Geology understandings

1) Why do I think we only find coal in certain regions?
I think that it was to do wight the make up of the earth in that area. Or that it is in places of volcano remains.

2) Brainstorm with those around you
altitude, due to the minerals in the area

3) Research
Fossil fuels are formed from the remains of ancient organisms. Because coal takes millions of years to develop and there is a limited amount of it, it is a nonrenewable resource. 

The conditions that would eventually create coal began to develop about 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period. During this time, the Earth was covered in wide, shallow seas and dense forests. The seas occasionally flooded the forested areas, trapping plants and algae at the bottom of a swampy wetland. Over time, the plants (mostly mosses) and algae were buried and compressed under the weight of overlying mud and vegetation. 

As the plant debris sifted deeper under Earth’s surface, it encountered increased temperatures and higher pressure. Mud and acidic water prevented the plant matter from coming into contact with oxygen. Due to this, the plant matter decomposed at a very slow rate and retained most of its carbon (source of energy). 

4) Class discussion
uses- burn it for energy

big thick swamps---> black rich organic matter gets buried, time in oppression morphs it into coal
the everglades and new orleans

Forming new knowledge

Plate tectonics
the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into several plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core. The plates act like a hard and rigid shell compared to Earth's mantle. This strong outer layer is called the lithosphere 

subduction
In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle as the plates converge. Regions where this process occurs are known as subduction zones

mountains
Movements of tectonic plates create volcanoes along the plate boundaries, which erupt and form mountains. A volcanic arc system is a series of volcanoes that form near a subduction zone where the crust of a sinking oceanic plate melts volcanoes

earth quakes

only lithosphere has the strength and the brittle behavior to fracture in an earthquake.

The map below locates earthquakes around the globe. They are not evenly distributed; the boundaries between the plates grind against each other, producing most earthquakes. So the lines of earthquakes help define the plates

There are three main plate tectonic environments:  extensional, transform, and compressional. Plate boundaries in different localities are subject to different inter-plate stresses, producing these three types of earthquakes. Each type has its own special hazards.

extensional-  smaller than magnitude 8
transform- shallow, smaller than 8.5 magnitude
comprehensional- earths larger quakes, some exceeding nine magnitude

Pangaea-  was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.^[2][3] It assembled from earlier continental units approximately 300 million years ago, and it began to break apart about 175 million years ago.^[4] In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea was in the southern hemisphereand surrounded by a super ocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the last supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.

Ring of fire- the Ring of Fire is an area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. In a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements. It has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.^[1] The Ring of Fire is sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt

Law of superposition-  an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields dealing with geological stratigraphy. In its plainest form, it states that in undeformed stratigraphic sequences, the oldest strata will be at the bottom of the sequence.

hot spot-

In geology, the places known as hotspots or hot spots are volcanic regions thought to be fed by underlying mantle that is anomalously hot compared with the surrounding mantle. They may be on, near to, or far from tectonic plate boundaries.

NGISS

Major take away

NGSS allows students to experience a phenomena first hand by engaging in hand on experiments. I think this is the only way that science should be taught in the classroom. NGSS gives meaning to learning and gets kids excited about going into the world and experiencing more. Hands on learning allows give teaching the opportunity to assess the students without formulating a a written summative test.


Implications for classroom

I will most definitely initiate NGSS into my future classroom. Even if my curriculum makes me teach from a textbook, I will accompany lessons with NGSS standards.

Shift in my understanding

Based on my own experience, the science concepts I understand the most from my past are those that were accompanied by an experiment. This being said, before watching these videos I thought that the best way to teach was by hand on activities to model concepts, but now i know that there is a built in set of standards to do just that.

The Sweater article and "conceptual change"

I am confident that disproving misconceptions by hands on modeling and experimentation is the best way to foster conceptual change. The Sweater article supports what we have been doing in class with the patterns of the moon and the cause of the change of the seasons. This makes me think about my time in school and how much of it was spent memorizing for a test versus pedagogical thinking.

It was frustrating for me last class when we were given a ball, the globe, and a light source and were left to find our own reasoning for a full moon and a lunar eclipse. To often in today's progressive society we resort to google to find immediate gratification. But, I am beginning to realize in this class that googling without further inquiring gives us no deeper understanding standing and will only withstand in the short-term.

Reflection on "Misconceptions Die Hard"

       I was immediately enticed by this article. I immediately thought of myself, and things that I once perceived at real to only find out that I was completely wrong. As a college student, I still often find myself questioning my judgment and reverting to google. And then I think back to my post on thinking. Has our schools systems been teaching us to think in the wrong way all along? Have they been teaching us to think for ourselves at all? This article gave me the conclusion that we usually read a fact in a textbook and consider it the truth without formulating our own convictions for the truth.

      The experiment is a terrific way to expose the state of student's thinking. If they learned science from a book or they learned from doing and discovering on their own intuition. I did my own little experimentation after reading and asked my friend sitting next to me whether a crumpled aluminum paper weighs more than a flat one. She replied first with I don't know and then with the crumpled one. We then digressed into why one might think that way and we could both understand why its a common misunderstanding.

     As a teacher I stop and pause....what can I do to prevent these misconceptions from my students? how can I make them hands on learners who push boundaries of the gapes of a book? I hope to find that out over the course of this class, and this article gave me the motivation to not settle for average.

Solar System

What are your best understandings about?

1) How the phases of the moon occur?
The moon rotates in correspondence with the sun and the earth, but is in its own gravitational system. We see the moon at different perspectives due to its path while traveling.

2) What causes the seasons?
The seasons are caused by the movement of the earth around the hemisphere. I actually know very little about this and don't find myself credible enough to even guess :)

3) What causes a lunar eclipse?
A lunar eclipse occur when the sun and the moon cross paths when they are rotating the earth

Thinking About Thinking

What does it mean when someone knows how to think?

Thinking is a very complicated concept if you attempt to divulge into it. I did an activity yesterday in class where I had to find my name in a group of names in the class, but the tricky part is that the names were made up entirely of symbols.  Because I am a fluent reader I never have to break apart my reading strategies and decode words. The thinking I used to decode the symbols and translate to my name made me realize the complicated process that my students go through when they read. I believe when someone knows ho to think, they are able to explain their thought process.

How does a teacher teach a student how to think?

           

A teacher teaches a student how to think by breaking apart their thought process. A teacher does this by knowing the student to be able to advocate for themselves and how they process information. A teacher should challenge student’s conceptual thinking by having to explain their opinions and answers to problems in order to become fluent thinkers.

Have you ever been in a class where you really had think?

The classes that are the most difficult to me require the most thinking. When I was a business major I had to take microeconomics. This class stands out to me as the hardest class I have taken because I could not properly process and relate to the material. This subject was also foreign to me before college, so being exposed to the content for the first time ever proved to be difficult to master.