Week 4: Reading Responce

While reading these articles my 5th and 6th grade teacher kept coming to my mind. Science in early elementary was definitely this Activitymania idea, where we would play with tinker toys, tape fingers together to see how important your thumb is, or the classic butterfly unit. These were all individual occurrences with little regularity in the curriculum. My 5th and 6th grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Motz, was the science teacher for the 5th and 6th grade. This meant that we got to spend every afternoon doing science, and I mean doing science. Reflecting upon it he used an inquiry based model, whether that is building the best straw structure or allowing us to create and develop our own experiment over flower growth (I used my family's compost instead of fertilizer and the plants actually produced more flowers and seeds). I remember almost every science inquiry we did in that class and it is almost a decade later. When I came to college I feel that I really saw an impact on how this approach affected my understanding of science. In his class I learned how to set up and run a science experiment in elementary school. In my AP high school science classes, there were some students that didn't understand how to set up an experiment. The teacher actually spent time going over it, where it was second nature in my mind at that point. In college science classes, I would see people struggling in lab about how to set up an experiment themselves, but this is something I learned almost a decade earlier. This really blew my mind that they just didn't get it, but by that time it was second nature to me. Additionally, I found labs easy, but other students really struggled. 

Looking into the reading over Coupled-Inquiry, I can't help but think back to those experiments. Let's go with the flower experiment example. Our unit was over the idea what do plants need to grow. Mr. Motz started with asking us what we thought and create our own questions around how plants grow and what they need to grow. This moved us into an "explore on your own" set up where we got to explore our own questions through an experiment we set up. Along the way we talked about pollination and other things a plant needs to grow and this is where we see more instruction. He tested our inquiry abilities, through allowing us to set up our own experiments and allowed us to do science in the classroom. Again, I remember nearly every activity we did in his class, because I was interested in it and this is really where I started to get excited about school and invested in it. As a student that struggled with reading, I was able to excel in something and gain my confidence in myself, which reflected in my test scores, by having them around the 30th percentile in 3rd grade to reaching the 70th through 90th percentiles by end of 6th grade (They were the highest in science and library studies/data analysis). 

The article "Misconceptions Die Hard" discusses a sink float activity, which was one of our experiments we did in my class with Mr. Motz. He started with our initial predictions and then we observed what happened. From here we discussed our thoughts around what we observed. He did not stop there he had us apply these thought to a tinfoil boat competition to see who could build a boat that could hold the most marbles. He had us directly address our misconceptions with predictions and discussing how our predictions were wrong. He had a similar method to when we ordered the phases of the moon. I remember my predictions were backwards for the order, and even though I felt confident, I learned I was wrong and it stuck with me. This also relates to the ideas in the article "Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children's Experience". In both of these situations my teacher had us communicate our beliefs, confront them head on with an experiment, prove us wrong and then discuss what was really going on. 

I know I really focused on my experience in Mr. Motz's science class in relation to these articles, but I feel that each of these experiences are a model for what the articles are calling for. This teacher is who I credit to harnessing my passion for science. He recognized my passion for it and how I excelled in that, at least way better than with spelling. He nominated me to go to WISE conferences or STEM days for girls to learn more about women in STEM and encouraged me and showed me I would do well in a STEM field. This is where I knew I was going to do something in science and he is one of the teachers that influenced me to want to become a teacher. Interestingly enough it was not my dad who is a teacher.