For
my life science lesson that Alicia and I taught at Brigham Elementary, we
decided to teach the students about living and nonliving things. We decided to
incorporate many visuals in our lesson as a way to accommodate for the amount
of ELL students in the classroom. Overall, this lesson was engaging and active,
making sure that students are moving a few times throughout the lesson.
Previously to this lesson, I had helped teach the kindergarten group once so I
had an idea of what to expect from the students during this lesson. The lesson
we taught was a follow-up lesson from the last Thursday when a different group
introduced the topic of living and non-living. The lesson helped us realize how
much information students retained from the previous week. I was surprised by
how much the students remembered, which in the end benefitted both the students
and my partner and I.
The
three main parts of the lesson that we engaged the students with was a song, a
SMARTboard activity, and a card sorting activity. We were able to successfully
complete all the parts of our lesson plan. I feel that there were several parts
of our lesson that were successful with and made an impact on the students. One
of the big strengths that I feel we had in our lesson was the timing and pacing
of the lesson. We were able to stay on schedule and finish at exactly at 2:45
while still having room for a closing. Timing while teaching lesson plans has
been something that I have been working on in my clinical. One trick that I have
used in the past is figuring out a time in advance for the ending activity and
that serves as a guide to see if I have time or should speed up. I have also
used a timer on an ipad before. I set the timer to the side so it was not
distracting to the students. One thing that I have learned in my classes at ISU
is to make sure to have time for the closing in order to wrap up the main ideas
which we made sure to do in our lesson.
Another
part of the lesson that I thought was successful was how the majority of the
lesson was in a small group setting. This was a result of the beginning part
going faster than we expected, but in the long run, it benefitted the students
more because they were able to get a more in depth conversation among the two
teachers and 4-6 students at their table. We left 15 minutes at the end for the
card sorting activity. The students took turns picking from language development
cards and sorting their card into living and nonliving. The students self
checked their answers and were able to explain their thinking process to the
teachers. That is when I get to see their personalities come to life and really
tell if the students were grasping the concepts being taught.
Another
strength of the lesson would be the SMARTboard activity. I feel that the
students were very anxious and willing to volunteer. The way Alicia and I made the
SMARTboard activity engaging and excited is by use the “magic” teacher pointer.
I feel that incorporating technology in teaching is crucial now days. Having an
opportunity to use technology in our lesson was used appropriately to support
our topic. What I realized is that students had positive reactions to the
feedback we were giving the students as they went up one at a time. I saw a few
students change their behavior (“I am looking for those students that are
sitting crisscross applesauce and quietly raising their hand, waiting to be called
on”) in order to get called on to participate. Having that guideline for being
called on was something that supported our classroom management. Overall, I
feel that we were prepared for our lesson with the materials we provided for
our teacher helpers and the premade assessments we created. In addition to
strength in our lesson, I also feel that there were some improvements as well
that we could have changed.
One
of the things I would change about our lesson was the beginning. When we began
our lesson I felt I was busy trying to pull up the SMARTboard activity while
Alicia was introducing our topic. If I would do it differently, I would have
had the SMARTboard activity already up so that I could focus on the steps of
our intro we have already covered. By the time I finished with the computer I
went straight into introducing the song. Like I mentioned above, I thought the beginning
of the lesson went much quicker than expected and we were able to talk about the
song, three requirements for living, and the SMARTboard activity in a quick
manor. That lets me know that lesson plans do not always go as planned. Alicia
and I were flexible and moved on to the card sorting activity, which was the most
important part in the long run.
Something
else that I would change about our lesson was the amount of room we had to tape
up the three parts of living and nonliving. After the students listed the three
parts from the song and what they remember from last Thursday, we put up the
list as they were named. We quickly realized as we were teaching that there was
no room to put up the three parts. We ended up taping them to the side of the
SMARTboard which may have not allowed all the students to see them. One way we
could fix that situation would be to make a PowerPoint slide that has the three
parts come in individually after they are mentioned. Then the students could
have a better visual of the three parts as they were working in their small
groups. Lastly, another part I would change would be during the SMARTboard
activity, have the living and nonliving labels in English and Spanish. I believe
that there were a few students that were just guessing and dragging a picture
into one of the spinning circles. The translation may have prevented the
confusion of what the different circles represented or were labeled as. In addition
to the area of improvement in our lesson, we also kept in mind how our topic
influenced our organization of the lesson plan.
When
choosing our topic and week we would teach, Alicia and I chose to teach about
living and nonliving because I have had previous experience with teaching this
topic to all the 1st graders in my clinical. I thought that there
would be some activities that we could use in the lesson I taught to the 1st
graders. Also, the previous experience I had with 1st graders helped
me gage what would be developmentally appropriate for kindergarteners knowing
that they are one year younger. Because we were the second day of teaching this
topic, we had to compare our lesson plans to the previous lesson so that we did
not teach the same things or do the same activities. One thing we changed in
our lesson after looking at the other groups was change the cookie monster
video to a song instead. Lastly, the pictures we used in the SMARTboard activity
and the card sort activity needed to be familiar things to the students. They
also needed to be pictures that were up to date, especially technology.
In
order to demonstrate students understanding throughout the lesson, we used a
few ways of assessing the students. One general way to check for understanding
would be looking to see who is participating in group conversation, mainly
during the SMARTboard activity. Also during the card sorting activity we had
one teacher complete a checklist to make the students could categorize a card
correctly and another student teacher doing an anecdotal record that was more
specific to what the students responses were. I feel these assessments were aligned
with our objectives and let the teachers know if students were able to grasp
the living and nonliving concepts. These assessments could be recorded and used
as a tool for the teacher to see if further instruction was needed.
This is a Pinterest link to other living
and nonliving lesson plan ideas for kindergarteners:
EXCEEDS: I wrote a 1,375 word reflection and included a Pinterest link to other living and nonliving lesson plans.
