Another Week, Another Adventure

Hello again all!
Sorry for the lack of posts in the past weeks. It has been a very busy time for us interns with teaching our lessons for a very big and important graduation project.
Since I have finished teaching my unit to be observed in order to graduate, I can now return back to my research project.

This past week we finished a reading unit that involved both fiction and non-fiction text. Next week, we start our reading inventory test. So what to do with those awkward few days between a unit and a test? Find engaging readings and work on our literary elements of course!

In order to prepare for our reading inventory test, I had students review how to compare and contrast text using a Venn Diagram. This gave me the opportunity to use my own selection of materials. So naturally, I went ahead and picked some articles that involved science. The topic we focused on is "Our Sun".

First, I had my students dig for some prior knowledge. I asked students what do they already know about our sun? I received answers such as "it is a star", "it is the center of our solar system", and "It is hotter than 20 ovens combined". It seemed to me that my students had pretty basic understanding of our Sun.

Before we read the articles, I had my students play vocabulary match up with the following terms: solar cycle, solar wind, star, sunspot, and Coronal Mass Ejection. This helped the students to understand the terms they would be reading so that when they did come across it in our text, they wouldn't have to go and search for what the term meant. With each vocabulary term, I extended the definition and gave an example of each term. For example: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME's) are bursts from the sun that send a lot of charged particles towards Earth. Needless to say when I was saying all this, I was pushing my arms way to show the power of the ejection. I think some of my students may have not been expecting me to "burst" because their faces dropped. I then explained that the particles that get through the magnetosphere are what causes our Aurora's. Once I mentioned Aurora's, the lightbulbs started to go off in their heads. They were eager to share with me everything they knew about these beautiful lights in the sky.

From there, I head my students first read "Sun Catcher" in National Geographic Explorer (May 2012 Edition). Students wrote down in the left side of their venn diagram important details and information from the article. I then had students share the information they collected and wrote their information on the board.

Next, I had my students watch the video "Our Sun, A Real Star" from NASA eClips. They took notes during the video and afterwards filled in the right side of the venn diagram. The students then compared the  information from the two sources and saw what was the common information.

The students seemed to enjoy reading and seeing the information about the Sun rather than start their new text book. It may be that the students just don't like the other book, but it really seemed the students enjoyed reading the science articles and talking about the science content.