We Made it to Fieldwork!

Yesterday, we had our first fieldwork session in science methods with the fourth graders.  Since it was our first day there, all of the groups did icebreaker activities with the students.  The icebreaker activities that everyone planned had to do with getting to know the students, the students getting to know us, and pre-assessing their prior knowledge of science and space.






My group played a board game with the students, and our game was called "Saturn's Spectacular Science Showdown!" (it's actually a tongue twister when you say it out loud!).  The students would spin a digital spinner, which was on my iPad and can be found at this link (this site has a lot of other great resources to use in any classroom).  Once the digital spinner landed on a number, they would move the number of spaces the spinner landed on (we had numbers 1-4 on the spinner).  When one of the students landed on a square, they had to answer questions that my group wrote on cards that we made.  The pink squares were all about me questions (the students answered questions about them), the blue triangles were 7 second challenge questions (the students had 7 seconds to complete the challenge that was on the card, for example we used: Spin around and name one phase of the moon!), the orange circles were questions about science and technology, and the question marks were questions that the students could ask us!  To the right is what our game cards looked like.  They were face down and the students would pick up the card that matched the shape they landed on.

The fourth graders really enjoyed our game.  It was enjoyable to be able to interact with them and not only learn about them, but what they know about science.  The first day of fieldwork in this classroom was great.  I am looking forward to working with this group and seeing them become even better scientists!  I noticed that they are a very energetic group, they are eager to share their ideas, and they are eager to learn.



I'm also starting to get even more excited about the lessons my group will be teaching to this fourth grade class.  I think the topic that my group has, which is technology, will be something the students will enjoy to learn about.  All of the technology questions we asked them during our icebreaker, they were able to answer with ease.  Technology is all around them, so I think that when they learn about space and technology they will be expanding their knowledge of technology.  On Thursday, group 1 is going to teach their direct lesson and then teach their inquiry lesson next Tuesday.  I am wishing them luck as they kick off our adventure into space with the fourth graders!