Week5/Week6/Week7

Week 5 -
I did not attend any classes because I was at a conference presenting my research.

Week 6 -
In the astronomy class Mr. Ambrose has started doing a long solar system unit. He goes over a body (moon, planet, comet, etc.) roughly once a day. The students write down important facts about the body being discussed on a worksheet. They keep these worksheets to help them on tests and eventually they will turn them in for credit. today they were specifically talking about the Moon. The conference I went to had people presenting on everything in and around our solar system. I was able to contribute a fact or two that I had just learned about the Moon. Most of the students seemed to be intrigued that we don't know everything about the closest object to the Earth. Mr. Ambrose and I discussed me doing a presentation on Venus next week, since Venus is my dissertation work.

For the chemistry labs Mr. Ambrose had a interesting lab that helped them understand mass. They weighed a piece of not chewed gum. then chewed a piece of gum until it lost its taste and weighted it to find out how much sugar is in a piece of gum. The risk part is trying not to have gum all over the classroom. The students were very cooperative and seemed to get the idea of the lab. They all enjoyed chewing gum (since they are not supposed too) and then comparing their answers to the actual package.

Week 7-
This week I got to lecture/present a power point on Venus for the Astronomy class. Mr. Ambrose and I thought this would be great for me and the students. Venus is the basis of my research, so it was very easy for me to tell them some basics stuff about it and then try to explain my research to them. My research entails understanding Venus' dynamics. I use a 3-D model to simulate what we think is going on and compare it to data. There isn't any direct wind measurements on Venus so we simulate airglow on the nightside. The chemistry is being blown from the dayside to the nightside therefore you get the winds right if you have the airglow right. Most of the students thought it was interesting but did not quite get why anyone would care. That was a vaild observation. I feel like I did not get my point across very well, due to lack of experience describing my research to younger students and the bell ringing with the students running out. The class overall was fine. They all got their planet profile filled out and seemed to learn a bit more about the planet than they expected.

In chemistry they are learning about Bohr Models. This was pretty basic for most of the students. Mr. Ambrose had a lot of examples for the students to work through before doing it for homework. There was a couple of classes the students were very eager to show their answers. They would go up and write their answers on the overhead for the rest of their classmates to see the answer. It was nice to see these students finally feel confident about something they just learned in class. Also it seemed like the disruptive behavior is settling down. I think I could make a connection between disruptive behavior and not learning in class. =)