Monday, March 30, 2009

Story Map and Rubric for a Science Based Digital Story

For my digital story I chose to express the concept of changes in a population due to challenges presented by the environment. The story presents natural selection through the life and times of Philbert, a long winged duck, and his family who struggle to overcome a drying environment and the increased distance between watering holes encountered while migrating.

To view the Story Map I created for this project and the Rubric For Assessing a Digital Story in Science Concepts click on the links below.


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Valuable Internet Resources for teaching science

In my first year of teaching high school science, one of the most challenging concepts for students to comprehend has been the location of electrons around the nucleus (positions of the different orbitals), energy levels and electron configurations, and how the valence electrons determine the chemical properties of an element, as well as, why they will form ionic and covalent bonds with different atoms to become stable. In my searching, I have found 2 very useful websites that offer interactive models to help supplement lessons and facilitate understanding for my students.

The first site is Learner.org and the web page is simply called Interactives. This site provides interactive lessons in science, mathematics, language arts, arts and history. You can click here to go straight to the Interactives site. This site provides an excellent walk through basic atomic theory, atomic structure, electron energy levels, orbitals, and configuration, and ends with a explanation of the information provided in each box of the periodic table and groups and periods of the elements within. The site includes games for the students to play with interactive models to test their knowledge on the concepts being presented that involve identifying atoms, ions, and isotopes of an element. As well as, arranging and properly filling orbitals with electrons in the correct orbital.

The second site is Skool Interactive Training. This site is great for the subsequent lessons on different groups of elements in the periodic table. It does a very good job at explaining valence electron configurations, why certain groups of elements are more reactive than others and how ionic bonds are formed between cations and anions. It visualizes ionization of atoms and the interactions between cations and anions in forming stable, electrically neutral, bonds.

A third site that I have found very useful for different science activities and lesson plans is The United States Geologic Survey website. This site offers information on a very wide range of activities and lessons for earth science and biology. My favorite thus far has been the water cycle game. The site provides you with materials for print, instructions, assessment ideas, and extensions to comprehensively teach the water cycle, energy transfers, and pollution tracking through the water cycle. Complete with key words and information for further study. I have used this very active and engaging activity with both my junior high class and my 10th grade biology class with fantastic results.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Article Assessment #5:

“Assistive Technologies for Reading” by Ted S. Hasselbring and Margaret E. Bausch.

Overview:

This article discusses how assistive technologies such as, Read & Write Gold by TextHELP and the Read 180 program published by Scholastic Inc., are tools that can help all educators guide and support students through class material with additional reading support and reading intervention or training programs. The authors present findings that 8 out of 10 students with learning disabilities have reading problems. Text-reader software like Read & Write Gold assist students by using synthetic speech to read text aloud with the student as well as provide support for writing and editing by reading back what the student has composed. Technologies like these help the student recognize when they have skipped words or misread material written material and in compositions of their own. Other software programs are known as reading intervention. These systems provide individualized reading strategies and training to students based on their current skill level. . Programs such as Read 180 .....

Click Here
to view the complete article assessment.