TWS 6: Reflection, Self-Evaluation, & Professional Development -Whole class

For my showcase lesson, I caught a FOSS kit lesson, entitled Fizz Quiz. This is the lesson my cooperating teacher wanted me to teach on Thursday, which is when my observation time was scheduled. I went into this lesson a little nervous because I did not know how my students would handle it and I was unsure of myself. Once I wrote my lesson plan and practiced, I felt much more confident about teaching this lesson. The class wanted into the room and I already had groups made with group name cards on the desks so students could easily find their group. I began the lesson by telling them they would find a piece of paper on their desk with a question. This was the pre-assessment. They had a few minutes to complete this before Mrs. Lewis and myself took them up. I began by reviewing what we learned the day before about solubility. We reviewed several vocabulary words and I asked a few questions. Then, I explained the experiment they were going to complete and reviewed safely procedures. Each member of a group was responsible for one cup, and I called each cup number up to the front to get the chemical they needed. For time sake, the student scooped one chemical for their cup, and I scooped the other. This process was time consuming for all three cups, but I wanted to let the student scoop at least one chemical instead of me scooping both for them. I made them wait until all of the groups had their chemicals, then every group put water into their cup at the same time. I chose to do this because I did not want any group getting ahead of the game and I wanted to be able to discuss with the whole class what they were seeing. This also allowed for students to share what they observed. I walked around the class while they were making observations to implement my checklist system (during-assessment). After we completed the experiment for all three cups, I asked them to think about which cups were chemical reactions and which were not. The class made the conclusions that I was hoping for them to. They were able to name several

properties, and I even introduced precipitate to them, which is something we saw in one of the cups. I was hoping that they would write that down on the post-assessment, but I only had two students that did. Overall, I did I showed good classroom management. There was not a time that they got out of hand or too noisy. However, I think that I could have better concluded the lesson. I think they got what I wanted them to out of the lesson, but for some reason they did not know that is what I wanted on the post-assessment, or how to express it. Many of the students wrote exactly what they observed for each cup on their post-assessment, which is not exactly what I was looking for. I wanted them to simply list 3 things that they would see when a chemical reaction was taking place. From the experiment, they saw a precipitate, temperature change, fizzing, and bubbling. Those observations would have been great for them to use, but many students wrote in this format: Cup 1 fizzing, cup 2 nothing, cup 3 bubbling and clear. The directions on the assessment were clear as to what I wanted, but I am sure many of them did not take to time to fully read. Next time, I would go over the assessments more thoroughly and provide examples of my expectations. I believe that the post-assessment results would have shown more progress if the students would have followed directions or I would have explained what I wanted in more detail. -Individual students The most successful students out of the 3 that I closely observed was the average learner. He/she increased his/her score from 0/3 to 2/3. There are probably several reasons for this. He/she was in a group that he/she worked well in, although most of the groups worked well together. This student was engaged in the lesson and a very active learner. He/she contributed to the class discussion and participated when others shared their observations. The least successful students of the 3 was the above average learner. He/she made no progress on the assessment. He/she scored 2/3 on both assessments. This student seemed to be

actively participating in the lesson when I was near, but when I was not close by I noticed that the student got off task often. He/she had more conversation going on in their group than they needed to and I think this kept this student from making any progress. The average performer was the below average learner. This student showed progress and had a great attitude and disposition during the entire lesson. -Response The post-assessment responses were surprising to me and not what I expected. As previously stated, the majority of students listed exactly what they saw in cup 1, 2, and 3. They were supposed to use the experiment to help them draw conclusions, then be able to identify three things they could observe during a chemical reaction. In cup 2 a chemical reaction did not take place, so most students listed what they saw during cup 2 and received no credit for it because it is not something that could be observed during a chemical reaction. Next time, I will definitely specify what I am looking for on the assessments. I am not able to implement this now, because it is what I noticed after the lesson was over and done with, but it is something I can take and use in the future. My results are not as accurate as they should be, but in the future I would explain and give examples of what I am expecting to see on the assessments. -Additional lessons My very first lesson was a math lesson on symmetry. I cut out shapes so each student could have their own envelope of 6 shapes. They explored these shapes by folding them and discussing with partners to find if the shapes had line symmetry, how many lines of symmetry, rotational symmetry, or no symmetry at all. After they had hands-on time, we moved to problems on the Smartboard. I called on students to come up and draw and solve problems, which they absolutely loved. This lesson went really well and almost all students seemed to really like it and be engaged in it. I would probably do the same thing if I were to teach this lesson in the

future. At first, I thought the lesson would not take nearly enough time, but I found out that with 24 students it takes much longer than I thought. I used the whole amount of time I was allotted, which was 55 minutes. My second lesson was another math lesson on surface area of rectangular prisms. This lesson went well but I did not feel like the got enough out of it. Mrs. Lewis told me it would be a review for the class, but they needed it. I began by giving the students a rectangular prism net that they colored, folded and taped and then found the surface area of. This part went well but then I moved to problems on the Smartboard. The students worked with partners to solve the problems and still had difficulty. If I were to do this lesson over, I would give each student 6-8 nets and have them work with a partner. They would use 3 colors to color the congruent sides the same color and find the surface area. The homework would be problems on paper for them to solve. They needed more hands-on experience to understand surface area. They were having a hard time know which sets of faces matched and remembering the formula. The third lesson I taught was a shard reading lesson using Stand Straight Ella Kate. I selected this book because a few students had recently been made fun of and picked on by other students. This book went right along with that and helped address the problem. The lesson went great and everyone was very engaged in the story. After I read it to them, we identified main parts of the story. The students wrote these down and then used the main parts to write a 2-3-sentence summary. The results I received from their papers were great. They really enjoyed the story and that showed by how much they wrote. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would let students do some research in the library or computer on gigantism, which is the condition the girl had in the story. The students were very interested in this and asked a lot of questions, but I could only provide the small amount of information that was given in the book. My fourth lesson was a science lesson on solubility. The students mixed a sugar cube into ice-cold water, room temperature

water, and hot water to conclude that the warmer the water, the quicker the sugar cube dissolved. The really enjoyed this lesson and definitely learned from it, but I did not do so well in classroom management. My materials station was set up in the back on the classroom, the groups were not very well arranged, and I did not have a good system of getting students the materials they needed. Also, we did not wait to do everything as a class so I was not able to implement very much class discussion until the very end. Overall, I was pleased with how I felt the students were learning and engaged, but I felt there were thing I could have done differently to make for a smoother and more managed classroom. -Professional development There are two main things that stood out to me during my experience at Mathews Elementary. First, I really enjoy teaching science lessons. They are almost automatically hands-on, and I think students really learn best that way. I loved seeing the students when they got something based on what they saw in their experiment. I want to attend seminars or workshops in the future that will prepare me to be a better science teacher. I also realized I need to review a lot of the science material, at least that I saw in 5th grade. I know that I need to know the content well so that I can answer questions and make connections to other science concepts. The second thing that I noticed is that I would like to prepare myself to teach math better. It was not my favorite subject to teach but I want to learn to like it more. The reason I had difficulty with it, is because I could not always find activities to make it hands-on. I wanted each lesson to involve a hands-on activity and sometimes that was not easy, especially not being the full time teacher and having the resources that they have. I am open to attend workshops and seminars that will help me to make math more hands-on.