Internship. I am studying to be a high school biology teacher, and therefore I chose to complete an internship instead of performing research work during my senior program. I had been doing my observation hours at the Michael J. Petrides School for an education class that I had taken last semester, and the 7th-grade teacher I was working with asked me if I would want to come back the following semester. I spoke to Dr. Don Stearns about the idea, and we both decided that it would be very appropriate and beneficial to intern at Petrides. While in the classroom I worked as a lab assistant, observed the teacher’s techniques, did some peer tutoring, interacted with each and every student, and even performed some individualized instruction.

Thesis. The title of my thesis is “Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching Science in Secondary Schools.” Two main challenges teachers face when teaching science is motivating the students and holding the interests of each and every student. Differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, and constructivism are three different teaching techniques that have shown to be very beneficial to students concerning test grades and active participation. Teaching science in a secondary school can be quite a challenge; however, by following certain pedagogical strategies in a secondary science classroom, the teacher will be able to accomplish his/her main goal: to promote and ensure learning in an atmosphere conducive to learning.

            I have learned in my education classes about many of the strategies my paper focuses on, and I chose this topic because I really wanted to see how and if these strategies actually worked. By interning at Petrides, I was able to see the benefit of grouping and “hands-on” learning. I also learned that teaching is not an easy job and that you, as the teacher, really need to be motivated to want to teach. By getting the students motivated and observing their interest in the topic, you can actually make teaching easier. Once you lose their interest, they completely stop focusing and tune the teacher out. By writing my thesis paper, I learned about strategies that I definitely plan to use in my classroom in order to motivate my students.