Month: August 2016

The best part about my group was that we found a way to connect all our lesson plans to our curriculum. My favorite lesson plan is a scientific experiment that no one knows the answer to as it hasn’t been done before. The students will use the camera traps and take data as they normally would. After a couple weeks a pink yard flamingo will be placed in front of the camera and the students will then look at the new photos and record any observations they see with the animals and the flamingo. It is our thought that animals from a more urban environment would not be affected by flamingo as they are used to these different objects, but animals in a more rural environment might be put off by the flamingo as they have not seen an object like that before.

I will be implementing this lesson plan during our evolution unit. We talk about adaptations and how if something is unable to adapt to a changing environment it would then die off and not be able to pass on its genetic material. I am excited to talk to my students about the different adaptations they believe would best suit a mammal living in their particular area.

When I think about my internship, I think about all of the amazing experiences I got to enjoy, from looking at photos from around the world to small mammal capture and release. The only thing I truly wish is that it would have lasted longer as I didn’t want my time to end.

For me I’m not sure if I could pinpoint just one interesting moment but I can say I really enjoyed looking and identifying animals from different areas of the world. It was so funny because you would always know when someone found something interesting as we (Lena, Nicole, and myself) would be oooing or ahhhing. Stephanie, our mentor, would then chuckle as she had seen what seemed like 10,000 of what we had just saw for the first time. It really gave me an idea of what my students must feel when they experience something for the first time. It reminded me that even though I know exactly what will happen when it comes to labs, chuckle with my students, “ooo” and “ahh” with them too.

Everything was not easy when it came to the process of actually working with the data. There were times when the site would decide that it didn’t want to cooperate that day and therefore we would not be able to get the data necessary for the lesson plan. Although this was frustrating at times it was nice to have it happen so that I now know how to mix things up if it happens with my students.

My time at the Natural Science Museum was incredible. We spent most of our time in the biodiversity lab working directly with eMammal. However we did get to explore the other labs and the collections departments. It was nice to have the VIP treatment and be able to see and explore places that are off limits to the public. I would say the best ‘extra’ part of our group was being able to go to Prairie Ridge and do small mammal trapping.

I really enjoyed working with my mentor Stephanie Shuttler. I learned so much from her and she made the whole process fun and enjoyable. It was amazing the photos that she would be able to show us that were taking from students around the world. She explained that the majority of research is done in nature parks, and this has given scientist an opportunity to see animals outside of a protected area and see how they are interacting with the influence of humans.

Although I was very sad to leave the museum after those three short weeks, I am so excited to bring everything I learned back into my classroom. The biggest thing for me was remembering what it is like to be a student. I can’t wait to share with them the mistakes and errors we made that resulted in us trying something new and ending with a great experience. The need to know that it is ok to fail and make mistakes. You just have to pick yourself back up and continue on the course.

Lets start with the fun and games. Overall the development of lessons has been absolutely wonderful. I have had such an amazing time with both Lena and Nicole and I am so thankful I was put into a group with this two incredible women. The three of us were like pieces of a machine functioning and helping one another to create some awesome lesson plans. Once we would get talking about an idea we would all build on each other and find the best way to make it work for each targeted grade level. Even when our amazing idea was uploaded a couple days later by the Florida teachers, we did not let that discourage us and we moved on to something different. I can honestly say this is the best group I have ever worked in and I believe our success of three lesson plans for multiple grade levels were all because of that.

Now some of our lesson plans focus heavily on the website. We chose to make some of our lessons work for classrooms that don’t have access to technology by downloading the graphs and data for them. It seemed like such a wonderful idea until the website decided to take a mini vacation for a couple days. Although that put a little kink in our flow, we moved on to all the other aspects of the three lessons. Eventually the site got back up and running and we were able to save our graphs and data for the lesson plan, but I’ll admit I might have been just a little nervous after day three of no website.

What is so amazing about this particular fellowship is that it is mutually beneficial to multiple parties. We talk and discuss a lot about how this will impact the students and other teachers, but we must look into the impact on our mentor’s organization as well.

After spending weeks in the lab it has become very clear to me that my classroom will have a large impact on my mentor’s organization. We are providing real life data that is being used directly in their research. It was so amazing to read different papers and be told that this data came from schools or that students data helped with this aspect of the research they are conducting. The photos my students “take” on their cameras will be stored forever in the Smithsonian and possibly used by future scientist. That alone I think is incredible and I know the kids will be fascinated by it!

I also think that our group bridged a gap with creating curriculum that was suitable for elementary aged students as well as middle school. So far eMammal has not published any lesson plans for that grade and I think that perhaps our lessons might get some of the younger grade levels involved. This will just increase the amount of data available to the Science Museum, while getting more students involved. Overall, I am just very excited to have the students see that they are doing real life science.