Fumia_Week 3 Post

I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of these articles for a couple of reasons. I think one of the biggest reasons these articles resonated with me was because of how practical and applicable they were for me. I wanted to teach science because of how important I believe the “thought process” behind scientific reasoning is for becoming successful in this world. In order to generate students’ ideas it starts with my questioning and planning on how to develop rich tasks that elicit these students’ ideas.

One of the biggest take away I got from these articles is how closely they aligned with my belief I hold on the importance of presenting information. I want my students to be able to synthesize their own thinking and then deliver in an academic setting and in academic vernacular. In order to do this effectively, synthesizing one's own data as well as supportive research is necessary. Students will need to critically think about how each point proves their initial question or hypothesis.  Speaking academically requires one to enact his or hers verbal and non-verbal behaviors. Speaking academically means that the tone and language is utilizing precise vocabulary and terms related to the topic. Furthermore, students most have presentation skills in a way that shows the audience their knowledge and expertise on the topic (body position, not reading from the slides etc.).

However, the more I read through these articles the more I realized how challenging it is to generate high level thinking conversations from my students. How can I challenge my students to better understand their own idea? The ideas of other group members? Then respond in a way that allows for a dialogue to open up? I feel as if I can engage my students in conversations about science they will then reveal a lot about their conceptual understandings, thus showing me how they are making sense of new ideas. If I breeze over this and focus on just throwing out information I am completely missing the point of teaching. Overall, the discourse primer for science teacher’s article sums up my thinking perfectly for this weeks reading “students ideas are resources for others.” Not only do I benefit from hearing my students thoughts but also the entire classroom gets an opportunity to hear how others are thinking. The benefit from understanding others thinking and then given the chance to explain your own trumps any other type of learning.