Day 4, Interdependency of Plants and Animals

Today was a much better day than yesterday. There was a short PowerPoint to introduce the information and then the students worked in groups of 3-4 on a "Chain of Effects" project. This showed that the students really understood the concept we have been talking about throughout the unit. They were given a food chain and a scenario (natural event (flood, fire) or a human effect (pollution, building cities) and had to explain (in words and pictures) what would happen to the food chain as a result of the given scenario. Ms. S told me she was really surprised with how well they did, so that made me feel more confident. The students had a lot of fun working with their peers and everyone had a chance to contribute to the group. Overall, it was a lot of fun seeing the kids apply their knowledge and share their projects with the class. It seemed like an effective lesson.

Day 3, Human Effects on the Environment

Today, I started by reintroducing myself and had the students introduce themselves. I then had them tell me about what they had previously learned with C. A PowerPoint presentation was used to introduce the new information on how humans affect the environment. They then had to fill out a "Cause and Effect" worksheet we had been using throughout the entire lesson. After that they had a journal prompt in which they had to recall a time they saw humans affecting the environment. The journal prompt turned out to be a bit of a flop; it should have been more specific so the students had more direction.

Overall, the lesson seemed to get the main points across. However, it was not a really exciting lesson. That was when a realization hit me: not all lessons can be mind-blowing and super-engaging when you are teaching everyday. There are bound to be lay-low days. I was a little worried that the students weren't understanding it because there wasn't as much engagement as I thought there might be. But after looking at their responses, most seemed to have a good grasp on the material.

Note About Teaching Unit

My schedule and my partner's schedule did not allow for us to team teach the unit in a timely manner. Therefore, we decided that C would teach Lesson 1 and 2 on Monday and Wednesday and I would teach Lesson 3 and 4 on Thursday and Friday. We would then team teach our final lesson the following Thursday in order to provide a comprehensive review before the post-assessment.

Preassessment

C and I went to give our four item constructed response preassessment to our class. The students took between 10-15 minutes to complete it. Overall, most students knew a little bit about each question, except for "What is erosion?" which seemed to confuse many. The preassessment gave us a good idea of where the students were in their understanding of the unit topics in order to guide our instruction. We knew that most students had some prior knowledge to call on but that they lacked complete understanding on the topics.