Reflection of Science Lesson
Science was the subject I was most excited to teach. When I found out that this was the topic I was asked to teach I knew exactly what activity I wanted to base my lesson on. Science is not a major part of this classroom and the students were very enthusiastic about me teaching a lesson to them. I started the planning of my lesson by asking the teacher what topics they would be studying during my time in the classroom. She gave me a list of topics to choose from and I chose an essential standard and based my lesson off that. I felt like that gave me the best basis for getting a quality lesson. I then finalized my main activity and based my lesson planning off of that activity. Due to the timing allowed for science each day was so short I had to stretch my science lesson over a two day span. This made it a bit more challenging however I think it worked better this way in the long run; especially looking back on how the main activity turned out.
In the school that I was placed in technology was required in every lesson. So, for this lesson I made a powerpoint to guide the lesson and the questioning of the students. I also used a youtube video of Bill Nye the Science Guy as my engage and the students loved this. I feel like for this lesson this was a great use of technology. I allowed the students to click on the smartboard to go through the slides and when I wanted something underlined or highlighted in the notes I let the students do it. This made the students pay attention even more because they knew that had to be well behaved if they wanted to be picked to use the smartboard.
Science was the first of my lessons that I taught so I was rather nervous to begin with. However, as I got started the nerves went away. It helped that my students were absolutely fantastic. They were engaged and involved in all aspects of the lesson; that is something that I was surprised about. I assumed they would zone out and not be interested in the lesson and I would have to keep them on track the whole time; this was not the case at all. I think it helped that my lesson always had some sort of hands on activity going on to keep them engaged. In my engage section of the lesson I asked them to relate water back to their own lives and how we use it. When I asked them these types of questions I felt that it helped to show them why they wanted to learn about the water cycle and why it was important to understand.
After that I started with some group work and the activity of making a water cycle in a bag. This activity really got the students thinking abstractly about the water cycle and the different parts of it. They had to work in groups for this part and discuss the water cycle in a bag worksheet as a group and come up with an answer for each question as a group. There were a couple groups that had some problems with only one person's ideas being heard but other than that the students worked very well in groups. I was surprised at how differently the groups' answers were from one another. They all interpreted the questions a bit differently and when I asked the groups to explain their answers they had valid reasons for each answer they gave.
The students seemed to understand the stages of the water cycle and what a water cycle was. They understood pollution and how it affects the water cycle. By the end of the lesson they were talking to each other about ideas and questions pertaining to the parts of the cycle and how we can affect the cycle. It was really interesting to hear their new ideas after just learning about this topic. As I walked around to listen to them, especially while they were working on their water drop stories, I heard them being very creative and innovative about the water cycle and that showed me that they were grasping the content.
The thing I remember most about this lesson was how excited they were during the making of the water cycle bags and how much they couldn't wait to the next day to see what was different about their bags. They asked me over and over when they could look at them. I would catch them trying to catch a peak at their bags throughout the next day. I loved seeing them excited about learning and about science. I hope this continues as I keep teaching lessons and I see this much enthusiasm more times than not.
This is definitely a lesson that I would continue to use in the years to come. It was interactive, engaging and the students learned a lot. My coordinating teacher absolutely loved it and asked for my lesson plan and worksheets I had made. She said she wanted to teach this lesson next year and that it was better than a lot of her science lessons. She only had good things to say about my lesson and that gave me a boost for the next lessons that I taught. The only thing I would have changed would have been to have a finished worksheet to have on the doc-cam to show the students as we went through. Some of the students struggled to keep up and comprehend the idea of taking notes off the powerpoint. I feel as though if I had an example already filled out it would help those students.
As a learner I learned that I would have liked to do more activities in school like this. I feel as though if I would have I would have liked science better. I think doing these types of activities are important so it reaches all types of learners. As a teacher I learned that hands on activities keep the students engaged and excited! I learned that I want to try hard to keep my lessons to the same standard as I had this one. Overall I liked teaching this lesson and I hope I get to do it again sometime.
In the school that I was placed in technology was required in every lesson. So, for this lesson I made a powerpoint to guide the lesson and the questioning of the students. I also used a youtube video of Bill Nye the Science Guy as my engage and the students loved this. I feel like for this lesson this was a great use of technology. I allowed the students to click on the smartboard to go through the slides and when I wanted something underlined or highlighted in the notes I let the students do it. This made the students pay attention even more because they knew that had to be well behaved if they wanted to be picked to use the smartboard.
Science was the first of my lessons that I taught so I was rather nervous to begin with. However, as I got started the nerves went away. It helped that my students were absolutely fantastic. They were engaged and involved in all aspects of the lesson; that is something that I was surprised about. I assumed they would zone out and not be interested in the lesson and I would have to keep them on track the whole time; this was not the case at all. I think it helped that my lesson always had some sort of hands on activity going on to keep them engaged. In my engage section of the lesson I asked them to relate water back to their own lives and how we use it. When I asked them these types of questions I felt that it helped to show them why they wanted to learn about the water cycle and why it was important to understand.
After that I started with some group work and the activity of making a water cycle in a bag. This activity really got the students thinking abstractly about the water cycle and the different parts of it. They had to work in groups for this part and discuss the water cycle in a bag worksheet as a group and come up with an answer for each question as a group. There were a couple groups that had some problems with only one person's ideas being heard but other than that the students worked very well in groups. I was surprised at how differently the groups' answers were from one another. They all interpreted the questions a bit differently and when I asked the groups to explain their answers they had valid reasons for each answer they gave.
The students seemed to understand the stages of the water cycle and what a water cycle was. They understood pollution and how it affects the water cycle. By the end of the lesson they were talking to each other about ideas and questions pertaining to the parts of the cycle and how we can affect the cycle. It was really interesting to hear their new ideas after just learning about this topic. As I walked around to listen to them, especially while they were working on their water drop stories, I heard them being very creative and innovative about the water cycle and that showed me that they were grasping the content.
The thing I remember most about this lesson was how excited they were during the making of the water cycle bags and how much they couldn't wait to the next day to see what was different about their bags. They asked me over and over when they could look at them. I would catch them trying to catch a peak at their bags throughout the next day. I loved seeing them excited about learning and about science. I hope this continues as I keep teaching lessons and I see this much enthusiasm more times than not.
This is definitely a lesson that I would continue to use in the years to come. It was interactive, engaging and the students learned a lot. My coordinating teacher absolutely loved it and asked for my lesson plan and worksheets I had made. She said she wanted to teach this lesson next year and that it was better than a lot of her science lessons. She only had good things to say about my lesson and that gave me a boost for the next lessons that I taught. The only thing I would have changed would have been to have a finished worksheet to have on the doc-cam to show the students as we went through. Some of the students struggled to keep up and comprehend the idea of taking notes off the powerpoint. I feel as though if I had an example already filled out it would help those students.
As a learner I learned that I would have liked to do more activities in school like this. I feel as though if I would have I would have liked science better. I think doing these types of activities are important so it reaches all types of learners. As a teacher I learned that hands on activities keep the students engaged and excited! I learned that I want to try hard to keep my lessons to the same standard as I had this one. Overall I liked teaching this lesson and I hope I get to do it again sometime.