Intern Experience Week #14

My internship at my PDS is coming to an end, but the experiences are never ending. My mentor teaching teaches social studies and science to 5th grade students. I have been teaching a unit on the Civil War since I started at my PDS and just finished it before thanksgiving break. Now since returning from the holiday break we have started a unit on matter and energy. This is a whole new experience for me because I have only taught science in a kindergarten classroom therefore, the concepts I will be teaching are a lot more complex. I have had to spend a lot of time reteaching myself about atoms and molecules and everything that has to deal with matter and energy. In order to feel more comfortable about teaching these concepts I watched my mentor teach for a day so I could get an idea of how he presents the material. After observing his teaching for a day I took over this past Tuesday and started teaching science. It has been a lot easier then I had anticipated. I think that is because I have my own type of teaching style now so I just took my approach in social studies to science, but now I am working into my lessons more hands on activities.
Today we actually build molecules. I worked with students on building their knowledge about atoms and molecules and using the periodic table on Tuesday. Then we reviewed the information in class today before we started to build our molecules. The students built molecules with clay and toothpicks and I modeled a few different types of molecule being built in order for them to have a visual on how to actually structure them correctly.
I ran into some difficulty when I was having the students use their periodic table to identify what symbols in the molecular formulas, represented the atoms on the table. The students were confusing the number on the periodic table which represents the element or atoms protons in that elements nucleus with the number of that actual atom needed to create the molecule. Therefore a discussion was held to help students identify the number of atoms needed in order to build the different molecules I had listed for them to try. I also gave students an option building a few more complex molecules which a lot took advantage of doing.