Week 10: April 8th - April 13th: WOW! This week in ESCI 310 has been my favourite. Hearing Cindy Rice talk so passionately about her time teaching while using Inquiry Based Learning was SO inspirational. I first found out about Cindy due to her presence on Twitter. On Twitter she shared pictures and tweets of her time in the classroom and the activities done using an Inquiry Based Learning model. See below for a few of the Tweets Cindy posted about Inquiry Based Learning. A few takeaways from the time Cindy was in our Zoom class were: 1. Relationships 2. Resources 3. Student-Led Cindy talked a lot about the importance of building relationships with the students in your classroom. Once you have built strong and solid relationships, this is when the "magic" can happen. By building relationships in the classroom that how you truly know your students' needs, wants and interests. This is also how you know where to add differentiation and adaptations during learning. She also talked closely about the resources. She shared that there are A LOT of resources available but you may need to do some researching to find the resources that work best in your classroom environment. On her Twitter she shares MANY different resources she used that fit best for her learners and the curriculum she was guided by. When she said there were many great resources available this made me excited to research and find my own once I have my own classroom/grade level. I often hear there aren't a lot of resources for teachers (I hear this as an Education student who finds it tricky not being a certified teacher to get access to them right now), so hearing Cindy share this was motivating. Lastly, Cindy talked about her lessons being student-led. I liked how Cindy would lay out the learning outcome and break it down and then ask the students "how"? How could they approach this outcome? How would they like to approach this? How could we do this? And then from there, together, the students would creatively voice their ideas and thoughts, and then she would find resources and material to assist their learning. I also loved how students wouldn't just ask for a worksheet to learn the outcome, they would most often think of something hands-on. Our textbook suggest, "insights into students' conceptual understanding abound as children immerse themselves in focused experiential explorations" (Anderson, Comay & Chiarotto, 2017, p. 47). It also states, "many children need to physically engage with materials to really think about them. Hands-on experiences such as planting, digging through soil to deconstruct its composition, or holding a worm can be deeply engrossing to children and inspire many observations and questions" (Anderson, Comay & Chiarotto, 2017, p. 32). (In my ESST course we are also talking about Inquiry Based Learning and my professor shared images that helped me better understand what it is and how I can apply it in the classroom. See images below:)
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Week Two: January 19th-21st
I can't believe it is already the second week of this semester, I am slowly but surely getting back into the swing of things. I am enjoying having a routine again (Winter Break always plays around with my routine). Although I am glad to be back into routine, I am also feeling very overwhelmed with the work load this semester. I think I have 4 different calendars and due date lists to ensure I am staying on track. This week in ESCI 310, I first read the featured poem, "Two Kinds of Intelligence" by Rumi. As stated in the write-up, "Rumi suggests that the second knowing is already within us, ready to flow out, but at The Reader we know that self-knowledge isn't always so forthcoming, sometimes you need to unlock it" (Rumi, 2021). I enjoyed reading through Rumi's poem as it shared the two kinds of intelligences. I could relate to this poem as a future teacher. I want to remind my students that the other kind of tablet it one that is already preserved inside of you. As Kumi says, "this second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out" (Kumi, 2021). In ESCI 310 we also went through the "Etched in Stone" & "There Is No Truth" readings. Next class, we will be having a debate on these two polar opposite view points. Next blog post, I will share how the debate went and discuss my opinion, stay tuned! Week One: January 2nd-14th
I am excited to begin this semester, this is my LAST full semester of classes before my internship. This semester I am enrolled in ESCI 310. This course is titled, "Becoming Civic Science Educators". As I shared in my blog post on URCourses, I had a great high-school science experience. I loved biology, chemistry and physics. The main reason I loved them was because of what we were doing. The work was a lot of hands-on and practical experiments. Some of the experiences I had in high-school science class, still stand out to me. Due to this experience, it makes me, a future teacher, want to implement fun, hands-on, interactive, and engaging science material for my future students. The first week of ESCI 310, we were asked to read "Two-Eyed Seeing". This read was a method that was new to me. A good quote from the reading that "explains Etuaptmumk - Two-Eyed Seeing by saying it refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing ... and learning to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all" (Cape Breton University, 2021). This method respectfully and passionately asks that we bring together our different ways of knowing. When we use all of our ways of knowing and understandings it leaves the world a better place. AuthorHaley Miller |