Classroom Reflection Essay

In terms of numeracy, the children were drawing a variety of shapes in the sand which allowed me to use new words with them to further develop their vocabulary. I also used everyday words to help reinforce their existing vocabulary in a new context.

In science we made Rube Goldberg machines. Are machine had to have five steps. Are first first step was for a pice of cardboard out of the box and the hair dryer blew the baseball down a ramp. The second step was for the baseball to fall of the rap and hit a tennis ball to go down another ramp. The third step was the tennis ball hit a small basketball. The forth step was the basketball fall through a hoop. Then finally the fifth step was for the basketball to hit and ring the bell.

When we ask the children to share their ideas orally using solid objects (teddies or animals), the teacher will be able to define their ideas and strategies. In addition, the children will have the opportunity to be involved in their learning process as part of their sense of agency.

For my Rube Goldberg Project, my group and I decided to push in a soap dispenser that was on the wall. We created a five step process that had worked numerous times before, but sadly failed to work when presenting. Even though this happened, we had many steps that reflected motion, force, mass, friction, and transferring energy. Our steps were having a marble roll down a ramp, which landed on a metal casing that would propel it forward. This marble would hit some dominoes that were lined up in three rows and knock them all down. Two books were at the end of these lines, so they were to knock each other over and have one book land on a remote controller. This would press in the forward button, making a remote controlled car that was placed on top of a cardboard box advance forward and hit the soap dispensers button.

demonstrating to a child, it is good to explain what is going on and afterwards let

One aspect of my lesson that I felt went well in the implementation of my lesson was the information being grasped by the learners. Before I began my lesson, I asked the learners some questions about the fun phonics letter. I started off by asking the children if they knew what the fun phonic letter for the week was, then I asked them to tell me some words that begins with the letter “Dd”. Next, I read a story called “Harry the dirty dog”. Throughout the story I asked some questions to keep the learners engaged. I asked them questions like “what words that begins with the letter “Dd” did you hear?” I can tell they were engaged because their answers were never off topic. The learners were so excited about the end result of their letter “Dd”

Last week, when my group and I were working on our storyboard, my job was to come up with a way to explain Newton’s Laws of Motion. I decided to use diagrams and visual examples (written on a whiteboard) to explain how they apply in theory and real life. For Newton’s 2nd Law, I drew diagrams explaining that the larger an object’s mass is, the more force that needs to be applied on it. I included a likeness of a 50kg and 100kg ball on my whiteboard, also explaining that the objects’ acceleration will increase if the force applied to them also increases. For example, if those objects both had a force of 100N applied to them, the lighter object would accelerate at a faster rate than the heavier one. When it was finally time for another group member to explain what I had written on camera, I was concerned about how understandable my pictures were, since they were just two circles. But I made sure to add “50kg” and “100kg” to them before my group member started explaining, as I remembered that I did that in the storyboard. This enabled my group member to successfully explain Newton’s 2nd Law of

Furthermore, while students were touching and experimenting the mixture, I was around them asking questions such as, what do you think? Is ooblick solid or liquid? How can you tell? Can you roll the substance into a ball? How does the substance feel? Or describe in your own words how does the substance look like. The strategy of asking meaningful questions while students were exploring the mixture made the learning experience more meaningful. Before writing the driving question on the board I played a YouTube video of the book by Dr. Seuss, called “Bartholomew and Ooblick.” It was a long story. Hence, it made it difficult to keep students fully engaged. Next time around I plan on renting the book and reading to students. I enjoy reading to children and I’m a very interactive reader, so that won’t be a

Another force that was acting on the car was friction, friction was acting on the car because the piece of wood was very rough and had little ridges on it which was rubbing on the car which would cause it to slow down a little bit. The direction that the forces were going was pretty much everywhere, gravity was going down and friction was going forwards and backwards. The car did not work well with the friction because the friction would cause the car to somewhat lose control and go off the side of the ramp, the car did not work well with the gravity either because the gravity is what cause the car to fall and crack the egg. Some ways that we could minimize those forces is by making wheels for the car and making the bottom of the car smooth to reduce the amount of friction, we can't really reduce the gravity in the car but one thing that we could do for that is make the car really light but with a lot of padding for the egg. The reason I say we could make it really light is so that when gravity is acting on the car the car won't fall as fast and would somewhat glide down to the floor with a soft landing for the

In December of 2013, I was told that I was not considered for the full-time temporary faculty position in political science on South Campus by Dr. Sonia Nieves because I was not able to teach international relations even though I have graduate level coursework in international relations and Political Science degrees do not specify a focus. I later found out that, this requirement was false and inconsistent with Broward College’s Faculty Credentialing Manual and that Dr. Nieves hired an adjunct faculty member from another campus who had the same degree as me. This left me in the middle of December with no classes for the upcoming spring term despite my ability and record to fill my classes and outstanding reviews by students and supervisors. Dr. Neves also mentioned to me, on several occasions, that it was always a major scheduling “hassle” to be forced to find a downstairs classroom in order to accommodate my ADA needs.

For standard 2.1.5 I found an example in the first and second grade lab balance and motion. The question asked what my lab group observed when we stroke the tuning fork against the table and held it to the table tennis ball. In reference to the tuning fork the tennis ball starts to bounce off of it due to the vibration of the tuning fork and the sound waves being emitted. We described the position and motion of the tennis ball relative to the tuning fork. For standard 2.1.6 I found an example in the kindergarten lab exploring forces and motion.

Like the toy doll, some would say that a user begins to have an imagination while playing with the toy truck. However, the user experiences no difficulties or tasks when playing with the toy. Despite all of this, a young user could learn the rudimentary characteristics of friction and scientific laws when playing with this toy. For example, every time you push the truck it will eventually come to a stop. This process exemplifies the scientific law of friction. Overall, the toy truck could be an in-between toy teaching more intelligent ideas of science but for those who do not understand, the toy does not actively engage

Language: The students will practice the language pertinent to Forces and Newton’s Laws of Motion, throughout the process of completing the project.

The physics students at Paul International High School conducted a project where a ramp was constructed to see how far a toy car could travel. The ramp’s angle of incline was changed in each trial. This experiment allowed students to understand how the angle of incline effect something as important as a car. For this project, students were provided cardboard, tape, scissors, books, and toy cars. Each pair created designs for their ramps. Each ramp was around the same length and adjustments were made to ensure that the toy car would not fall off the ramp. For our ramp specifically, we hypothesized that if the angle of incline of the ramp was low then the toy car would not travel far.

The lack of time to teach foundation subjects in school can leave teachers with inadequate experience of teaching DT (Sayers, 2002; OFSTEAD, 1999), the lesson taught was squeezed in at the end of term to ensure DT and Science had been taught but was planned as part of a cross-curricular learning journey to make the learning as meaningful as possible for the children (Barnes, 2015). The series of lessons involved the children using maths, science, English and DT skills.