Science Notebook from 400 level Classes
I have decided to use images of my science notebook as an example of my best piece of academic work. It was somewhat difficult to pick one piece of work to be labeled as my best piece, because I would like to think that I have had more than one. I chose this notebook as my favorite because I really had a lot of fun putting it together. I got to build things, put together experiments, create problems, and find solutions for those problems, which is all the stuff that I personally love to do.
It is obvious when someone enjoys their work. You can see it when you pay attention to the amount of details that they tend to put into it. It is almost as if they don't wan't the assignment to be over, so they continue to put things together in order to prolong what they have going on. It is an amazing thing to see in the class, and I think that you can see it when you look at the examples that I have chosen for this section of my professional portfolio.
During this assignment, my peers and I were given five beads from our professor. We were then told to monitor the beads and come up with an experiment to test them. The processes of this experiment were to be put into a science journal and turned in for a grade. These excerpts give the viewer a good example of how the overall appearance of my assignment was, along with a few pages of work. The index is present to not only show the audience what is within this journal, including the stuff that they do not see, but also how I am telling the reader that when they come to an underlined word, they could find the definition to that word in the glossary in the back.
I also give a picture of how the entire test went by explaining, without showing, how I subjected the beads to a specified period of exposure along with how they were being exposed. As I have said, this assignment was picked as my best work because of the amount of fun I had while doing it, but it also gave me a chance to play around with ideas of how I can be putting this type of work into my future instruction, with my future students.
Kids seem to love when they get a chance to build things and play as little scientists. By guiding the class to a specific problem and allowing them to create their own solution to that problem, the teacher will excite their pupils to learn while giving the teacher an insight to how the students organize and find solutions to questions. Science is something that everyone in some way is interested in. Teaching how scientists work is an excellent way for instructors of all grades to engage their classes in all subject areas. This assignment shows how I have been able to take something that I love to do, and use that to become something that I love to be, a teacher.
