I was asked by my science instructor to begin class with a blog post about the Great American Teach In and its connections to our Nature's Classroom Experience and an article we read on informal learning. "Informal learning is defined as voluntary learning that takes place outside the traditional classroom environment"(Melber, 2000). I, for one, am a huge advocate for informal learning experiences. I feel like a change of scenery can really rejuvenate your students and give them an alternate perspective of new learning, or help make connections to something previously learned. Unfortunately for my science instructor, we did not have the privilege of seeing a scientist yesterday, but we did have some awesome experiences with speakers that highlighted other subject areas. We had many speakers and activities throughout the school yesterday, but the most meaningful for my students was a presentation given by two lovely ladies from Target's Human Resources Department. This presentation was planned to help give meaning to the student's learning over the last few weeks. Our 5th grade is planning a field study at J.A. Biztown. The curriculum for this trip has been intense for our students because many of the skills they're learning, such as balancing a checkbook or applying for a job, are skills that they have never seen or done before. Although you can "tell" students how to apply for a job or conduct themselves in an interview, it is more beneficial for them to have the experience. The ladies from Target provided the students an opportunity to watch and participate in an actual Target interview, which was successful in helping them complete their job applications to us in the classroom for J.A. Biztown. Although this experience is very relevant to my students, some of the others were not. Some of our other speakers and guests did not provide pertinent information to our students, or did not provide age appropriate or content appropriate information. On our informal learning experience at Nature's Classroom, our guide stressed to us the importance of visiting a site before hand, and doing your own research, before taking your students. Although the Great American Teach in was an on campus informal learning experience, I can see how lack of research on presenters provided some confusion for us as teachers, as well as a lost opportunity to really reinforce some things that our students were learning in their course work. Although the day was successful, it could've been much more meaningful even if we had just met with some of the speakers before had and discussed some possible connections they could've made for our students. The next time I participate in the teach in, I feel that I will be much more prepared to be active in selecting purposeful speakers and presentations for my students to extend their learning.
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This week I was able to teach my STEM math lesson, an assignment from my math course, in my partnership classroom. I was very unsure of teaching this lesson. First, because there are alot of components that must fall into place in a short period of time. Second, because I was unsure of whether the students would prefer this type of project based learning, or if undesired behaviors would be an issue.
During this lesson I tried to focus on some new goals that were developed during my midterm conference with my CT and PRT. One focus was behavior management; I needed to make myself revolve around the room so that I could more easily notice undesired behaviors and address them before the made and impact on the lesson. Another focus, was on student learning and engagement. I feel as though learning and engagement go hand in hand; If they're not engaged, they're not doing their most meaningful learning. With lesson plan in hand, I introduced the lesson with a video on how to make a lemonade stand. I then provided the students with the request for proposal. The purpose of this lesson was for students to add and subtract decimals; what better way to do that then have them deal with money. Their goal was to create a lemonade stand for J.A. Biztown. This is very relevant to the students because they will be taking a field trip to biztown in early December and will need the skills learned in this lesson to be successful on this filed trip. The students were required to make a menu with prices including whole numbers and decimals, a budget plan, and a business plan, and apply these three things to 2 different real world business scenarios. I cannot explain to you the excitement that my students had knowing that they were in charge of their our design, menu, money, etc. They asked questions like, "can we make coupons?", and "can we have flavored lemonade?". I was so excited to be able to respond that YES, they can create their business and menu any way they wanted, as long as they followed the criteria. The criteria was that they must have at least 3 items on their menu, they must create a business plan, budget plan, and menu, and they must include at least one item price that included both dollars and cents. I really saw a difference in the quality of student work when they were so excited and engaged to produce a meaningful product. They were working collaboratively, having meaningful discussions about how much to charge, and how they could make the most profit. They were debating whether their prices were reasonable for the type of customers they might have, and including coupons and buy one get one deals. As you can see from the criteria, none of these tasks, such as coupons etc., were required by me, but were created by the students in an effort to make legitimate business decisions. I rotated around the room while asking questions and addressing the class, making sure not to stay in one spot too long. The purpose of my movement was to detour undesired behaviors, but that was absolutely not needed during this lesson. The students were so engaged that the only trouble I had was actually getting them to stop working when class was coming to and end. At the end of the lesson, I took a very informal thumbs up, thumbs down survey about whether or not they preferred this project based learning as opposed to their traditional classwork. I got a 100% thumbs up on this survey and couldn't have been happier. Planning this lesson was extremely difficult and time consuming, but was well worth it. My students were able to produce work that they were proud of, took ownership of, and that was meaningful to them. Their processing of the mathematics was much better than I expected and I think this was because of the collaborative nature of the lesson. The students were teaching each other how to add and subtract the money and there was so much learning going on that I genuinely want to teach STEM lessons for the rest of the year. Lesson Plan Lemonade Stand This lesson, I would have to say, was by far one of the hardest I had ever taught. And after teaching it, I realized, that there are so many factors that must fall into place, in order for students to do any real learning. I started planning for this lesson by using a backwards planning model. I began by asking myself, what do my students need to be able to do when I am finished with this lesson? What I wanted them to know, or be able to do, is to recognize the comparisons between the mass of an object and it's volume. They should be able to tell me, after some investigating, that just because 2 objects have the same mass, does not mean that it will have the same volume. They should also notice the inverse, that just because 2 objects have the same volume does not mean they have the same mass. In addition to this, they should know that just because an object is "large" compared to another object, does not necessarily mean that it will have a greater mass or volume. After considering what I wanted them to learn, I modified an AIMS lesson called Massive Masses to guide the students in these discoveries.
After planning the lesson on my own using a Science Resource Lesson Guide, I brought it to my CT for feedback. She pointed out to me that it might be a possible issue that the students do not learn to calculate the volume of objects or containers until the end of the 5th grade year. At this point we discussed that we may need to have a mini math lesson within our science lesson to teach them the mathematical portion of volume, so that they could correctly calculate the volume of their provided objects (boxes) and compare the volumes to the masses. It turns out, that when learning about volume in Math, later in the year, a similar goal is present. "The goal here is for students to realize that volume does not dictate surface area" (Van de Walle, 2013). Since this is something that they will revisit in the future, we felt that it was a good choice to invest the time in teaching them how to properly calculate volume for these comparisons. So, with everything we considered together in planning, I also wanted to appeal to student's differing modalities by making this a lesson that involved a total physical response. I created stations, 1 box at each station, and had the students calculate mass and volume of that box at their station. After collecting their data in a data table in their science notebooks, they would rotate to the next station and repeat. Also, for my ESE and ELL students, I created a graphic organizer for them to record their data so that they would not spend so much time creating the table, but really be able to spend time in the investigation. When I arrived at school in the morning, I was an hour early so that I could gather balance scales, and do the investigation myself. I always like to perform the investigations before my students, hoping to identify any problems or possible misconceptions in advance. This turned out to be a wise choice since when I performed the investigation, I discovered that we only had 2 working scales, but I planned for 4 stations in my lesson. When my CT arrived I notified her of the problem, and we decided to place the scales at an alternate location and have the groups switch their measurements. So while group 1 and 2 were finding the mass, group 3 and 4 would be calculating volume, then switching roles. In theory it sounds reasonable, but in reality it created way to much traffic. There was too much distraction in walking back and forth from the scale to the workstations, and then walking to a new workstations. When the timer went off, some members of the groups were rotating without the rest of their groups, and others were rotating in the wrong direction. Although I thought my directions were very explicit, I was immediately proven wrong. In addition to the traffic problem, we came back to the issue that the students still, after my modeling of filling a container with unit cubes, and discovering a formula for finding volume, were still unclear on how to find the volume of their containers. This confusion kept myself and my CT tied up at some of the workstations and distracted us from assisting other groups. After a long, hectic first period, we broke for lunch and reflected on this disastrous experience. During lunch we talked about what modifications we could make to help our afternoon group's investigation go more smoothly. My afternoon class has the majority of my ELL's and ESE students. This usually means that we spend alot more time modeling and have to be very explicit in stating our procedures. My CT recommended for this group that I have one of the students repeat the directions back to me in front of the class before we start the investigation. Since this was a focus for our second group, and I had the pleasure of having my PRT come to observe me, I asked her to collect some data about our classroom discourse that would show whether or not I adequately explained instructions and had the students repeat them back. We also decided, to avoid traffic issues, that we would still have stations, but that the students would not rotate. We decided to let them find the mass and volume for their container, and then we would have them share out, and record the data on an anchor chart so that we could discuss the comparisons as a whole group. The time came that the students arrived, and I felt much better prepared, but to my disappointment, the lesson still did not go as planned. The traffic issue was solved, and the students behaviors were much better with the limited distractions. The students also followed procedures better after having to repeat them back to me. However, we still had a lot of trouble calculating the volume of the containers, even with thorough modeling. What I concluded from this lesson is that the students were just not ready and able to learn about calculating volume this early in the year, and in such a short period of time. If anything, the math lesson on volume should've been done as a full lesson in advance, and not crammed within a science lesson. They never really got a full grasp of the concept, and ultimately this affected their ability to make the comparisons between mass and volume, which was the goal, because we had too much trouble just calculating the volumes. If I had to teach this lesson again, I would still model for them what volume is and how we find it, but I would not leave them to calculate volume independently. I would provide them with the volumes of the containers, and have them find the mass as part of the investigation. They have used balance scales in previous years, and have also had a few prior lessons on mass and how to find the mass of an object. I believe that asking them to find the mass would be a reasonable request, but calculating volume would not be. I ultimately wanted them to be able to compare mass and volume, and they can very easily compare the two if the volumes are provided for them. By trying to cram too much content into 1 sixty minute lesson, I defeated the whole purpose of the lesson which was for them to make comparisons. Lesson learned! Below you will find links to the notes from my observation, as well as her feedback, the graphic organizer I provided for my ESE and ELL students, and my written lesson plan. PRT Notes PRT Feedback Lesson Plan Side 1 Lesson Plan Side 2 Graphic Organizer This reflective post shows evidence of my achievement towards the following FEAP(s) goals: (a).1.b: Sequences lessons and concepts to endure coherence and required prior knowledge (a).3.c: Identify gaps in student knowledge (a).3.d: Modify instruction to respond to preconceptions or misconceptions For the next three weeks, I will be focusing on planning and teaching Science, as this aligns with my content coaching cycle. In this lesson, I was the lead planner and lead co-teach for both our AM and PM classes. For this lesson I had several focuses. First, I used the USF 5 page lesson plan template to thoroughly plan my lesson. I wanted to use this not only so I could get feedback from my content coach, but so I could better understand the components of planning that are behind the shorter planning templates we used. I also wanted to focus on the 3 legs of science: content, process, and nature of science. Lastly, I wanted to think back to a timing strategy that I used in a previous post, and to apply and test this strategy during my lesson.
For planning, I started by building my own content knowledge. I sought the help of my Science methods instructor, and used an article that she provided me, titled What's the Matter with Teaching Children About Matter? This proved to be a helpful resource not only to build my own content knowledge, but to help me address possible misconceptions that my students might have, which coincidentally is one of the components of the 5 page USF Lesson Plan. With the help of this article, and the National Geographic Teacher Edition, I was able to brush up on the properties of matter and think about my own misconceptions as well as the ones my students might have. This article also gave me a sample of an activity that I was able to modify and use in my classroom that provided an awesome hands on investigation for my students. Also in this plan, I wanted to make sure that I included the 3 legs of Science from Weinburgh's article titled A Leg (or Three) to Stand On. This article states that " The three legs on which Science instruction rests are the content of science, process of science, and the nature of science. Each leg performs its own function and need not be competitive with the others. Rather, the legs should work together" to produce balance (Weinburgh, 2003). I wanted to make sure that my plan, as well as my delivery of the lesson, showed very clearly, each of the 3 legs. For this lesson, the content revolved around the properties of matter. The processes were observing and sorting, which were probably the simplest to identify. And the nature of science is that science demands evidence, which means that students must provide evidence for the claims they make. After planning and teaching my lesson I realized that I included only one nature of science in my plan, but taught two in my lesson. During the lesson, I found an opportunity to incorporate the nature of science that science is social, so I just went with it. It was fitting, because the students were actively comparing their observations to those of their classmates, and discussing similarities and differences. For the actually lesson, I planned for transitions/activities that could be timed, to encourage the students to stay on task. I did this because of a previous blog entry from Semester 4, Week 8: Force and Motion, which helped me notice that my students had difficulties staying on task, unless they were being timed. During the exploration, the students were timed. They were told for both parts of the investigation that they had 15 minutes, on a timer, to complete their observations or classification. For transitions, I used the countdown strategy, in which I would tell the students to "bring it back in 5,4,3,2,1". Each of these timing strategies were successful. The students stayed mostly on task, and were able to transition smoothly, following my timing expectations. I feel like this is a great success! When the students are on task, and stay within their time limits, we get so much more time to actually investigate and explore. I am still awaiting feedback on my 5 page lesson plan, however I have placed a link at the bottom so that it can be viewed. Overall, planning was very in depth and productive, and this lesson was one of my most successful yet, as far as student engagement and behavior goes. I am proud of my students for their hard work, and myself for my continued reflective practices! Lesson Plan: Properties of Matter This reflective post is assisting in the completion of FEAP(s): (a).1.e: Uses variety of data, independently and in collaboration with colleagues, to evaluate student learning outcomes, adjust planning, and continuously improve the effectiveness of lessons. (a).3.a: Deliver engaging and challenging lessons. (a).3.c: Identify gaps in students' subject matter knowledge. (a).3.g: Apply varied instructional strategies and resources, including appropriate technology, to teach for student understanding. (b).5.a: Designs purposeful professional goals to strengthen the effectiveness of instruction based on students' needs. (b).5.c: Uses variety of data, independently and in collaboration with colleagues, to evaluate student learning outcomes, adjust planning, and continuously improve the effectiveness of lessons. (b).5.e: Engages in targeted professional growth opportunities and reflective practices. |