This semester I had the opportunity to spend my Friday afternoons in Professors Jack and Kyle’s Ed350 Teaching and Learning Seminar along with eight of my peers. We were all able to learn a great deal from one another throughout the semester. I was able to learn not only how to design and execute a lesson but also about how to address matters of social inequity in the classroom, which is a very important as well as great place to start doing so given the impressionable nature of children and the amount of time they spend at school.
I have had some previous experience teaching/instructing young children in the past, coaching youth cheerleading, teaching preschool at a summer program, and observing in a lower-elementary classroom for Ed200 last semester among other things. This being said, I knew going in to this course that teaching was something I always considered pursuing and was comfortable with (especially with the little ones), however I did not anticipate an entirely new experience of working with middle school-aged students. After teaching three workshops to the seventh graders at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, CT, I know now that this is not a task I should shy away from. Sure, at first I was nervous and concerned I was not the right person for the job, but after concluding my last lesson a few weeks ago and learning and growing from the previous ones, I know that this is something I can do! And maybe I can even do it pretty well. I would say I personally felt that I had done a pretty decent job at teaching seventh grade science, given I had no experience in this field since of course I was an actual student in the course. My first lesson was well designed and interactive in order to get students excited to learn, which was one of my main goals based off the observation I did prior to the first session. Students in this class seemed particularly uninterested and had little desire to participate or even pay attention. I took this and wanted to do my part in this classroom to inspire and encourage students to try their best and put their best foot forward. I always felt that learning was important growing up, and this seminar emphasized that to me in more ways than one, so I wanted to show this to my students. My second lesson, though maybe not as fun or clear as the first, was more of a challenge for students and myself. I pushed myself in the second lesson in that I taught a rather last second plan that incorporated math, which was a bit risky since I was not fully aware of the students’ math background. Despite these factors, I was able to see student learning happening in the questions they asked as well as summative assessment I had prepared. The second lesson went well, however I did feel that my first one went a little better. Learning from both of the previous lessons, I went in to lesson three the most prepared and the most comfortable with being in the front of the classroom. I felt lesson 3 was a success, though tough at first to get students to participate and focus. As the hour-long class progressed I saw students engaged with material and even excited about what I was teaching.
This expereince was so gratifying to see student learning happening as a result of my instruction! I am proud of myself for being able to put in hard work to plan and execute these lessons and learn from my mistakes. I know now that teaching middle school is something I can do, however I am unsure if it is something I want to do. I know that sometime in my future I will be working with children to help them in one way or another, but for now teaching is just one of the many options for me. Working with children is something I always saw myself doing and this class was able to teach me so much more than I already thought I knew about doing so. Teaching and inspiring students to care about their learning and realize that learning is important is something that I will take with me wherever I go from here and hope to show many children along the way. My high school teacher told me once that “teachers are important,” and from this teaching and learning experience, this statement was able to come true for me, helping me to see that they (and maybe me someday) really are. I am thankful for Ed350 and my teaching experiences in the middle school for all they taught me and for helping me grow not only as an educator but as a student and as a person.
On April 25th, 2019, I taught my final lesson to the seventh grade class at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, CT. I was advised beforehand by the classroom teacher to create a lesson on biodiversity. This was the class’s first introduction to the topic so I had to create an introductory lesson that basically overviewed the topic, going over a few key concepts that are important to learn when discussing biodiversity. I wanted to create an interactive lesson that would get the class made up of about 15 students involved and excited about learning this new topic.
This lesson revolved around an essential question based off of information provided to me by the classroom teacher:
Why/how is biodiversity important to an ecosystem’s success?
As well as a few key concepts I wanted to make sure I covered in class,
Students will understand:
Organisms and populations are dependent on living and nonliving things
Relationships between organisms can be competitive, predatory & mutually beneficial.
Ecosystems’ components can be disrupted
Ecosystems (populations) can change over time
The concepts were developed from Next Generation Science Standards, specifically MS-LS2-1, MS-LS2-2, and MS-LS2-4 which pertain to lessons on ecosystems mainly focusing on population growth which I felt would help students to understand why biodiversity is important to an ecosystem’s success (the essential question mentioned above) . From these standards, students are asked to be able to construct arguments based on evidence. The lesson included six activities to do just this:
To begin the lesson I started off asking the students why they think it is important to have many different kinds of people in their community. I was glad to hear the response from a student giving the example of “if everyone in the community is a plumber, what would we do if the electricity went out?” This showed me that the students were in good shape to learn about biodiversity in that they already sort of understood the concept by relating it to their own lives.
Activities:
After my “launch,” I began to teach the lesson with a slideshow as visual aid for the students to follow along. I felt from previous experiences using slides to project information I was telling them was most effective. This time around, I had students read the information aloud to me in attempt to get everyone to participate and pay attention, as they would need to know this information to partake in the rest of the activities I had planned.
After going over the essential information, I made sure students had an understanding to continue on with the lesson’s activities by reviewing the material before moving on. I asked them questions like “who can give me another example of a mutualistic relationship?” or “what was the example I gave of commensalism?” and also asking them to show me with their thumbs up, down, or in the middle what each relationship meant for each organisms involved, for example, parasitic relationship students showed me one thumb up and one thumb down. This was a way of using formative assessment. From here, we moved on to the next set of activities.
Example of one handout
First, I passed out five different worksheets to each table of students in the classroom. Each table was told to focus on the organism that was pictured on their sheet that would show up during the Planet Earth clip (iguana, crab, snake, algae or lizard). The clip demonstrated different kinds of relationships in a specific ecosystem, a beach in the Galapagos Islands. Before playing the clip, I pulled up an image of the Galapagos Islands on google maps to give students more of an idea about where we were zooming in to.
Students began to fill out their worksheets as the clip played and they saw the organism they were assigned, which isn’t necessarily what I had planned but I was very glad they were so eager to see their organism come on to the screen and write down the part in played in the ecosystem.
Once the clip ended, I set time to go to each table and see what students had wrote and also to answer any questions. I feel like individually approaching the students helps them to feel comfortable to ask for help as well as more confident to share what they already had written down. During this time, I saw some students who were on the right tract and some who needed a little more help to get there.
Once I felt each student had a good handle on what their organism contributed to the relationships it was a part of in this particular ecosystem, I moved on to connect it all together, to show just why biodiversity is so important (again, going back to the essential question). First, I took the same images that were on their handouts and taped them to the board, starting with algae and asking the table of students who were assigned this one who they had a relationship with. We moved through the rest of the animals and relationships from here.
The thought process behind drawing the web first was 1, to get students to share with me that they saw and understood the relationships of the organism they focused on and 2, to set up the next activity of creating a physical web using yarn, mimicking the one I had drawn on the board.
Once the students organized the web, representing the different relationships shared between groups, I showed them a video on the effects of global warming on algae. The video included a neat feature to be able to scan the bottom of the ocean 360°. With this feature I scanned the ocean showing them what the healthy algae looked like and what the unhealthy algae looked like. The point of doing this was to cover the concept mentioned above that ecosystems’ components can be disrupted by things like global warming. After showing the class this, I asked them what they think will happen if the algae for the iguanas became unhealthy, to which they responded with the correct answer that the iguanas would be adversely affected. To demonstrate visually, I cut the string between the two groups which then in turn made me cut the string between the others, since we had determined beforehand that really all of the relationships depended on the iguana, which depended on the algae. I physically cut the string to really show students how the relationship and ecosystem was affected by a disruption. I was able to see that students had an understanding of the concept by asking questions like “what will happen to the crab group once I cut this string?” to which each student was able to answer correctly. My main form of assessment during this workshop was formative assessment, asking questions the entire way to make sure they were getting it and also to keep them focused.
Lastly, I found a quiz online that covered everything I had taught during this last workshop. The quiz served as summative assessment. I decided to make it into a small competition, since I felt that would get middle schoolers motivated to answer the questions correctly, offering the winning team first pick at the variety of candies and treats I brought with me. This proved to work very well, because I saw the students team up and work together to come up with the right answer as quickly as they could in order to earn the most points to win. I was very happy with the results, as each team answered the majority of the questions correctly! In the end, I handed the winning team a bag of lollipops to choose from first and chocolates and popcorn to the other students as well. The final bell rang and the students were off into the hallway for the next class, their peers envious of the treats they worked hard for.
Equity:
Matters of equity were addressed in this lesson by using video clips I thought would appeal to the middle schoolers. I also made sure they had an understanding of where the Galapagos Islands were before we continued which I feel was necessary since not all students may have known where/what the Galapagos is. I also checked with the classroom teacher prior to the lesson to make sure enough students had phones to participate in the online quiz, which addressed the matter. Another way I tried to make this lesson equitable was by giving each student a chance to participate, both by encouraging them to ask questions when confused as well as share what they wrote down or observed from the videos I showed. I made myself available for each student by taking time to circulate the classroom, talking to each student individually, which I think also contributed to efforts to make this lesson equitable. By creating interactive as well as interesting activities and giving equal opportunity for students to participate, I was able to address matters of equity in this lesson.
Reflection:
Walking in to my last workshop at McDonough Middle School, I was nervous and excited. I knew I had prepared a fun, interactive lesson that the students would enjoy, but nervous it wouldn’t go as planned. Luckily, I felt everything went very smoothly, maybe because I was now more comfortable in the front of the classroom and was confident in the lesson plan. At first it was tough to get the students to participate but as the class progressed more students were willing to read aloud and share ideas and observations. I saw student learning happening when I asked the students questions and requested they make their own examples of relationships. Student learning was also prevalent when I walked around the classroom and was able to talk one-on-one with each student, finding out what they had observed from the Planet Earth clip, helping me to see that they were beginning to understand biodiversity and why it is important for an ecosystem. Something I had not planned for, but was happy to see, was that students filled out their worksheets on their own during the clip without any instruction. This showed to me that they really were paying attention and were also eager to learn about their given organism, which would then help them participate further. Through use of mainly formative assessment, I was able to see learning happening throughout the hour-long class.
I could also see that students learned based on their performance on the team quiz I planned for them to do at the end of class. This was more summative assessment. By seeing them respond to a majority of the questions correctly, I knew they had learned something in class. This made me proud and happy to see since I was the one who taught them! Reflecting on the lesson, I feel that students did meet the objective and were able to answer the essential question I posed at the beginning of class based on both formative and summative assessments.
Another thing that worked well was using a reward/treat at the end. By telling students they would be able to play with their phones at the end to complete the quiz and that the winning team would get candy, they were definitely motivated more to pay attention and participate in order to get the reward. I think I will use this technique again with other teaching experiences I may take part in.
It was also helpful for me to teach this lesson based on the past lessons I had done. It felt like a wrap-up of the workshops because it covered this broad topic, sort of zooming out from previous topics on energy flow and food webs in an ecosystem, and then population ecology. The students were able to take the information I had previously taught them (which I am very pleased they did remember!) and apply it to this final lesson. I am glad the lessons panned out the way they had, one building on top of the other in a way, because it made it feel as though I was teaching continuously as the classroom teacher would have. I have grown a great deal since the first workshop in February and was able to take that first experience and build on it, though I know there is always room for improvement. I can work more on creating a fun and interactive environment for students to learn since I have learned that these sort of lessons work best to appeal to students. Something else I can work on in the future is coming up with different ways to explain concepts if students did not understand the first time, this is something I felt I had a little bit of a hard time with when students expressed confusion.
I am very thankful for this opportunity and I know I will take all that I learned both in class from professors as well as everything I learned from the seventh grade students with me in my next endeavors. I had no experience in a middle school classroom, except of course when I was the student, so this experience opened my mind to entertain the possibility of teaching or engaging in some way with middle schoolers which I had not really thought of doing before. Thanks to Core 4 at McDonough Middle School! A true mutualistic relationship:)
Citations
Gunton, M., Hugh-Jones, T., Anderson, J., Charles, E., Devas, F., Hunter, C., . . . BBC Earth (Firm) (Directors). (2017). Planet earth ii [Video file]. BBC Earth.
How Are Climate Change Affecting Our Oceans? (2018, May 03). Retrieved from https://www.oceans16mtsieeemonterey.org/how-are-climate-change-affecting-our-oceans/
(n.d.). Retrieved from https://create.kahoot.it/details/biodiversity/b33b489e-2437-4f01-b7d0-085f537bd421
My second teaching workshop took place the morning of April 4th, 2019, again with the same seventh grade science class at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, CT. I created a lesson plan around the topic of population ecology using both science, math, and English language arts elements. The classroom teacher had advised me beforehand to create an introductory lesson, as the students had not had any background knowledge on population ecology, using three key concepts:
Population Size
Carrying Capacity
Limiting Factors
To create my lesson plan, I went to the Next Generation Science Standards and based it off of standards MS-LS2-1, which asks that students be able to analyze and interpret data to understand the effects of resource availability on a population and MS-LS2-4, which asks that students be able to construct and argument with evidence that changes to an ecosystem affects a population. To meet these objectives given by the standards I designed my lesson with 4 main parts:
The lesson began with a short and simple “do now” activity where I asked students to write down anything they thought could limit a population from growing. I decided to start this way to determine where the kids were at with their knowledge on the topic, though I knew this would be their first formal lesson on it. I also chose to start the lesson with a simple do now to allow the students to come in to the classroom in the morning and settle in, since the classroom teacher had told me last workshop that they often need a “quiet ten minutes” before class begins.
After a few minutes I kicked off the actual lesson with asking the students if they knew what particular neighborhood of Hartford we all live and go to school in. Most students did not know the answer, so after a couple of guesses I told them the name of our neighborhood is Frog Hollow. I wanted to start with an introduction of Frog Hollow, telling them that many years ago there were frogs inhabiting the area we now reside, since my lesson on population ecology involved a population of frogs and the flies they eat.
After the introduction, I went over to a slideshow presentation to teach the students about the different terms that were necessary to know for this topic. I used examples of other populations besides frogs as well to help them understand these concepts apply to all different kinds of populations, not just frogs and flies. During this portion of the lesson, I was actively asking the class questions and going back to review what I had just spoke about to make sure they were understand what I was teaching. This was a form of formative assessment that I kept up throughout the hour long class.
After going through the terms, I asked the class if there were any questions before we moved on to the activity of creating our own ecosystem using frog and fly print outs. I drew a pond shape on the white-board and passed around 8 frogs and about 16 flies. I wanted the lesson to be interactive, learning from my last workshop that the students were quite engaged when I had them come up to the board and tape something up. I wanted to have visual aids (the frogs and flies I printed and handed out to the students) to help them understand the concepts of carrying capacity and limiting factors.
The “rules” of the activity were that one frog needs four flies per day in order to grow, and we started with 16 flies. The flies also reproduce at a rate of 50%, (to make it more realistic since we know flies do reproduce rapidly) meaning that if you take the number of flies left at the end of each day, and divide that by two, you would get the amount of flies that were produced for the next morning. Then, to determine how many flies we started with the next day, you should add together the number of flies. left at the end of the day and the number that would be produced. My professor, Kyle Evans, helped me with this portion of the lesson by creating a calculator.
I helped the students to see this by writing it on the board in a chart, one column of frogs, one column of flies at the start of the day, one at the end of the day, and lastly one of how many would be produced. At first, there was some confusion which I anticipated when using math since I was not aware of their math levels, but I was able to answer any questions that came up and proceeded until we reached carrying capacity.
So, we started with one frog in the pond and 16 flies. After frog one/day one, four flies were eaten, leaving 12 at the end of the day, and 6 to be reproduced. When frog 2 hopped to our pond on day 2, there were 18 flies for the both to eat, after both frog 1 and 2 ate for the day, there were 10 flies left, and 5 reproduced (the photo above of the frog/fly calculator shows this more clearly). The activity went on like this until we got to the fourth frog. Once the fourth frog came to our pond, there were not enough flies to feed all four. This showed that the carrying capacity of the pond would only be three frogs, and the fourth would have to go find another pond to inhabit. The limiting factor was that there was not enough food (flies) to feed the whole population of frogs in our ecosystem.
Next, I added in another limiting factor and asked the students what they thought would happen if a competitor, such as a salamander, made its way to our pond. The class responded that it would negatively impact our frog population as there would be less flies. I was pleased with the answer because it indicated to me that they had an understanding of the key concept. I added in a final limiting factor of a disease affecting the fly population, and again the students responded that this would again affect the frog population negatively. I gave them another scenario that now, since there is a disease, there are only 12 flies in the pond. We did the math again to show how the carrying capacity would decrease.
This particular student needed some help writing out his story, but did a great job telling his story for both me and the classroom teacher to write down for him.
From here, I moved into a writing exercise I had designed for students to be able to creatively show me an understanding of the topic I taught in class that day. This was my formative assessment for this workshop. The exercise asked students to take on a role of something in the ecosystem we just created, whether that was a frog (most students chose this option) or a fly, even the pond or the salamander. I passed out the sheet and circulated the classroom encouraging students to be creative, listening to their ideas, and helping them formulate thoughts. I was pleased with how the students did with this activity and they were able to convey to me that they understood the lesson by including the key terms int their writings.
Equity
The lesson I designed addressed matters of equity by developing the idea of using frogs and flies off of the name of the neighborhood students live and go to school in. I presented the lesson in a way that was able to reach all students and made sure I was walking around the classroom helping each student individually.
Reflection
I felt this lesson went well for the plan that I had created. I do think the plan, however, could have been better and I felt a little less confident and organized than I had during my first workshop. The portion of the lesson I think went the best was the writing exercise I planned for the end of class. I liked being able to see the students use their creativity and apply it to population ecology. The frog & flies activity went well too in that I was able to see students actively trying to understand the concept and figure out the math to determine the carrying capacity. I was glad a student spoke up and asked a question when he was confused. This gave me the chance to clarify anything I may have left out and potentially help other students who might have also been confused. Another thing that I felt went well was when I worked with a student individually, helping him to write his story and understand the concepts I taught previously. Seeing this particular student show an interest and desire to work made me feel as if I was doing something good for him, helping him participate and learn.
My teaching still needs improvement as well as my lesson planning. I was pleased with how this workshop panned out, but I also think it could have been better, but hey, there’s always room for improvement and nobody’s perfect. In comparison to my last workshop, I used less teaching aids and did more of a lecture style I would say, where I taught the terms instead of a video or a song. I am not sure which one I prefer in terms of feeling like I’m the teacher, but I’m sure the students preferred the song or video. Overall, I am getting more comfortable in the classroom and feel like I am getting the hang of it. I am looking forward to the third workshop, which will hopefully be the best of the three!
The morning of February 28th, 2019, I had the opportunity to lead my first teaching workshop in a seventh grade science class at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, CT. I put together a lesson plan which included Science as well as English Language Arts elements. The class’s teacher had requested ahead of time that I prepare a lesson based on the marine ecosystem, focusing on elements of the food web as well as the flow of energy within this web. I taught the Core 4 class, made up of about 15 students. The students did not have much prior knowledge of the topic, so it was up to me to give them an informative and fun lesson about ocean food webs.
In this lesson, I focused on two key concepts:
Students will develop their own food web and demonstrate the flow of energy
Students will create writing piece taking on role of organism and incorporating key terms and concepts (energy flow)
These concepts were developed from the Next Generation Science Standards, specifically MS-L2-3, which asks that students be able to develop a model to describe the flow of energy in an ecosystem as well as MS-L2-4 which asks students to demonstrate the ability to construct an argument that uses evidence to show how a change in a system effects population patterns.
To meet these objectives, I prepared a lesson with 5 main activities for students to participate in:
To begin the lesson, I had students work on a “Do Now” activity as the entered the classroom in the morning. I passed out two blank index cards to each students and asked them to write down any two organisms they knew in the ocean. I followed up this instruction with an example, suggesting they could think of a predator/prey pair, since the students had not had a prior lesson on this topic. After about 10 minutes, it was time to dive in to the lesson. I chose to start the lesson off by asking if any of the students had ever visited the beach before or went swimming in the ocean, followed up by asking if anyone eats seafood. The majority of the class raised their hands up for that one. Going off of that, I introduced the key concept of energy flow. I asked the students if they had any idea where they would fall in this food web if they were the ones eating the fish and shrimp and other sea creatures.
Moving on from the introduction, I had a learning tool to help the students learn about what an ecosystem is and specific parts of it. I used an interactive rap song and printed out the lyrics for the students to follow along. I figured using an entertaining song would appeal to middle school students and get them excited to continue the lesson.
After the song, I started the lesson using a PowerPoint presentation I had prepared before class to act as a visual aid for the students to follow along.
I showed the class this first slide (above) and asked if anyone could tell me, based off the song we just listened to, what these organisms (seaweed, algae, etc.) would be considered in the food web. Students referred back to their lyric print out and shouted out “producer”. In asking these questions as the lesson progressed, I was able to assess the students’ learning based off of answers they were shouting out. We went through the rest of the presentation in the same way, going over all of the different layers of consumers and finishing with decomposers.
After teaching the class about the different groups that make up the ocean food web, I planned an activity to take the cards handed out during the “do now” and using them to make our own ocean food web. I gave each student an opportunity to come to the front of the classroom and tape on a member of the food web in an order that portrayed the flow of energy.
After the web was completed and the students were able to show an understanding of the marine food web and its flow of energy, I had them start on the formative assessment activity.
Students started the activity with taking on the role of an ocean organism, maybe one they had written down during the “do now”. I asked them use as many terms from the lesson as possible, to show an understanding of terms and the concept of energy flow.
After the students were given enough time to write their first half of the exercise, I introduced the idea that a key organism in their food web, like seaweed, was extinct. Now what would their lives look like in the ocean without a key part of their ecosystem? I chose to include this in the assessment because I wanted to see students’ understanding of the cross-cutting concept “small changes in one part of system may cause change in a larger part.”
Here we see two different pieces written by students who chose to take on different roles in the marine ecosystem. I was able to see student learning from these examples because they incorporated key terms and concepts and were able to understand that if a change was made to the ecosystem, it would have greater effects elsewhere in the system. I loved the first student example taking on the role of the sun, it was very creative and showed deeper thinking. After students were given plenty of time to complete the assessment exercise, we were able to play a vocab game to review everything the students just learned. The students particularly enjoyed this activity because of the interesting music the game plays with each correct response.
Equity
I addressed matters of equity in this lesson by using a rap song I thought would appeal to middle school students. I had noticed during my previous observation of the class that the kids were interested in music and creating their own beats, so when I had found this teaching aid I knew it would appeal to these students. Another way I made this lesson equitable was by ensuring every student had the opportunity to participate in this lesson, by coming to the front to tape an organism to our food web, answering or even asking a question or by sharing their creative stories, I was even successful at getting particularly quiet students to be involved and vocal. I made it a point to circulate the classroom to see if anyone needed more guidance as well as to hear the ideas they were coming up with. This lesson was equitable because I used a song middle school students would be interested in since it is similar to some popular music, as well as the fact I gave opportunities to each student to be actively involved in their learning.
Reflection
I felt that my lesson went well. I went in to the classroom nervous but confident in my lesson plan. Aspects of the lesson that went well were student participation as well as presenting the information to the class in a way that helped them to best understand the concept of energy flow in a marine ecosystem. The students were able to learn the different organisms that make up a marine ecosystem (i.e. producers, consumers, decomposers) and where they each get their energy from. I knew that student learning was happening when I saw students refer back to the lyric sheet with definitions, answer questions I asked, and complete the formative assessment exercise. I also knew there was thinking happening when some students thought about the question I posed and answered incorrectly the first time, but were able to correct themselves. I was pleased with the extent to which the students met the objectives. The majority of the class was involved in creating the food web and put their minds to work writing a creative piece on a marine organism.
I think something I can improve on as I move in to my second workshop is maybe teaching more. I felt afterwards like I had really just given a review to the students and didn’t do much of my own teaching, since I used the song to teach them the terms, though they were very helpful aids that made the kids interested. I just felt I could have come up with something that was my own to use to teach the lesson versus using something someone else created. By using a song/video I didn’t feel like I was the teacher, the song was. Next time, I’d like to have a lesson where I am more of the teacher than the aids I use. I also felt like I may have went through the lesson quickly, so next time I can slow down and utilize all of the time I’m given.
In the future, I would like to continue to think of interactive and informative lessons for the seventh grade science students to be excited to learn about. My goal is to create fun and interesting lessons to keep the students entertained and interested in science. I want to be the teacher that a student remembers as he/she goes from grade to grade and can say they remember the fun lesson I taught them that made them interested in a certain topic. This lesson definitely showed personal growth since before this I had only had experience with preschool and lower elementary level students. I was worried I would not do well in a middle school classroom, but I feel I was able to prove myself wrong and am eager to get back to the classroom for another teaching workshop.
I had the opportunity to observe in Ms. Amy Dougan’s seventh grade science class at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, CT, this Thursday morning. McDonough Middle School is part of the Hartford Public Schools system. I expected a typical middle school experience, and I think my actual experience matched this expectation. I observed a class of around 20 students during their very first class of the day, so some students needed some time to wake up and get settled in. I expected some students to be engaged with the material and some to be, well, not so engaged, and I think this expectation was matched in my observation. This is middle school, after all.
After walking up one flight of stairs and rounding a corner, I found Ms. Dougan outside her classroom rounding up the students and getting them from their lockers and in to their first class of the day. She welcomed me and her students in to the classroom and we started with a “quiet 10 minutes.” The students take this time to get settled in and begin on a sheet the teacher prepares for each class where they are instructed to first copy down the “daily learning target” and then move on to the Do Now.
Daily Paper created by Ms. Dougan at McDonough Middle School
Daily Paper created by Ms. Dougan at McDonough Middle School
I noticed that Ms. Dougan has the daily learning target written in two different locations in the classroom, along with a statement written on the “long term learning board”, for this lesson, she wrote “should energy drinks be regulated for people under 16 years old.” Along with the daily learning target, words like “engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.” This idea of evaluating and using evidence to emphasize arguments is a concept Ms. Dougan says she encourages in the classroom. A Word Wall was also incorporated into the décor of the classroom, with all of the vocabulary terms for that unit displayed, the most recent ones at the top. The purpose of this was to have a visual for the students to refer back to when writing and doing other tasks.
I caught the class at the end of a chapter, so they were working on a sort of final project on the chemistry of energy drinks. They had to pull evidence from a reading on energy drinks in order to support their claim of whether or not energy drinks should be regulated for people under 16. The project was a creative one in that they had to create an infographic. I saw student learning through their creativity and skills to pull out evidence to back up their claim. Student learning was also exhibited when Ms. Dougan asked the students what some effects of energy drinks were and they were able to recall information they had previously read. The teacher was using this infographic project as a form of assessment to see whether or not students were able to pull and interpret information from readings and use terminology learned earlier in the lesson to enhance their argument. I found it interesting that students behavior/attitude was also assessed, the rubric grading them on if they were “friendly, helpful, open, and positive.” This part of the rubric/assessment is interesting to me and I think it is a good thing to include in order to encourage students to be open to suggestions and also open to the idea of working together and helping each other. I think including a social element to lessons is good for students to start talking with each other about science. If one student shows interest, maybe it will spark interest in other students.
Ms. Dougan’s Energy Drink Infographic Directions
I asked Ms. Dougan how she typically assesses the students and she said usually with formative assessments like the one they were doing or writing assignments. She told me at McDonough there is a push to emphasize writing and reading skills. I noticed there was a board at the front of the classroom labeled “bravo” where students’ exceptional work was posted. The work there now was a short writing assignment where students had to choose a statement they agreed with most in regard to a certain topic and use evidence to support why they made that choice.
From this observation, I was able to pick up on the dynamic of the classroom and also speak with the teacher to hear what her needs are and what sort of curriculum she is planning on teaching next when it’s my turn to lead the class. She recommended use of a slideshow to aid learning and also said that having some kind of “do now” activity is most effective. Ms. Dougan is great to work with and is very helpful, I am looking forward to more experiences inside her classroom!
