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I went on a hike at Snow Canyon on Saturday. After exploring caves, we went to the top of a mountain and watched the sunset. It was beautiful!!

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Nature Walk

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Final STEM class on body systems and the microverse.

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Body systems curriculum investigations with holiday cookies.

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I hiked in Snow Canyon and saw these beautiful flowers. It made me notice how many different colors we have in the desert here that come out in different seasons. Snow Canyon would also be a great resource for field trips and teaching STEM because it shows so many different areas of science, such as geology, plants, animals, habitats, etc.

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I went to Pine Valley to see the changing colors of the leaves. I think this would be a good local resource to use to show students the changing colors of the leaves and the gradation of them. It would be interesting to discuss how seasons affect plant life and animal life and allowing the students to make observations. -Risa

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Interview Science Coordinator for District - Ashley Veater

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Interview Science Coordinator for District - Ashley Veater

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I interviewed Shauna Williams, the Science Coordinator for WCSD, over email. I tried calling but did not get a response and I do not have the opportunity to call during regular business hours very often (because I am at the elementary school, the University, or work lol), so I decided to just email her and hope for a response. Today I got my response!
I asked her two major questions:
1. What resources and services do you provide to the schools?
2. How does data on students from the district affect funding for the STEM/science programs?

Her responses were:

1. We provide materials, learning opportunities, and data/support.  The materials we provide include: learning kits from various partnerships (Red Butte Gardens, Natural History Museum of Utah), non-consumable devices and supplies such as digital microscopes and mag-lev tracks, and consumable materials such as tin foil and styrofoam.  The learning opportunities we provide are a combination of in-house and external: iSEE partners offer workshops as does the State.  We also design and offer our own PL events.  Data and support that we offer includes identifying areas of need based on data, creating/importing assessments into our LMS, communicating about expectations and resources available.

2. Funding for science/STEM support comes from different sources: some of the funding this year came from ESSR funds (which will not continue), the majority of the funding comes from a Title IV grant--this provides for a person (she puts together all the communication, loads resources into our LMS, and coordinates learning events --among other things!) and it funds part of a science/STEM program called Mystery Science.  Data will be analyzed at the end of the year to {hopefully} determine if there is a correlation between resources and strategies used and end-of-level test scores in grades 4&5.  If a correlation can be found, the connected resources/strategies will be continued or encouraged.  Resources and strategies that do not show a positive correlation will be discouraged.  I am not sure if this answers your question thoroughly.  If you need something else or more detail, please let me know.

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My mentor teacher & STEM - Ashley Veater

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My mentor teacher & STEM - Ashley Veater

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I am in a kindergarten class and honestly we do not do many STEM projects. We have done monthly school-wide STEM projects, but none that are specifically for Kindergarten. Kindergarten mainly focuses on literacy and mathematics skills, so many of their learning activities are aligned to those goals and objectives.
When I asked my mentor teacher for the science education tests/assessments for the district/state she did not have the current data for them. My mentor teacher said she does not focus on STEM or science in Kindergarten because to her the most important concepts for kindergartners to learn are literacy skills to read and social skills to know how to behave in a classroom. She did say that usually when we do the monthly STEM projects she likes to focus more on a scientific method, such as inquiry or observation. She will introduce the whole lesson in a way that gets students thinking about scientist, which I believe is a great skill to have.

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STEM NEWS that ALL educators should know about - Ashley Veater 

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STEM NEWS that ALL educators should know about - Ashley Veater 

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I found the most amazing article that I think every teacher and person in general should know about!  Here is the link.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221202124841.htm
This article discusses how playing the piano boost brain processing power and can help lift moods. The article studied participants who played the piano, who only listened to the music, and a control group who did neither. The researchers found that after just a few weeks the people who listened to the music had enhanced abilities to process multi sensory information. The most interesting thing is that it did more than just enhance people's musical abilities; it actually increased their audio-visual processing and overall achievements across other task. I think knowing this information is so useful because you can give students the opportunities to listen to classical music while they are independently working. Of course, you would want to be mindful of students who it might distract. However, the majority of learners should benefit from listening to music as they complete their assignments.

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A new study published by researchers at the University of Bath demonstrates the positive impact learning to play a musical instrument has on the brain's ability to process sights and sounds, and shows how it can also help to lift a blue mood.

Publishing their findings in the academic journal Nature Scientific Reports, the team behind the study shows how beginners who undertook piano lessons for just one hour a week over 11 weeks reported significant improvements in recognising audio-visual changes in the environment and reported less depression, stress and anxiety.

In the randomised control study, 31 adults were assigned into either a music training, music listening, or a control group. Individuals with no prior musical experiences or training were instructed to complete weekly one-hour sessions. Whilst the intervention groups played music, the control groups either listened to music or used the time to complete homework.

The researchers found that within just a few weeks of starting lessons*, people's ability to process multisensory information -- i.e., sight and sound -- was enhanced. Improved 'multisensory process' has benefits for almost every activity we participate in -- from driving a car and crossing a road, to finding someone in a crowd or watching TV.

These multisensory improvements extended beyond musical abilities. With musical training, people's audio-visual processing became more accurate across other tasks. Those who received piano lessons showed greater accuracy in tests where participants were asked to determine whether sound and vision 'events' occurred at the same time.

This was true both for simple displays presenting flashes and beeps, and for more complex displays showing a person talking. Such fine-tuning of individuals' cognitive abilities was not present for the music listening group (where participants listened to the same music as played by the music group), or for the non-music group (where members studied or read).

In addition, the findings went beyond improvements in cognitive abilities, showing that participants also had reduced depression, anxiety and stress scores after the training compared to before it. The authors suggest that music training could be beneficial for people with mental health difficulties, and further research is currently underway to test this.

Cognitive psychologist and music specialist Dr Karin Petrini from the University of Bath's Department of Psychology, explained: "We know that playing and listening to music often brings joy to our lives, but with this study we were interested in learning more about the direct effects a short period of music learning can have on our cognitive abilities.

"Learning to play an instrument like the piano is a complex task: it requires a musician to read a score, generate movements and monitor the auditory and tactile feedback to adjust their further actions. In scientific terms, the process couples visual with auditory cues and results in a multisensory training for individuals.

"The findings from our study suggest that this has a significant, positive impact on how the brain processes audio-visual information even in adulthood when brain plasticity is reduced."
Notes

Each music training session included two segments. The first 20-minute segment was dedicated to finger exercise. The second segment consisted of learning songs from the ABRSM 2017-2018 piano grade one exam list for 40 minutes. All training sessions were carried out on a one-to-one basis. Participants learned these pieces in the order presented below. They proceeded to the next song once they could play the former one correctly and fluently:

William Gillock A Stately Sarabande. Classic Piano Repertoire (Elementary).

Johann Christian Bach Aria in F, BWV Anh. II 131.

Giuseppe Verdi La donna è mobile (from Rigoletto).

Bryan Kelly Gypsy Song: No. 6 from A Baker's Dozen.

Traditional American Folk Song: When the saints go marching in.

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medical education and training; fitness; mental health research; psychology research; music; intelligence; perception; educational psychology

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Playing the piano boosts brain processing power and helps lift the blues

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A new study published by researchers at the University of Bath demonstrates the positive impact learning to play a musical instrument has on the brain's ability to process sights and sounds, and shows how it can also help to lift a blue mood.

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Share STEM News with Practicum Class - Ashley Veater 

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Share STEM News with Practicum Class - Ashley Veater 

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I found an article to share with my practicum class.  Here is the link.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221205153720.htm
Of course, the article is not in kindergartner-friendly language. So I explained the article to them in my own words. Currently, we are beginning to learn about weather patterns. I thought this article would be a great way of showing my students that weather can look different depending on where you are in the world. The article discussed how there are more storms in the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere. Research has known this for decades but could never explain why, until now. The northern hemisphere has less storms because there are more mountain ranges and less of the surface is ocean. I pointed out the hemispheres to my students on a map as I explained it to them. The information was a great addition to my lesson, even though students were unable to read it.

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For centuries, sailors who had been all over the world knew where the most fearsome storms of all lay in wait: the Southern Hemisphere. "The waves ran mountain-high and threatened to overwhelm [the ship] at every roll," wrote one passenger on an 1849 voyage rounding the tip of South America.

Many years later, scientists poring over satellite data could finally put numbers behind sailors' intuition: The Southern Hemisphere is indeed stormier than the Northern, by about 24%, in fact. But no one knew why.

A new study led by University of Chicago climate scientist Tiffany Shaw lays out the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon. Shaw and her colleagues found two major culprits: ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

The study also found that this storminess asymmetry has increased since the beginning of the satellite era in the 1980s. They found the increase was qualitatively consistent with climate change forecasts from physics-based models.
'A tale of two hemispheres'
For a long time, we didn't know very much about the weather in the Southern Hemisphere: most of the ways we observe weather are land-based, and the Southern Hemisphere has much more ocean than the Northern Hemisphere does.

But with the advent of satellite-based global observing in the 1980s, we could quantify just how extreme the difference was. The Southern Hemisphere has a stronger jet stream and more intense weather events.

Ideas had been circulated, but no one had established a definitive explanation for this asymmetry. Shaw -- along with Osamu Miyawaki (PhD'22, now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research) and the University of Washington's Aaron Donohoe -- had hypotheses from their own and other previous studies, but they wanted to take the next step. This meant bringing together multiple lines of evidence, from observations, theory, and physics-based simulations of Earth's climate.

"You can't put the Earth in a jar," Shaw explained, "so instead we use climate models built on the laws of physics and run experiments to test our hypotheses."

They used a numerical model of Earth's climate built on the laws of physics that reproduced the observations. Then they removed different variables one at a time, and quantified each one's impact on storminess.

The first variable they tested was topography. Large mountain ranges disrupt air flow in a way that reduces storms, and there are more mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

Indeed, when the scientists flattened every mountain on Earth, about half the difference in storminess between the two hemispheres disappeared.

The other half had to do with ocean circulation. Water moves around the globe like a very slow but powerful conveyor belt: it sinks in the Arctic, travels along the bottom of the ocean, rises near Antarctica and then flows up near the surface, carrying energy with it. This creates an energy difference between the two hemispheres. When the scientists tried eliminating this conveyor belt, they saw the other half of the difference in storminess disappear.
Getting even stormier
Having answered the fundamental question regarding why the southern hemisphere is stormier, the researchers moved on to examine how storminess has changed since we've been able to track it.

Looking over past decades of observations, they found that the storminess asymmetry has increased over the satellite era beginning in the 1980s. That is, the Southern Hemisphere is getting even stormier, whereas the change on average in the Northern Hemisphere has been negligible.

The Southern Hemisphere storminess changes were connected to changes in the ocean. They found a similar ocean influence is occurring in the Northern Hemisphere, but its effect is canceled out by the absorption of sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere due to the loss of sea ice and snow.

The scientists checked and found that models used to forecast climate change as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report were showing the same signals -- increasing storminess in the Southern Hemisphere and negligible changes in the Northern -- which serves as an important independent check on the accuracy of these models.

It may be surprising that such a deceptively simple question -- why one hemisphere is stormier than another -- went unanswered for so long, but Shaw explained that the field of weather and climate physics is relatively young compared to many other fields.

It was only after World War II that scientists began to build models of the physics driving large-scale weather and climate (of which key contributions were made at the University of Chicago by Prof. Carl-Gustaf Rossby).

But having a deep understanding of the physical mechanisms behind the climate and its response to human-caused changes, such as those laid out in this study, are crucial for predicting and understanding what will happen as climate change accelerates.

"By laying this foundation of understanding, we increase confidence in climate change projections and thereby help society better prepare for the impacts of climate change," Shaw said. "One of the major threads in my research is to understand if models are giving us good information now so that we can trust what they say about the future. The stakes are high and it's important to get the right answer for the right reason."

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climate; weather; environmental awareness; global warming; early climate; fossils; origin of life; tyrannosaurus rex

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The Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, and we finally know why

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The Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern -- but no one knew why. A new study lays out the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon. Researchers found two major culprits: ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

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This picture is a few months old, but it was taken at the Saint George Nature Center. Saint George has an entire staff dedicated to educational camps/programs that kids can register for throughout the year. Such camps include the crazy crawdad nature camp and the wiggly worms nature camp. Those camps do require individual sign ups and have fees. However, one cool thing that the nature center does is for entire grade levels of schools! Students are divided into groups and do a rotation system between the Nature Center (where they learn about the duck pond, ecosystem, and plants), the tennis facility (where they learn about tennis and the movement of the body), the Tonaquint Gardens (where they learn about specific plants) and the Thunder Junction All abilities park (where they receive a break to play). I completely forgot about this resource until I called the Educational Program Leader, but a few years ago I actually volunteered to be one of the coaches for the tennis center that the students participated in!

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I went on a nature walk the other day and it was so wonderful. I feel one of the best ways to observe science concepts is through being surrounded by nature! In this picture the red rocks are beautiful! I could easily teach a lesson about rock forms and how to identity the differences between each type. My main though, however, was about clouds! How fun would it be for students to observe clouds as their homework? I was thinking it would be great to do a whole unit on clouds, which could lead to weather (precipitation and humidity) and then having the students do a tracking chart for one month to observe the types of clouds in the sky each day. A month would be long enough that the students could observe a variety of clouds, but short enough to keep it interesting and feasible for them.

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I went on a hike with my sister and cousin. While on our hike, I noticed all the different type of trees. I also noticed the different creatures and how they interacted with each other. It was interesting that there was no wind high up on this mountain. I think it is important for students to go on nature walks. It will help them to observe and analyze different things happening around them. It may also help them to recognize what they have been learning in the classroom, in the outside world.

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I went on a nature walk/hike with Corina and Ashley! As I was walking, I noticed all of the colors of the rocks and the color of the sand. I also noticed the animals that were still outside in the cold weather. The last thing that I noticed was how the weather changed from sunny to very windy and cold fairly fast. I think that there are a lot of different things that students could notice by going on a nature walk.

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I was able to teach the students a little bit about the planets and rockets. This idea came from my STEM night presentation and I was able to use the same worksheet from that night on my students. Here is one student filling out the worksheet about what planet they would visit, who they would go with, and how big of a rocket they would have. -Chelsea

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I was able to teach the students a little bit about the planets and rockets. This idea came from my STEM night presentation and I was able to use the same worksheet from that night on my students. Here is one student filling out the worksheet about what planet they would visit, who they would go with, and how big of a rocket they would have. -Chelsea

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And another one. I was able to teach the students a lesson on the water cycle. After proving to me that they new the water cycle based on the PowerPoint, I was able to give them a test. Here is one student taking the test. -Chelsea

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Here is another student taking the test. I was able to teach the students a lesson on the water cycle. After proving to me that they new the water cycle based on the PowerPoint, I was able to give them a test. Here is one student taking the test. - Chelsea

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I was able to teach the students a lesson on the water cycle. After proving to me that they new the water cycle based on the PowerPoint, I was able to give them a test. Here is one student taking the test. - Chelsea

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the hands-on activities and literature to go along! go Kenzie!! 

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- risa

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differentiating for our ML Spanish learners!!! go Mallory!

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-risa

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all about cold blooded animals! go Hannah!!

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-risa

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really HOPPY with how this turned out! 🐸 -risa

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a beautiful woman in STEM! -risa

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Daisha

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Daisha

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- Daisha

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By Prof.

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Use force, reduce friction.

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We also read a book with STEM connections for our reading group :)
Sailor

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My 1st grade class is talking about weather and temperature now that the seasons are changing!
Sailor

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All I'm saying is that our marshmallow was not on the table. :)

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Making predictions/observations about out sunscreen experiment 

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Making predictions/observations about out sunscreen experiment 

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Sailor

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testing if sunscreen actually protects against the sun☀️

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testing if sunscreen actually protects against the sun☀️

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A 1st grade science experiment! We put sunscreen on one area of the paper and left it outside for two hours. Since the sunscreen worked, the area it was on was not faded!-sailor

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Morgan gave halite a 10/10 *chefs kiss*
-sailor

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I got to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific with my family over fall break! This aquarium has a TON of STEM activities for kids. This video shows a small part of the facility, but the kids can touch the interactive walls and find out more about the sea creature that they located. Here they can learn about our relationship with our planet through high-tech multimedia exhibits, art instillations, animal exhibits and shows! They also can learn about the environment and construct waterways, interact with the sea life, etc.

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Students learned about static electricity/positive and negative charges. They got to experiment with balloons and plastic bags to discover more about the charges and electricity!

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The fourth grade is working on robotics and engineering today! They are having lots of fun and getting creative with how tall they can stack things and build different objects.-Risa

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I taught my STEM lesson with the 6th grade math honors students. I had discussed how different languages have symbols and specific meanings. We used our knowledge of coordinate planes and positive/negative integers to reverse engineer a demo coding game. Students worked in teams to chart characters and how they moved or changed in relation to the coordinate plane. Afterwards, they were worked in teams to brainstorm their own games using their coding and math knowledge. They shared their ideas with other teams, making sure to use appropriate academic language. Students were engaged the entire time and had a blast!

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These kids realized the carpet was a factor of their dominos standing up. This was their solution!

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I taught my STEM lesson today on Force and Motion. The kids loved it! They were given a foot of tape, two pieces of card stock and a bouncy ball. Their task was to create an amount of force to tip over some blocks.

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I taught my STEM lesson yesterday and it was on sedimentary rock layers. For the experiment, students made sediment jars by adding rocks, gravel, dirt, baby powder, and water. They shook it all up and waited for it to settle. We discussed how sedimentary rocks are formed and how more layers are added to create Earth’s landscapes

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Showing off my kids and their ranger hats. Our STEM future in the making!

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I taught my STEM lesson today and we learned about trace fossils, mold fossils, and cast fossils! I think I witnessed the youngest paleontologists making discoveries and observations today! -Risa M.

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Em and Kins were really getting up close and personal with the rocks, trying to learn each of their stories - building that connection.

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yes, we ate the whole bowl. no, don't ask us how.

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Students chose an object to fossilize and stuck it in between two pieces of bread. They then smashed the bread with two books and waited. This showed them how fossils are formed. The one pictured is a fossilized Lego! :)

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Mari is looking really close at those rocks👀

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Creating edible experiments is lots of fun. Just be careful to keep in mind food allergies, hand washing and other safety practices. - Mari

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Making slime isn’t just for kids. - Mari

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The students were shown a few examples of fossils found in the Arizona desert. My mentor teacher went over each fossil and what it was. The students then answered the question, “Do you think Arizona has always been dry?” They examined the pictures of the fossils again and created their own arguments in their science journals.

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yum -risa

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Ice cream has never been more easy! Ice cream in a bag!- Chelsea

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Guac!

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maybe not the best rollercoaster engineers but what we lacked in skill we made up for with enthusiasm HA -sailor

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maybe not the best rollercoaster engineers but what we lacked in skill we made up for with enthusiasm HA -sailor

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our graph of how fast our toy cars were! sailor

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our graph of how fast our toy cars were! sailor

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(look how cute corina made it🥺) 👑☀️💗🌸

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In my practicum class, the students conducted a celery experiment that shows how plants absorb water (osmosis).
Each table group was given a jar of water with food coloring, and each student was given a celery stick. The students placed the celery sticks in the colored water and waited until the next day to observe what happened.
As pictured above, the colored water traveled up the water tubes in the celery and the students were able to see that easily in the different colors. This particular student stuck her celery in a cup of blue water, as shown in the water tubes in the picture.

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In my practicum class, the students watched a video of a gerbil making its way through a maze. The gerbil made it through the maze faster every round.
The students observed and came up with an argument from the evidence about the cause of the gerbil's change in behavior each round.
The students then developed their own model of a plan (system) to train an animal to do a trick. They added pictures, labels and captions including environmental stimuli, receptors used by animals, how the animals process the information and commit trick to memory.

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Exploring toy cars and STEM variables. The Prof.

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On September 3rd I was able to do a 9 mile hike in Zions. I have never done a hike for so long and that caused my toes to hurt due to the slants of the switchbacks on the way down. But once I got to the top of where I wanted to be, I realized that I was higher than Angels Landing. This made me think about all the people who try to do Angels landing and want to go where the chains are at, yet if they just stayed on the first trail, they would have had a safer ascent and higher views! Amazing how beautiful out land is in Utah! -Chelsea

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Geologic Features of Southern Utah- Volcanic Caprock and Erosion

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Geologic Features of Southern Utah- Volcanic Caprock and Erosion

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Went for a bike ride this morning (way too hot for a hike) There are so many beautiful vistas here in our little corner of the world. It would be fun to have a geologist visit our classroom, or maybe kids could pose as the geologic expert and present some of their “findings”. It sure would make all of these pretty views more meaningful. - Mari

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Mine didn't make it (astronaut down)

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Teachers of Future NASA Engineers  -Mari

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Teachers of Future NASA Engineers  -Mari

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We're awesome!

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"It" survived! (Not sure the parachute helped though) -Mari

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"It" survived! (Not sure the parachute helped though) -Mari

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I really wanted the parachute to allow it to gently float to the ground. i guess I have a lot more to learn about parachutes.

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Eggbert lived a great life but this last fall was not good for him or his family. He landed so awkwardly that he didn’t have the strength to resist gravity. He will be resting sideways from now on… (he is the plain silver can)

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Rip bobbi

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Future astronomy teachers. Photo by the Prof. 

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Future astronomy teachers. Photo by the Prof. 

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Dr. Hammond-Todd - Future teachers discussing the motion of the sun and earth and their effect on seasons.

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Dr. Hammond-Todd - Future teachers discussing the motion of the sun and earth and their effect on seasons.