Teaching Everyday Science: Electromagnetic - Assignment Example

Teaching Everyday Science: Electromagnetic Curriculum The primary goal of this is to help understand and appreciate that magnets are everywhere and that they influence our daily lives. In this course, the students I will involve my students’ listening, observing, testing and questioning skills with a hope that they will be well versed with the requisite skills in the field of electromagnetism. This curriculum tailored to help the students embrace and appreciate the scientific knowledge disseminated by the course. The curriculum aims at helping the students develop a deeper sense of scientific reasoning and at the end of the day become critical thinkers who can understand and interpret scientific theories and principles (Konicek-Moran 9). Learning objectives By the end of this course, the students should be able to: learn how an electromagnet is created, understand what factors affect the strength of the magnetic field familiarize with and understand the terms magnet, magnetic field, and electromagnetism Recognize where electromagnets are used in daily life and how common they are Oregon Education and Teaching standards met by the curriculum This curriculum relates to Oregon Standards of Science education and teaching in the sense that it (Oregon Department of Education): Creates or analyzes at least one of the more promising solutions. It allows for collection and processing of relevant data and allows for Incorporation of modifications based on data from testing or other analysis. Analyzes data, identifies uncertainties, and displays data so that the implications for the solution in test are candid. Explains how the Earth’s atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere change over time and at varying rates. It further explains the techniques used to elucidate the history of events on Earth. Describes the interactions of energy and matter including the law of conservation of energy Results of teaching Upon the conclusion of the teaching activity, the students filled an evaluation form where they expressed their view concerning the relevance of the lesson plan to their lives, the clarity of the curriculum and my delivery and explanation of the concept contained in the curriculum (Konicek-Moran 10). Analysis of the Assessment and Teaching Evaluations From the results presented above, a majority of the students were okay by the directions given. The students also expressed satisfaction in the delivery of the curriculum. Most students gave a nod to the relevance of the curriculum and the lesson plan to their “real world” teaching. Further, the students were happy with the curriculum of which they said it was engaging, smoothly presented, supports the concepts and had limited or no disequilibrium. Most if not all the students took part in the group activity. They affirmed that the activity adequately connected to their lives and that it related well to the concepts enshrined in the curriculum (Konicek-Moran 11). Strengths and Limitations of the Curriculum and Curriculum Delivery From the results analyzed above, it is apparent that the curriculum has more strengths than weaknesses. Some of the main strengths of the curriculum include; its ability to engage students in the learning process, the lesson plan relates to their lives of the students it targets to impact, and the concepts are clearly in articulation to the satisfaction of the students. The main limitation of the curriculum seems to lie in its restriction on time such that the teacher is time barred as it comes to delivery of the curriculum content (Konicek-Moran 11). Strategies for Improving the Curriculum and Teaching I learned that the curriculum is not perfect as it is. There is room for improving it. I leaned that I can focus my attention on the areas that received the least positive responses from the students. To improve on my teaching, I will commit myself to giving better directions, and substitute text based directions with visual explanations. Further, I will institute better planning of control elements and check on time management. Better classroom management will be instrumental in ensuring that the students follow my directions and conduct consistent experiments (Konicek-Moran 12). Evaluation of the Curriculum The curriculum is comprehensive and complete in its current state though it needs minimal amendments. The amendments aimed on areas that would enable the teacher teach the syllabus within the set time. Further, the curriculum should have a change to allow for students participation in both the teaching and learning processes. Discussion The steps involved in developing the experiment conducted by my class are as illustrated in the diagram below The students experience conducting the inquiry lesson represented in the diagram that follows: Conclusion The activity involved cognitive disequilibrium, which inspired inquiry, thinking and curiosity and by so doing led to deep learning. The students’ cognition understanding enhanced by the activity taught. The activity required them to consider all the possible relationships and the expected conditions i.e. the students had to engage their minds to understand the relationship between the number of coils and amount of current passed thru the nail and the resultant electromagnet produced. Our experiment allowed the students to identify and control the various variables of the experiment and determine how each variable affected the outcome (Konicek-Moran 15). The students gained correlation reasoning by charting and evaluating their results. In average, the class showed that with every increase in the number of coils, there was a corresponding increase in the number of paperclips that the resulting electromagnet would hold, in spite of a few outliers. The activity also helped the students develop scientific skills of developing a hypothesis, conducting an experiment to test the veracity of the hypothesis, analyzing the data collected and checking whether it supports the null hypothesis, failure to which they would create an alternate hypothesis (Konicek-Moran 13). The teaching experience has helped our group to appreciate and understand the necessity of creating disequilibrium to achieve deep learning. We have learnt that effective teaching is that which involves both the students and the teacher (Konicek-Moran 13). Students should have an allowance and encouragement to ask questions, create hypothesis and test the hypotheses they have created via scientific experiments to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter of the course. According to our group, we tend to support the use of this hands-on teaching method than the traditional method of lecturing and memorization as it is much more effective and productive. The teaching experience has helped us, as a group to appreciate that teaching is not an easy job to do. We have discovered that teaching is a learning process and that it requires patience to gain the right experience. We further learnt that as we teach, we are likely to come across methods that do not work. The teaching experience has exposed us to various challenging scenarios and helped us understand the value of constantly evaluating the methods we use and adjusting them to obtain the desired results (Konicek-Moran 15). We have come to appreciate that classroom management is not as easy as we had earlier on thought. The teaching experience has expose us to the actual classroom environment from where we have learnt that the most effective way to manage a classroom is by encouraging the students, in a calm manner, to be attentive and cooperative. Finally, we learnt that the time allocated for the experiments (50 minutes), is not sufficient for conducting such an experiment and therefore the need to manage our time was emphasized (Konicek-Moran 15). Work Cited Konicek-Moran, Richard. Everyday Science Mysteries: Stories for Inquiry-Based Science Teaching. Arlington, Va: NSTA Press, 2008. Print. Read More