Building an environment.
This lesson is the only lesson in this portfolio that took place somewhere other than my fall student teaching placement. The lesson was the second in sequence with the same children, building a system connecting a terrarium and aquarium. We did not know the students before teaching either lesson, and we, unfortunately, did not get the opportunity to follow up on the lesson, though the classroom teachers helped the students maintain their work afterwards. |
Reflection and Analysis
The lesson took place in a 5th grade classroom in which we had taught one previous lesson: the creation and exploration of the terrarium that sat on top of the aquarium we were making in this lesson. The three of us had the same 4 students we had had in the previous lesson. In this lesson we opted to separate the lesson into three parts with each of us in charge of the instruction for one part. I was in charge of instructing the students on introducing the flora to the new environment.
The lesson I felt went well. Students had good discussions about the interactions between the aquarium and terrarium, and we left them with questions they could try to answer through further observation of the system (such as, “will we need to add water to the system now that the terrarium is connected to the aquarium?” and “what do the water plants do?”). Students often spoke to each other, responding to each other’s points, though this could have been highlighted and expanded more. Because we were not in charge of all of our materials from the onset, we ran into some logistical issues of getting plants to the table, but no issue was so large that students were not able to complete their aquarium and a discussion of the systems within it.
Things went mostly as planned, but the first part of discussing our terrarium and predicting about our aquarium ran a bit longer than we planned; we had planned for it to take 7-9 minutes, and it probably took closer to 15 or 20. This compressed the time we had to debrief at the end, but it was important information to make sure was clear for the students. For our in the moment reasoning I turn to Koch’s discussion of the difference between lessons and activities: “An activity is not a lesson… it is not just the activity but the process of reflection that can lead to the construction of new ideas” (Koch, 1996, p.255). I believe all of us, without explicitly discussing it in the moment, reasoned that the discussion about the model was just as important as making and observing the model itself. In this way, students might be able to construct new ideas rather than just have a pretty water bottle environment.
In watching myself on video, I was surprised at how pleasant my demeanor seems. It is not that I find myself particularly unpleasant, but I often worry that, especially with children I do not know well, I will have trouble eliciting from them their prior knowledge. How People Learn makes it clear that student need their prior knowledge to construct new knowledge. Bransford writes, “There is a good deal of evidence that learning is enhanced when teachers pay attention to the knowledge and beliefs that learners bring to a learning task, use this knowledge as a starting point for new instruction, and monitor students’ changing conceptions as instruction proceeds” (1999, p. 11). I am not sure that I saw strong evidence of my monitoring of how student conceptions change and altering my instruction accordingly, but I did see myself listening intently (and, importantly, invitingly) to students and asking about their thinking. This, if nothing else, struck me as a positive starting point for science instruction. Unfortunately, we left our “artifacts” with the students, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best choice. However, what I did see students write indicated that they understood the importance of monitoring their aquarium carefully (noting how much of each substance was in the bottle, and drawing pictures to match). I saw students use each other as references for what and how much went into each bottle, and while I did not see much of students interacting with each other’s predictions about the bottle, I did see many times the students offering predictions.
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would hope I could teach it with students with whom I could follow up more. Creating a terrarium/ aquarium model is a huge undertaking! The implications for models on students’ understandings of data and the world feel too heavy to complete in two standalone 40-minute sessions. If I only had two sessions again, however, I would want to ask the students to talk to each other more, rather than to us. I am glad we spent so much time on student predictions, but I would want to write the predictions down in a place where students could refer back to them and see their thinking, like we did with their data collection and drawings once they made the aquarium. Additionally, the structure of having 3 teachers for 4 students felt cumbersome rather than supportive at moments. It is difficult to monitor the pacing and consistency of 3 people, and while it might be slightly more planning work to organize a lesson by myself I think I would find the implementation easier (even though my co-teachers are fantastic!). The upside of having 2 other co-teachers, however, is the opportunity to see other styles in action, giving me an opportunity to delve more deeply into positive management or construction of plans as my other teachers did.
In teaching this lesson, I hoped the students would be able to think more deeply about how the world’s organisms and non-living structures interact to keep us and other living things alive. I wanted the students to think about how systems can be closed and still operate and what one action causes what other responses. I believe the students did think about the ways in which flora interact in water (see Edthena Video), but it is the change in the system over time that interests me the most. We left the students with their questions and predictions to consider, but it feels impossible to assess student understanding without seeing those students when confronted with their predictions’ outcomes. In summary, I felt our instruction focused appropriately on predictions, but I am confronted with the difficulty of assessing students without seeing those predictions play out. I felt good about the ways in which I elicited students to bring in their prior knowledge, and I would want to work on getting students to work together to think about a collective prior knowledge and collective construction of new knowledge.
Bransford, J. (1999). Learning: From Speculation to Science. In How people learn brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Koch, J. (1996). Planning for Science: Lesson Plans and Instructional Strategies. In Science Stories: Teachers and Children as Science Learners (pp. 254-274). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
The lesson I felt went well. Students had good discussions about the interactions between the aquarium and terrarium, and we left them with questions they could try to answer through further observation of the system (such as, “will we need to add water to the system now that the terrarium is connected to the aquarium?” and “what do the water plants do?”). Students often spoke to each other, responding to each other’s points, though this could have been highlighted and expanded more. Because we were not in charge of all of our materials from the onset, we ran into some logistical issues of getting plants to the table, but no issue was so large that students were not able to complete their aquarium and a discussion of the systems within it.
Things went mostly as planned, but the first part of discussing our terrarium and predicting about our aquarium ran a bit longer than we planned; we had planned for it to take 7-9 minutes, and it probably took closer to 15 or 20. This compressed the time we had to debrief at the end, but it was important information to make sure was clear for the students. For our in the moment reasoning I turn to Koch’s discussion of the difference between lessons and activities: “An activity is not a lesson… it is not just the activity but the process of reflection that can lead to the construction of new ideas” (Koch, 1996, p.255). I believe all of us, without explicitly discussing it in the moment, reasoned that the discussion about the model was just as important as making and observing the model itself. In this way, students might be able to construct new ideas rather than just have a pretty water bottle environment.
In watching myself on video, I was surprised at how pleasant my demeanor seems. It is not that I find myself particularly unpleasant, but I often worry that, especially with children I do not know well, I will have trouble eliciting from them their prior knowledge. How People Learn makes it clear that student need their prior knowledge to construct new knowledge. Bransford writes, “There is a good deal of evidence that learning is enhanced when teachers pay attention to the knowledge and beliefs that learners bring to a learning task, use this knowledge as a starting point for new instruction, and monitor students’ changing conceptions as instruction proceeds” (1999, p. 11). I am not sure that I saw strong evidence of my monitoring of how student conceptions change and altering my instruction accordingly, but I did see myself listening intently (and, importantly, invitingly) to students and asking about their thinking. This, if nothing else, struck me as a positive starting point for science instruction. Unfortunately, we left our “artifacts” with the students, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best choice. However, what I did see students write indicated that they understood the importance of monitoring their aquarium carefully (noting how much of each substance was in the bottle, and drawing pictures to match). I saw students use each other as references for what and how much went into each bottle, and while I did not see much of students interacting with each other’s predictions about the bottle, I did see many times the students offering predictions.
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would hope I could teach it with students with whom I could follow up more. Creating a terrarium/ aquarium model is a huge undertaking! The implications for models on students’ understandings of data and the world feel too heavy to complete in two standalone 40-minute sessions. If I only had two sessions again, however, I would want to ask the students to talk to each other more, rather than to us. I am glad we spent so much time on student predictions, but I would want to write the predictions down in a place where students could refer back to them and see their thinking, like we did with their data collection and drawings once they made the aquarium. Additionally, the structure of having 3 teachers for 4 students felt cumbersome rather than supportive at moments. It is difficult to monitor the pacing and consistency of 3 people, and while it might be slightly more planning work to organize a lesson by myself I think I would find the implementation easier (even though my co-teachers are fantastic!). The upside of having 2 other co-teachers, however, is the opportunity to see other styles in action, giving me an opportunity to delve more deeply into positive management or construction of plans as my other teachers did.
In teaching this lesson, I hoped the students would be able to think more deeply about how the world’s organisms and non-living structures interact to keep us and other living things alive. I wanted the students to think about how systems can be closed and still operate and what one action causes what other responses. I believe the students did think about the ways in which flora interact in water (see Edthena Video), but it is the change in the system over time that interests me the most. We left the students with their questions and predictions to consider, but it feels impossible to assess student understanding without seeing those students when confronted with their predictions’ outcomes. In summary, I felt our instruction focused appropriately on predictions, but I am confronted with the difficulty of assessing students without seeing those predictions play out. I felt good about the ways in which I elicited students to bring in their prior knowledge, and I would want to work on getting students to work together to think about a collective prior knowledge and collective construction of new knowledge.
Bransford, J. (1999). Learning: From Speculation to Science. In How people learn brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Koch, J. (1996). Planning for Science: Lesson Plans and Instructional Strategies. In Science Stories: Teachers and Children as Science Learners (pp. 254-274). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.