Module VII: Culture and Climate

Explain
Module VII started out with videos and information about the composition of the atmosphere and the early formation of our solar system, and I found myself again disappointed, wishing I had discovered this information about six weeks earlier. But the blog entry "Module VII: Carbon Connections" showed me some exciting ways to tie that information into my third quarter units on Chemistry! More than anything lately, the Explore Alaska course is showing  me how to make seventh grade Integrated Science truly integrated. I've tried to show connections and integrate different science topics as I teach students each year, but the connections and resources on Teacher's Domain are showing me better ways to make the connections meaningful and relevant, rather than superficial lip service.

Extend
The videos in the above-mentioned blog entry, along with the Cosmos video clip from Dave's Blog, will be excellent starting points for students' introduction to the periodic table. Focusing on carbon specifically will not only provide a good connecting theme as we learn about atomic number, mass, electron orbits, and other basic elemental facts, but will also allow me to refocus students on the idea we began with at the beginning of the year: that everything is a cycle. Not only are we drinking the same water that the dinosaurs did, we are also eating the same carbon that made up their bodies millions of years ago. That is definitely a concept that will grab students' attention!

Evaluate
As I mentioned above, the videos about elements will be the starting point for this year's units on the Periodic Table and Elements.  Much of the other information in the blog was equally useful for my own understanding. While a lot of the carbon cycle information is probably far beyond the scope of my curriculum (and my student's current abilities), it reinforced for me the importance of giving students a basic understanding of this information, since the decisions they make as adults will have such an immediate and important impact on the direction life on Earth takes. Even if I don't directly tackle the big issues with them, I'm providing a foundation for them to understand this information over their next decade of education and experience.

Three Colleagues
Not only were the resources in the Explore Alaska modules interesting and useful, but I found several of my colleagues blogs equally beneficial. Dave's blog has the aforementioned great video clip suggestion for my students.  Martha's blog is filled with wonderful quotations related to the module, some of which could be used as writing and/or discussion prompts for students. Janet's blog made me hope that she will share more of her husband's photos from his travels around the state.

Atmosphere: a particular environment or surrounding influence.

Explore:

The atmosphere has always been one of the most difficult units for me to teach. I find it relatively difficult to understand, and not particularly exciting. Especially since moving to Alaska, I feel very disconnected from much of the locally-relevant atmosphere topics-especially this week, as I again struggled to find ways to relate to the material.

One of the things that helped me begin to relate to the material was reviewing other participants' blogs. Dave's blog had several interesting facts, and I especially enjoyed his explanation for the bubbles he often sees in ice over the permafrost. I also found the ideas Eric presented in his blog intriguing, and I was introduced to the tragedy of the commons, a social phenomena I had not heard of before.

Much of the information related to the atmosphere inspires negative emotions in me-global warming, pollution, and high levels of toxins collecting in the environment around the world. There is so much bad news about human impact on the natural world, and on humans ourselves, that it feels like an insurmountable challenge. Is there any good news out there about the atmosphere?!

Extend:

Unfortunately, my students and I have already completed most of the atmosphere curricula for this year, but I will briefly revisit weather with my students during January, and I am looking forward to incorporating this weather site that I found through a link on Alicia's blog. I plan to share many of the food-chain resources on Teacher's Domain with my colleagues in eighth grade, since they spend a lot of time on that topic in their Biology Unit. 

Evaluate

This module was helpful to me simply as a reminder of the importance of relevancy in my own lessons-if I don't find a hook to draw students in, they won't be motivated to learn the facts and background information they need to know.

Also, as the course progresses I find myself becoming less sure of myself and my blog posts, and this is impacting my ability to understand and intake the material as it is presented. This is a great example of how many of my students must feel when we get too focused on the test and their performance in class, instead of simply learning for the sake of acquiring knowledge and satisfying curiousity about the world in which we live-my real goal for them, and myself.

Module V Blog Review

I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by coursework during this last module. Much of it was my own fault, in getting excited, taking long tangents of exploration into topics on Teacher Domain, and then procrastinating when it came to the actual writing of my response. So it was comforting tonight to see a surprising number of blogs that have not been updated since the first few modules.

Fellow slackers aside, I've struggled to keep my posts to a short length that doesn't overwhelm readers with text. So this week, I focused on concise, well-written and to-the-point blogs, in hopes that their style would rub off a bit. I especially enjoyed James White's blog, Sandi Pahlke's blog, and Kevin Hamrick's blog. The writing was excellent without tending to wordiness or large text blocks. Good examples for my inspiration!

Module V

Photo by Daniel Y Go

 Cloudy skies by day mean cooler temperatures, but cloudy skies after dark mean a warmer night.

istockphoto.com

 

We can ice skate on water because our weight on the narrow blade of the skate compresses the solid ice into its denser form: liquid water.Water is the only substance on Earth known to have a less-dense solid-state.

These are a couple of the many facts about water I "soaked up like a sponge" as I was growing up. I was fascinated in high school science to learn that we are only able to survive on Earth because ice floats, allowing the oceans to remain liquid.

http://www.stevegarufi.com/coloradodesert.htm

Where I Came From
Growing up in Colorado, I was about as far away from the ocean as I could get in North America, and so the ocean always held its own mistique and allure. It wasn't until late in elementary school that I first saw a world map with physical features not only on land, but also illustrated underwater. I was captivated by the idea of these immense, unknown depths. Today, I introduce my seventh-graders to science in part by explaining to them how little we know about much of our world, especially the oceans. Science is not a stagnant memorization of endless facts dead white guys discovered hundereds of years ago. Science is barely getting started-and the mysteries of the deep are a perfect example of how much there is for new scientists-today's students-to study and learn.

Where I Am
Every day, I learn more about how little I actually know-and this week's module on the oceans is a perfect example of this. I've read about climate change, I teach my students about seasons, and I've watched/demonstrated/talked about the ice to water to steam lab and graphs more times than I can count. Yet until this unit, I never really thought about how those things were interrelated. So I have to stop and ask-have I really understood these concepts if I've always seen and thought about them as seperate? Have I done a really good job of teaching any of those ideas to my students, if I haven't at least touched on the interconnectedness of the oceans, the seasons, and the weather?

Where I Will Go
This module took concepts I'd always enjoyed, and in fact, been slightly in awe of, and showed me ways to communicate that awe to my students. Every science teacher I've met agrees that some topics are inherently more difficult to understand than others; for middle school, seasons and density seem to be difficult topics to teach <i>well.</i> The idea of density is easy to get across, but the importance, the excitement I feel for the subject seems lost on my students.The examples, explanations, and topics in this unit make me question my students' actual grasp of the fundamentals of density-is the excitement lacking because their understanding is superficial? Teaching about seasons presents an inverse challenge: students have such an intrinsic, common-sense understanding of seasons that they have little motivation to dive into the science behind what they see outside their window.Putting it into a globalcontext that illustrates the deeper levels of connection and science behind "rain," "cloudy," and "wind" might be just the key I was searching for. I look forward to using all of the resources in this unit, especially the "Reason for the Season" resources!

The Map I’ll Follow
One of the Evaluate questions that jumped out at me this week was at the end of Density of Density Differences: How useful are simple labs and/or YouTube for your professional purposes? I cannot think of anything this year that I have been more excited about, that is more directly relevant, or that I would predict will have a bigger positive impact on my teacing and my students’ learning than the simple demonstrations, labs, and YouTube videos in this module.

http://www.ehow.com/shoe-decor/