I feel that my lesson on food webs and food chains had many
strengths. First off I was able to allow call on students to read from their
science book. This allowed them to be engaged in my lesson as well as start
soaking up the information I wanted them to learn. I did not force students to read because my CT
told me how important it is to not make a student do something they might not
be comfortable with. At first I did not understand this idea, but after I thought
about it more it made complete sense. If we require a student to do something
and they are afraid of we are decreasing the likelihood that a student will
benefit from this activity. There seems to be a down side too. What if the
student never volunteers to read or answer a question, how will we see what
they are or are not learning? After reading with the students I passed out a
vocabulary sheet with six words from the book we read. To keep them busy while I
was passing the papers out I asked the students to think about what we could
write for the first definition. I told them I would do the first definition
with them and then they would be on their own. A student raised her hand and
gave us the definition for the first word. In our classroom we use a voice level
system with numbers so I told the students they were to be at a level 1, which
is a slight whisper with those around you. I walked around to monitor students
as they worked.
One area that I struggled with was what to have the students
do when they finished. I have some students that finished very quickly. I knew
that this was going to be the case, but did not write anything in the plan for
it specifically. I did my best to have them draw a food web of their own on the
back of their sheet. Some students really took off with this but some students
did not understand what I wanted them to do. In order to fix this issue for my
future lessons I will have a plan for exact what I want students to do when
they are finished. Before allowing them to do their individual work I will give
them instructions on what they are to do after they complete the first
activity. As with most activities in the classroom I will need to give
reminders to the students throughout but it will save me from having to go from
student to student and tell them what the next step is. The students seemed to
like the chance to draw, but they then were asking a lot of questions about
what certain animals eat. I was not prepared for all of the animals they were
asking me. I would normally Google something quick on my iPad but I did not
feel like that was a good use of my time since I was leading the lesson. They
were very motivated to figure out what certain animals eat or what animals hunt
which animals so they started looking in other books around the room to help
answer their questions. I thought this was a really cool moment. They figured
out how to problem solve before I was able to help them. I did not write
anything in my lesson plan about having the students problem solve but it was neat
to watch them take their learning into their own hands.
My CT gave me some really good feedback that can help me in
my future lesson planning. He mentioned that I was very prepared for the lesson
and it showed. He mentioned that I might need to work on engaging all the
students. He noticed that some students were not following along as the
students were reading aloud. I saw the same thing from them, but I am not sure
how to fix this. I think over time I will get a feel for how to handle certain
situations. Right now I am in the phase that I am unsure of how to handle
issues like this in his classroom. I do not want to overstep my role as a
student teacher, but I want to gain more practice with behavior management. We have
had many conversations that behavior management is always the hardest area for
new teachers to master and I am starting to see why after teaching multiple
lessons. Luckily I am more than willing to get all the experience I can
teaching all subject areas, even if I do not feel that subject is a strong suit
of mine. For example as I was preparing for this lesson I was worried there
would be many questions the students had that I would not be able to answer. I did
not run into this issue but it taught me that I should always prepare more than
I need to for a lesson.
One issue that I did have was the WiFi district wide was
out. I had found a very interesting video to show the kids complete with silly
voices and drawings to grab their attention and start the lesson off. Since this
option was no longer available to me I had to think quick. I asked the students
to raise their hands and tell me what things plants and animals need and we created
a list on the SMART Board. Since I had not planned to start my lesson like this
the students were able to look in the book and read me the answers. This is not
what I had in mind but I had to make it work. Teaching is all about being flexible.
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyefVtxY-oI
To close my lesson I called on different students to share
their definitions with the class. It was a very informal way to see how well
they were able to look in the book and copy down the correct definition. We are
still working on with them what part of the definition to write down. Many
times I was asked “Can I stop at the period?” to which my answer was yes. For second
graders writing definitions can be a tricky skill, but with practice they all
did a very nice job. I noticed that the students feed off of my energy so if I am
excited, they are excited. If I am not feeling a topic they will start acting
out and then the whole lesson is down the drain. Overall I was really happy
with my lesson and how the students responded to what I was teaching them.
Exceeds: I included the video I wanted to use in my lesson
and went over the word count.
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