The Ocean Floor

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This is a photo of the ocean floor in the Caribbean, how gorgeous is that? The ocean floor is a place where many do not get the opportunity to go and I think it is such a great thing to teach about. Things are more beautiful than just the surface, and I think teaching children this early on is important.

There are several parts of the ocean floor that my group and I will be covering tomorrow with the class. While preparing for this lesson, I had to re familiarize myself with the parts ocean floor. I think that all of us at some point learned this material, but it is easily forgotten as time goes by. My goal for our presentation is to create memories of learning that you can implement into your future classroom. 

If only we could take a field trip to the Caribbean for our presentation, then I think we would all remember the lesson!

Science Detectives

When I was compiling my bibliography, I went to Barnes and Noble and stumbled upon this book.

I began flipping through the pages and knew I had to buy it for my future classroom. This book highlights many famous scientists and "uncovers the human story behind scientific discovery and finds out what motivated these scientists despite the enormous difficulties and prejudice they often faced." (Goldsmith, 2010)

This book is broken down into six different sections: the birth of science, the rise of science, the power of science, the triumph of science, revolutions in science, and a new world.

Each page is so beautifully illustrated and includes detailed explanations and facts. I think that this book is a good buy (at only $8 right now at Barnes & Noble) because it covers so many different "detectives" that it could be used for several different grade levels.

In the back of the book is a reference to more scientist, a gloassary, and an index. In my opinion, this would be a perfect reference book when students are to report on a scientist and find out all they can about that particular person.

If you are interested in this book, I would make a trip to the bookstore and pick up a copy. This book will definitely be used in my future classroom!

Conjunctivitis

Conjunctivitis....the actual term instead of "pink eye". I figured since I got diagnosed with conjunctivitis, I might as well make the most of it and blog about it.

During this process, I have learned a lot about conjunctivitis. First, there are four main causes of conjunctivitis: viral, bacterial, irritants, and allergies.

As we all know, pink eye is very common. When we were discussing tonight, many members of the class have had pink eye. This is my first run in with pink eye and I must say, this has given me a lot of thought about my eyes. The nurse practitioner today talked about how sensitive yet resilient they are.

According to the CDC, viral conjunctivitis can be caused from a cold, sore throat, or respiratory infection. Bacterial conjunctivitis, just like the name says is caused from bacteria while allergy conjunctivitis is caused when pollen counts are high, and when asthma and hay fever are more prominent. The last type, irritants, are caused by cleaning supplies, or other chemicals that are in the air.

After reading these articles, it is really surprising people don't get conjunctivitis more often than they do. I hope that this will be my last bout with conjunctivitis, this has not been a fun way to start off summer!

For more information, visit these websites:

 WebMD
All About Vision

Blue Flame University

Tonight, we had a special guest, Cliff Swoape,  from Middle Tennessee Natural Gas.

Mr. Swoape gave a presentation that he gives to 4th grade students about natural gas. It was really captivating and helped us all brush up on our gas skills.

Natural gas is one of the cleanest of all fossil fuels. There are pipelines all throughout America, some of the main areas are in Louisiana and Oklahoma. One way to show kids how long the pipeline is is to use straws and put them together from one end of the room to the next. What a great visual to show distance!

I found it interesting that fracturing causes less damage to the Earth than the traditional drilling that is done. With fracturing, only one hole is drilled rather than many holes in the same spot, and then many tiny holes are drilled in between the shale to get the natural gas.

I also thought it was neat that by using natural gas in cars, that they would average less than $2 a gallon. How wonderful would that be? Where could I get a car like that? 

One of the many neat visuals Mr. Swoape brought with him was the pipes that had been damaged due to construction type vehicles and even animals! A main point to remember from tonight's less is to leave the pipe and call 811. Being smart and safe around natural gas is the number one thing to keep in mind.


Don't forget, call before you dig! 811

Moss

From the misconceptions quiz we took last week, we began questioning if moss was a plant.

According to encyclopediabritannica.com, there are actually 12,000 species of moss plants. Many mosses that include the name aren't actually moss at all, they are lichens. Mosses release nutrients that help nourish more complex plants.

Mosses do not have a vascular system, that explains why the plant can't grow very large. Moss only needs droplets of water to survive, unlike other plants that require more water. Moss is referred to as one plant while they are actually many tiny plants.

I found this information really interesting. I found this website to be the mo

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Liquid Oxygen

The boiling point of oxygen. It is something I never really gave much thought, I never thought of oxygen even reaching a boiling point.

When Dr. Kat mentioned the boiling point would have to be pretty low since we breathe it in, then it began to make sense. I think this is one of those things we were never taught in the classroom, but when you sit down and actually think it through, you realize oxygen in fact, does boil.

According to How Stuff Works, The boiling points of liquids vary widely. At normal atmospheric pressure, for example, liquid oxygen boils at -297.4 F. (-183 C.), ether at 94.1 F. (34.5 C.), water at 212 F. (100 C.), and mercury at 674.4 F. (356.9 C.). Because of this variation in boiling points, two or more liquids can often be separated by a process called fractional distillation.

Pressure affects boiling points. An increase of pressure retards the formation of vapor so that greater heating of the liquid becomes necessary to bring about boiling. A decrease of pressure, such as that which accompanies an increase in altitude, lowers the boiling point. For example, the boiling point of water drops about 1.8 F. with each increase of 1,000 feet (about 1 C. per 300 m) in altitude. 

Here is a video for those who were wondering what this looked like:

The Mother Kangaroo Is One Cool Momma!

Since my blog is focusing on life cycles, I thought I would look into Australia's Kangaroo. When I lived in Australia, I had the opportunity to visit a wildlife park where I actually got to feed kanagroos and wallabies. I hope you enjoy the information I  found as well as the pictures I took when I was there.

I found all of this information on this amazing website http://www.kidcyber.com.au/topics/kanga.htm

When kangaroos also known as joeys are born, they weigh less than 2 grams. The mother licks her fur so the joey knows where to go in order to get in her pouch where he/she stays for about nine months.

After nine months, the joey will leave his mother's pouch, but then return for milk until it no longer requires milk for survival.

Something that I found interesting from this website was that the female kangaroo generally has another baby in the womb in "suspense". This means that the baby has developed some and then stops and waits. After the first joey leaves his mom's pouch, the other baby finishes developing and then few weeks later, joey number two is born. The youngest joey will be living in her pouch drinking milk while the oldest comes back for his milk as well. Each joey has a different kind of milk they need for nourishment from their mom.

If the conditions in the wild aren't favorable due to drought, then the mother kangaroo will wait to develop the youngest joey so that she will have enough food for both of her babies.

I found this information so neat, how cool is mother nature to where the mom can actually suspend development in the womb and it not have negative effects?

The Many Moods of the Moon

Tonight, Dr. Kat showed us an illustration of the phases of the moon "God's Eye View" that I have never seen before. I have only ever seen the moon phases from the view we have here on Earth and so at first, I was finding it a bit hard to follow.

What made the connection for me was when we used the styrofoam ball, the pencil, and the flashlights. What a wonderful (and not to mention affordable) illustration to show the phases of the moon!

Everyone learns in different ways and I think that by having several different strategies for one particular lessons, that you reach more students.

I can't wait to see what else Dr. Kat has rolled up her sleeve for us to take with us to our future classrooms.

One of my favorite views of the moon, from the airplane.  :)
Photo: Linsley Langley

Life Cycles: Pinterest Edition

As we all know, Pinterest is a wonderful resource for teachers. I looked up life cycles and saw so many resources that could be used in my future classroom.

I think that this would be fun for the younger grades. Anything to be active in the classroom while learning is something the children will remember when they go home at the end of the day.

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This activity is a way to visualize what each life stage looks like:

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I think that the activity using the pasta and the beans would be cool to ask the students which came first and what pasta they would use. While the students are constructing it, the teacher could read from the textbook or another book about the life cycle of the butterfly.

Again for the younger grades, I found this frog hat that illustrated the life cycle of a frog around the hat. I think that for younger learners, it would help them remember the lesson because they made it themselves and then got to wear it.

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While there are many activities that can be done with all of the different life cycles that have to be covered, I thought these ideas were a great start to get the children interested.

Lessons From Thin Air

"Science is about making predictions, not about explaining, just because you can explain it doesn't mean you understand it." -Lessons From Thin Air

Today I watched the Lessons From Thin Air video and it correlated with the movie we watched on Monday.

The video started with grads from Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia I believe. They were asked how trees were made, and thrived. After many answers, the consensus was that trees thrive through soil, water, and sun.

The video then shows students in a 3rd grade classroom that are learning about photosynthesis. In order for trees to survive, the video tells us we need sun, water and carbon dioxide.

A common misconception is that air doesn't weigh anything. Relating back to the tree and how they produce carbon dioxide, the interviewer asked the 3rd grade student about how much a tree weighed. He said like a newborn, about 5 or 6 pounds. The interviewer asked if he thought gasses have weight, and he said no until she showed him the dry ice where he concluded that air in fact, could have weight.

I really learned a lot in this video because it was stuff I had learned a long time ago and I didn't realize how much I had forgotten.

One of the teachers in the video made a statement that stuck with me, "When you cover so much stuff, students learn very little." This is something we all need to keep in mind as we become teachers. I know tonight we talked about covering the standards and having time to let students adequately learn and I found this quote as a great reminder. We need to keep in mind that as we teach that we need to make it memorable so that children actually learn something rather than teaching as much as we can for an end of the year test.

Thrifty Sites

Before we even thought of becoming a teacher, there is one thing we all knew. Being a teacher means finding creative ways to work on a shoestring budget. 

Tonight I thought I would share a few things that I have found over the past few years that I hope will be helpful to you in your classroom. 

1. Hip2Save This website is a legitimate website, endorsed by The Today Show. Not only does this website tell you where you can use coupons for groceries, office supplies and clothes, but it also tells you about freebies you can sign up for. Throughout my time visiting Hip2Save, I have received free books, learned about cash back, and found great deals on clothes (hey, we have to look nice when we are teachers right?)

2. EBates At first when I heard about this website, I was a bit skeptical...but after I got an actual check, I then believed. Basically, this website links you to a website you were going to buy something on, take Macy's for example, and it opens up a ticket for you. You buy the items you want and then you get a small percentage back which accumulates over time (think 3 month period) and once you reach a certain amount (I believe it is minnimum $10) Ebates will cut you a check. If you are going to buy something online anyway, might as well check out to see if they have an agreement with EBates. 

3. Kellogs Family Rewards with this website, you simply enter codes from your Kellogs brand foods and then redeem them in for a reward or donate them to a school of your choice. I am a huge lover of Cheese-Its and so I get points everytime I buy them. Another way is to get extra points, is to always check hip2save. I know they often are giving away codes to enter.

4. Recycle Bank This is one of my favorites. This website could be used in the classroom, if the kids each had an email address. If not, you could just show them yours. Basically the mission of this website is to promote a clean environment. You take quizes, pledge to recycle certain things, or watch a short video and earn points. Once you recieve points, you can redeem them for magazines, even Starbucks and Target gift cards (while they are in stock) sometimes, I save up my points until the gift cards are back in stock. If you chose to get the Target card for example, it could always be used toward your classroom. While it is only $5, I think that its a free $5 and I learned a lot about recycling than I did before I started so it is a win-win situation!

Those are just a few thrifty sites that can not only be helpful to teachers, but others as well.

Does anyone else know some great websites similar to these?

Magic Tricks? Or balancing of the sticks?

Tonight in class, we focused on misconceptions. I think we all at one point or another felt a little silly, thinking "I should have known that" or "its really simple if you think about it."

One of the topics that came up tonight was the broom trend. Here I am a few years ago, clearly proud of my broom balancing skills:

While there isn't any scholarly research on this matter, it appears the broom is just like the egg and doesn't have anything to do with the equinox or alignment of planets, it is just simply balancing skills. If only a few years ago we would have known this when this tend went viral on Facebook, we may have not jumped on the trend.

I am curious to see other misconceptions I have about science and learn the truth.

What else could we balance that we could "blame" on the equinox?

The Discovery Center

Last week, our teaching science class had the opportunity to meet at the Discovery Center here in Murfreesboro. While we were there, we got certified in Project Wet and Project Wild by Mrs. Bonnie Ervin.

Photo credit: Dr. Kat

Although it was a bit chilly and rainy, we all had a great time. We got to take water samples  from pond water and spring water. My task was to test the temperature. I found that the pond water was about 75/F while the spring water was 60/F. It was funny how close they were together but yet so different in temperature and pH.

One of the neat things about our evening was the game we played. We were given a map of different bodies of water and were assigned to begin at different places where we would read different scenarios and roll a dice telling us which body of water we would go to (or stay) next.

I learned a lot of valuable information for my future classroom and I really enjoyed having class at the Discovery Center.

The Science Quiz

For the science quiz, I scored a 17/25

I found it funny because we had actually discussed some of the questions during tonight's lecture like the misconception about Christopher Columbus and the idea he thought the Earth was flat. Some of the questions that I got wrong that I learned from were:

I didn't realize that the moth larvae are the ones who ate clothes stored in the attic, I always just assumed it was the larvae.

I also learned that the cloud from a pot of boiling water in fact is not steam but rather condensing water vapor.

Back to the moths, I did not realize that they flew according to the pattern of the stars.

I think that this quiz would be a great way to introduce a middle school, high school, or college level class. This would be a fun way to start off the school year and see what students know and open up room for discussion. I think that another activity that would be fun would be to investigate each claim and have students get into groups to do so.

Introduction and Life Cycles

Hello everyone! My name is Linsley and I would like to tell you a little about myself and the content I have chose to focus on for this class. In school, I always enjoyed science, the teachers I had in elementary and middle school made science fun and I can still remember some of the experiments we did in the classroom.

When I am not studying or in class, I enjoy making things for my Etsy shop, Kangaroos and I Do's. I typically make things like vinyl letters, or banners for birthdays, bachelorette parties and other things like that. I also enjoy traveling whenever I get the opportunity.

For my reflective journaling, I have chosen to focus on life cycles. There are many different activities that can be incorporated with this particular content area and the specific focus can be altered according to grade and specific state and common core standards. I am looking forward to finding fun activities to help students learn and remember what they learned.