Wednesday, October 18th, 2017: Today, for EDES 365, we had an opportunity to teach a discrepant event at Central Middle School, Red Deer, Alberta... My team teaching partner and I created a lesson based on Structures and Forces for grade 7. The opportunity to teach two science classes back to back was the bonus! Both classes went well, but having an opportunity to teach the same lesson twice, gave us time to reflect and to make adjustments in our lesson plans for the second time around. During the first class, our students were really excited to build structures with the blocks. In fact, they were SO excited that they wanted to move out of their groups and build a collaborative tower with the entire class. This was a great idea in concept; however, the mechanics of this wasn't working. The problem was that not all the students could participate within one circle. The class got a little noisy, so I just redirected students to the next activity. In reflection, I have no problems changing the lesson plan if the students are really engaged and learning. However, in this situation, the students had already accomplished the task. If this was my classroom, I would have compromised with the students by offering them time at the end of the week after our work was done to further 'experiment' with the blocks. With my instructional strategies, I noted two things: my timing and my explanation of tasks. With the timing of the lessons, we were finished a couple of minutes early in the first class and we just completed our lessons in the second class. The first class comprised of English learners and the second class comprised of French immersion and ESL learners. This is a classic example of how important it is to know your learners. The first science class worked through the lessons quicker than we anticipated. The second group needed more time to work through the tasks and complete the inquiry questions at the end of the class. These are all valid reasons why we need to know our learners. The second instructional strategy that I noted was my explanation of tasks. The students understood what we were asking of them in the first class, as I was sure to model the experiment. In the second class, I noted that the ESL learners were struggling with the concepts. My teaching partner took a few minutes to explain the process again to the students that were having a hard time comprehending the tasks. Once this happened, the students could verbally relay to me what happened during their experiment. Our classroom teacher commented on the following positive parts of our lessons. First, he said that the lesson material was well thought out and the students were really engaged. Our classroom teacher also commented that the way we linked the lesson to the students prior knowledge was well done. Also, the vocabulary and new concepts that we introduced fit well with other subjects that the grade 7 students were currently learning. He also liked how we integrated the flash cards into the discrepant event. If I was teaching these students, I would have them continue making flash cards for each unit so they would have a set of study cards at the end of the school year. I am thankful for Gord & Nat for driving us over and back on the school bus. Very kind! I am also thankful to the the Central Middle School teachers for giving up two classes today so that we could "get our feet wet"!
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Lorie PennerA scientist can be anyone, as long as you as you are curious enough to want to know why! Archives
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