The Moon and Winter

• Since it's winter time and it's mostly cloudy out all the time (not to mention we had a crazy amount of snow and ice this winter), its been hard for me to see the moon. Friday night I was unable to see it and Saturday night as well. Sunday was the only day so far that I was able to actually see the moon in the sky without clouds getting in the way! Hopefully winter is done hitting us with all this snow so that I could look out at the sky at night and see the moon!

• In class on Friday we learned about Bloom's Taxonomy. I have never learned about this before so when we reviewed the power point in class, I was really interested to see what this view of education was all about. I also learned about what the term "pedagogue" meant. I like the idea of a "higher order of thinking." I think that it's great to get students to reach their full potential when they want to learn about something. In teaching science, I want my students to be able to explain what they learned and actually understand what they are saying and what they are explaining, not just spit out information. Another aspect of Bloom's taxonomy that I agree with is how the terms have changed. The six major categories, instead of having nouns as the categories, they are now verbs. I think when learning is doing, it is much more effective on the student's learning process. I hope to take some of the aspects of Bloom's taxonomy into my own classroom one day.

Snow Storm!

Doing the "Sink or Float" experiment brought back memories for me of when I was in elementary school doing science experiments. I enjoyed how we got to learn about density hands on rather than just listening to a lecture on what density is. My classmates and I worked in groups in order to come up with different measurements for the cork, the slate, and the piece of wood. It was fun to work on an experiment in a group because we were able to learn from each other and make sure that our measurements were correct. We would check and see if we all got the same measurements.

In my classroom, I want to do a lot of hands on science activities. I feel like if students are able to witness first hand what science is all about, they will be more interested in the subject and interested in nature itself.

Because of all the snow that we've been having, I've been observing a lot about nature. First of all, I have not seen any wildlife around what so ever. I'm pretty sure that the negative degree temperature has been keeping them hiding away in their dens. I've read on local news stations that this has been the coldest winter since the early 1900s! Since this winter is so cold and has appeared out of nowhere, it makes me wonder if global warming is still occurring. I read an article just the other day that it global warming is something that would occur whether or not humans have any part in it. Seeing as how this is one of the coldest winters in a very long time, I'm kind of assuming that global warming is not too much of an issue as it used to be. This issue now is: what are we going to do about all this snow?"