Audrey Ward - Elementary Science Blog

     This week, we talked about how to identify if something is a living thing or not depending on if it has all of the 8 characteristics. We also talked in detail about the different chracteristics, such as, what they are, how they work, and why they are important. One thing that I learned was that a living thing must have all 8 charcteristics to be considered living. Each of these characteristics are connected to make life possible. An example of how they are connected is reproduction and growth. They are connected becuase every living thing, for example, humans, get genes from a parent, start as something small and grow, and then adventually passes their genes through reproduction.      I think that the 8 characertistics and how they work is very clear and straight forward. Although, I do think it could get confusing when trying to apply it to more complex concepts. For example, when we were talking about if a virus is a living thing or a single-cell org...

       We first designed our dream classroom with a partner during lab this week. One thing my partner and I decided to include was flexible seating so that our students could sit wherever and however they would like to while learning. We also chose to have lots of group tables so that our students could collaborate with each other.       We then learned about the Next Generation Science Standards.  I liked how we got time to explore the NGSS website. We then talked more in-depth about the three different dimensions of the NGSS and how they apply to the standards. I am still not 100% confident in how to fully understand these standards and would like to have more practice working with and reading them as there are a lot of terms and abbreviations. I did find it interesting, though, to talk about since I had never heard of NGSS before or been taught how to understand all of the components of school standards. This will help me in my future car...