a few students, but I think I'd have to give it a try before I could know for certain.  Most people that I know are interested in my tank and if I can inspire a little interest in biology by having one around, I'll give it a try.

Reading: A Love-Hate Relationship

My mom reading with my niece, just like she used to with me :)

             I’ve loved to read nearly as long as I could do it, but I hated it at first.  I remember struggling to read short, easy books that my friends could finish in minutes without even having to sound out words.  I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t read.  Finally one night while I was trying to read with my mom I got so frustrated that I started yelling “I just can’t read, okay?!” Well, you can probably imagine that that didn’t go over very well.  My mom was as frustrated as I was and insisted that not only could I read, but I would read.  She sat down and told me to read.  I read.  It wasn’t easy, but after that night I picked it up quickly and my interest in reading grew.  About two years later (I think) I was diagnosed with exophoria (I'm fairly sure that's what I had), a condition which didn’t allow my eyes to track together on a page.  The eye doctors were amazed that I could read at all, let alone read well above grade level as I was doing at the time.  They put me in eye therapy and my eyes no longer have that problem. 

Way cuter than the original illustration

During the later years of elementary, I read as much as I could.  I used to get books about animals from the library, in addition to reading children’s stories and novels.  I read so much and so well that I didn’t really fit in with my peers at school.  On one occasion when  I was in the fourth grade, we were assigned to read a story at home and then bring it to school the next day so we could read it out loud in circle time.  I brought a collection of stories about dolphins and chose a story about Mona the bottlenose dolphin having her miracle baby in an aquatic park. Everyone else brought cute, colorful children’s books full of illustrations.  Mine only had one picture- of a mother dolphin with her baby’s tail sticking out of her birth canal.  It wasn’t really a hit.  Sometimes I was made fun of by other students because I read so much, but I just kept reading.

            My enjoyment in reading has continued to grow over the years.  I’m not too picky about the genre of the books I read, but if I’m going to read a classic or a historical fiction it had better be a good one.  In fact, some of my least favorite reading were classics that I had to read in high school.  I did not like The Count of Monte Cristo, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, or Great Expectations. There were other assigned classics that I really enjoyed.  I won’t go into specifics of why I disliked each of the books above, but they were not easy for me to get through.  I think part of it was that I didn’t like the characters or the message that I was taking home from the book.  Another thing especially in the last two from the list was that I felt like nothing ever happened.  I think I enjoyed the assigned readings the most from books that had strong, thought provoking messages that resonated with me or very likeable characters.

            I hope I can help students in my class learn to appreciate readings from books about biology or science in general.  I know that I probably won’t change most students into readers as enthusiastic as myself, but I hope to make texts that resonate with their own lives available.  In the classroom, that may be articles or books on medical advances or current controversies.  I also plan on having texts full of just plain cool stuff, including pictures (I learned from that whole Mona thing) for students to look at or check out.  I also know how it is to feel like I just couldn’t read.  It was a long time ago, but I remember it clearly.  It was confusing, frustrating, and embarrassing.  I don’t want to make student’s feel like that in my class.  I know that some students are more confident in reading scientific texts than others and I certainly wouldn’t want to make anyone do something they aren’t ready for so I will avoid using the “popsickle stick” method or calling on students randomly to read. 

Introduction

Right now, I have two names.  Officially I am Lauren Neuner, but to my family and friends I am Lauren Walker.  I just thought I’d get that out there so as to avoid any confusion.  My favorite things to do outside of school include reading, being outside, cooking, napping, and playing with horses.  I used to have a horse of my own and then I loved to ride, but since I had to put her down I have to settle for playing with my friend’s horse.  Unfortunately he has had issues with his suspensory ligament and isn’t sound to ride, so we just play.  

My favorite subject (and the one I hope to teach) is biology.  Biology is the study of life and living things.  People usually look at me a little weird when I say that, but it honestly has been my favorite since before I even knew “biology” was a word.  I have literally been into biology for as long as I can remember, and it has been serious business to me for nearly that long.  As a kid, I was always drawn to the animal based toys. I played with Barbie horses, plastic zoo animals, veterinarian toys, and stuffed animals, but my favorite were dinosaur toys.  It was tons of fun.  All the toys had to act like the animals they were based on, and I made sure that my younger brother, Austin, followed the rules of nature.  It may have been a little harsh considering that he was no more than five years old, but like I said, biology was serious business.

I decided I wanted to teach while I had my horse.  I lived in a rural area that was quickly being converted into a suburb and in order to reach the good horse trails or arenas I had to walk down roads and through neighborhoods.  I loved it when the local kids would come out and ask if they could pet the horse and ask questions.  I found out that I really enjoyed sharing what I knew in a way that they could understand.  I decided to go into teaching biology because that’s what I’m passionate about and relevant pretty much everywhere.  For a while I thought I wanted to go into ag ed or even veterinary science.  After watching my vet float my horse’s teeth with a power grinder, I decided I’d like to do something that would be a little less physically demanding.  When I was able to help tutor one of my roommates in biology during my freshman year, I found that I really did love it- even the microscopic stuff.

I feel that literacy is very important in biology.  I defined literacy as the ability to show or demonstrate understanding or proficiency in a particular subject in an appropriate manner for that subject.  In biology, that means students should be able to describe in words (orally or written), diagram, demonstrate or show in some other way that they can interpret scientific writings appropriate for the students’ age.  A student with a high level of literacy would also show understanding of scientific process and experimental design through any of the ways listed above.  I think that another way students show what level of literacy they have achieved is by asking questions.  A student who shows an adequate level of literacy will be able to ask a question that is more relevant and meaningful than a student who shows an inadequate level of literacy.