For my clinical science lesson, my
cooperating teacher and I decided that it would be best to continue finishing
the unit we have been working on thus far this semester. In our kindergarten
classroom, we have been discussing the difference between living and nonliving
organisms, the necessities all living things need, the anatomy of plants, and
how different animals move. For the lesson I implemented on Wednesday, November
12, I selected the following standard to guide my lesson: K-LS1-1 Use
observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans)
need to survive. I came up with two objectives for this lesson that include:
students will be able to distinguish between the different life stages of a
plant, and students will be able to identify the different parts of a plant.
These two objectives correlated with the science workbook pages completed
during this class.
At the beginning of my lesson, I asked
the students to recall what we talked about during the last science lesson.
Students were very attentive and told me how we talked about what plants and
animals need to live. I applauded the students for remember what we did a week
prior to this lesson implementation and related this information to that day’s
goals. I briefly recapped what the students said and played a kid-friendly
video explaining the life cycle of a plant. I paused the video a single time to
ask children a question on what happened to the seeds once they were “hidden”
underground. The students were able to tell me that the seeds started to grow
into plants. I praised them for coming to that conclusion and continued the
video. At the end of the video, I asked the students what happened. All of the
students looked at me as if I had a third eye, but told me from beginning to
end of what happened throughout the video. I was very pleased to see how the
repetition of this standard has paid off. The video was then related back to
the day’s objectives. Before moving into the next section of my lesson plan, I
went over some crucial vocabulary with the students.
Even though our class has discussed
what plants need to grow and survive, labeling a diagram of a plant was a new
concept to these kindergartners. I had the students help me sound out each of
the following words: flower, stem, roots, and leaf. This was the integration of
literacy into my science lesson (letter sounds/phonemic awareness). I recapped
where these parts were found on a plant and continued on with completing our
large group activity. For the first workbook page, we, as a large group,
completed drawings of the different life stages of a plant. I selected students
to help generate ideas of which illustration would be listed there; I also tied
this into the growth and development of humans, and similar activity we
completed a few lessons prior. Students were able to come up with three main
life stages for the plant, including the seeds being planted, a baby plant
emerging, and finally, a full-grown adult plant. I made sure to walk around the
room and ask students explain to me why we went in this particular order. Many
children referred back to the video we just watched, while others remembered
talking about the different plant stages from previous science lessons.
After I
made sure that everyone correctly drew in their plant life stages, we continued
onto the shared practice. During this time, I felt very confident that I was doing
a good job with my passing, checking for student understanding, and activating
the student’s prior knowledge. Just from looking at their work samples, I could
tell that even some of our struggling students were understanding this concept.
Seeing these results boosted my confidence in knowing that I was effectively
teaching the material correctly. As we moved onto the shared practice, students
were told to work in their table teams on the new vocabulary introduced at the
beginning of the lesson. Before the students started to work in their groups, I
made sure that each child pointed to each word as we read it together. We did
this for the following words: flower, stem, roots, and leaf. We have discussed
different parts of a plant before, but listing these terms on a diagram was unfamiliar
to the students. I wanted to use this as a shared practice activity so that the
children could help one another out. To show me when groups were done, I told
them to put their pencil on their nose. As I was observing the children work, I
saw how everyone resorted to me for questions rather than each other. These
students have never participated in a share practice, so this made me question
my teaching abilities. Even though I reminded the students to work together,
they only wanted my input, which defeats the purpose of having a “shared
practice” section in a lesson plan. After constant reminders, the students
finally talked amongst themselves to go over which word they connected to each part
of the plant. As a group, we went over the answers as I called individual
students from each table team to draw a line from a word to the corresponding
image on the SMART board. All students did this activity correctly, too. I made
sure to walk around to each table and check their worksheet pages before moving
on to the independent practice portion of this lesson.
My
checklist to assess the student’s individual practice was utilized during this
final activity. We went over the life cycle of a plant via the introductory
video and by completing illustrations as a class, but now it was time to see
how many students were able to complete this task independently. The children
were instructed to label four images using the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 to
indicate which picture came first, second, and so on. While each child was
filling out their worksheet, I was walking around to each table recording
whether or not they were accurately able to label these images. Of the 22
students I had in class, four of them were not able to effectively label the
life stages of a plant independently. I saw that all four students mixed up the
second and third illustrations, which could be challenging for a young child to
detect. Overall, there was an 82% objective success rate in the lesson I
taught. I was happy with these results, but was disappointed that four students
did not meet this lesson’s objective of distinguishing between the different
life stages of a plant.
Overall,
I feel that I did a successful job in assessing the students throughout the
lesson. I documented their individual work as well as checking for
understanding through the use of gestures and questions. When looking over and
consulting my CT on my performance, she told me that I did a good job
activating the children’s prior knowledge, that I grasped their attention with
the video, that I paused to ask a question, that I utilized good visuals to
indicate when the children completed an activity, and that the behavior of the
students was good, which translated to an appropriate paced lesson. However,
not everything I did was sunshine and rainbows. A few areas of growth my CT noted
included pausing an additional time during the video to explain how the day and
night scene indicated time passing (this concept may have been lost on a few
students), having the students working independently during the “shared
practice” aspect of my lesson and then having the students share their answers
with their teammates when everyone was completed, and going over how different
numbers represent a sequence, as seen in the independent practice portion of my
lesson (1 means the first, 2 means the next, etc.). Overall, I would say that I
am proud of how far I have come with teaching in front of my kindergarten
students. I was pleased to see the enthusiasm and excitement presented on their
faces, as well as how engaged each student was. Although there are areas of
growth I will improve upon, I am proud to see my CT’s observations and
strengths I exhibited during this time. This was a very atypical lesson plan
setup, but I wanted to set it up this way to help with the overall
organizational flow of the lesson. I wanted to be ambitious and try something
new, such as the “shared practice” to see which students responded well to this
adjustment. Although this did not go as expected, I do not regret organizing my
lesson in this way. I feel that the change in format helped keep the student’s
attention, as well as introducing a new grouping strategy to this classroom. I
am excited to take these criticisms and improve upon them to exhibit more
positive outcomes for the next lesson I teach at my clinical site.
Exceeds: Went over the word count and included a synopsis of
the lesson I taught in my overall reflection.
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