Week 7 PLE - Science Challenge

1. We are using the kidsparation technology to teach about the weather and how they change with the seasons. We will have an intro activity where the teacher will hold up 4 different items (sunglasses, coat, etc) and will ask the students when it is appropriate to use each of the items. The students will raise their hands and give their ideas (i.e. coat in the winter when it's cold). Then the teacher will have the students get onto kidsparation and instruct the students on filling out a concept map about "Weather and Seasons". There are four empty boxes in the concept map that are labeled Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. There is also a box that is designated for a state. The students will drag their home state into the blue state box and label the box whatever state they put (i.e. UTAH). Then the students will be able to drag pictures of different weather features into each season box (i.e. drag snow into the winter box). After the students have put their weather features in the correct boxes we can have a mini class discussion about what everyone did and why. The children will share their ideas and the teacher will teach more about the weather changes with seasons as is necessary. After doing this the students will go into a writing portion of the kidsparation application and write about the weather for each season.
2. i. Content- 2nd Grade Standard 3: Students will develop an understanding of their environment.-Objective 2-Observe and describe weather. a)Observe and describe patterns of change in weather.
ii. Pedagogy- We are going to use concept mapping as our pedagogy. This type of pedagogy is good with the contect that we are teaching because it allows the students to classify information that they have been taught about the seasons. Since there are 4 specific seasons it is easy for the children to visualize how to divide up the characteristics if they have a concept map laid out for them. They will have already dicussed the seasons a little bit before the concept mapping so it will be more of a way for the teacher to check for understanding rather than teaching a new concept. This gives them the opportunity to work independently to demonstrate their knowledge. This is also good in teaching our objective because the objective is for the students to be able to "describe patterns of change in the weather" and that is exactly what our pedagogy activity is having them do. They are classifying and defining the different weather features for each season.
iii. We are using kidsparation as our technology resource. This is a concept mapping tool. It is a fun, interactive program. It is good for our content because it allows the students to see the feautures of the weather. It is one things to talk about the sun, and the snow but it is another thing to see pictures of them and know what they look like. Our pedagogy is all about classification and putting the correct weather features with each season. Kidspration is a perfect tool for this. It is clear and easy to understand and it is fun for kids.
iv. I would describe the representation of the content produced by my technology as multi-modal. It is a visual representation which helps the students to see that there are 4 different categories and they need to put characteristics in each one. It is easy for them to see the weather feautures with this visual representation. It is also a dynamic representation. The students can switch from a pictoral view to a writing view in the application. The students are involved in demonstarting the concept. This is helpful because it really makes it so the students are able to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject. It is a great tool for learning.