{"id":2347,"date":"2019-09-03T21:12:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/edt431-531\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2019-09-05T13:02:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T17:02:34","slug":"exemplary-science-teaching-how-do-we-know-we-are-looking-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/exemplary-science-teaching\/2019\/09\/exemplary-science-teaching-how-do-we-know-we-are-looking-at-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Exemplary Science Teaching? How do we know we are looking at it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Everyone has had good and bad teachers throughout their academic career. Think back to your old science teachers. What stands out about your time in their class? Was is the number of times you sat quietly and did questions from the book? Or was it when the class designed rockets from plastic bottles and went to the football field to shoot them into the sky and calculated the height of rocket’s path? The answers to these questions distinguish the difference between good science teaching and exemplary. In other words, a teacher who goes above and beyond so his or her students can too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exemplary science teachers in my mind are the teachers whose lessons are still remembered by their students years from graduate. These teachers go above and beyond making sure each and every student is engaged and participating in the material being presented. This is how we know we are seeing exemplary teaching, it is when we as teachers are pushing our students to think critically and dive into the scientific method. We can do this by taking a step back and asking: are my students going to enjoy this? Making science fun and inviting is the KEY to being an exemplary teacher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a blog that had many different in class activities for environmental science. When you look at these activities what do they have in common? THEY ARE ALL HANDS ON!!! These activities all force students in interact with the concepts they are studying in a fun and exciting way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/thetrendyscienceteacher.com\/2018\/09\/30\/5-must-do-activities-for-physical-science\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Take Mr. Clarke below. Yes, I know it is a silly meme from the Netflix Show, Stranger Things,<\/em> but he is a wonderful example of an exemplary teacher, he constantly supports his students questions no matter how outlandish and he always pushes them to think outside the box. While Mr. Clarke is fiction, he is an example of what kid of teacher I strive to be. The type of science teacher who engages with students constant even outside the classroom and encourages them to ask questions and develop their own hypothesis and experiments to test on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Overall, being an exemplary teacher is about trying to connect with your kids. It’s important to remember while you may find the material fascinating, your students may not. It is your job to change their minds. This is how I hope to run my classroom, by making science fun by connecting the material to the students own interests. Do you have a student who like video games? Find a virus and bacteria game! Do you have a wonderfully gifted artist? Ask them to draw the DNA structure! It’s all about connecting with your students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a wonderful Ted Talk by Tyler DeWitt discussing why many teachers loose their students’ interest in science and how to fix it.:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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