Instructional Strategies
“Restrain yourself.”
Lesson Plan
The lesson that utilized the most instructional strategies was Unit 9, Day 2. I gave a focus question and circulated to keep them on task/ answering and asking questions. Then we went over it together on the white board. I then gave them instructions on what we were going to do. Small groups worked with me while the rest of the class engaged with the Solve the Outbreak! Activity from the CDC using my guiding sheet. I gave them two points in the room to check what they were supposed to be doing and asked them where they should be looking for what to do before moving on. I then took a small group to the back to work with me. I walked them through the exercise, while they thought of their own answers and shared them to the group. They wrote their own notes on their activity sheet. We then switched to a new group and repeated.
Lesson Observations
I did not get a traditional student teaching experience, but my administrator gave me feedback with her observations. Please note that her Inconsistent ratings mean they are in-progress targets. Link to evaluations. She has not been to observe me since my mid-year evaluation was done in January.
This is my university supervisor's Lesson Observation Notes from February 28th.
Observation Reports
My university supervisor came to observe twice during my spring semester. Here are my two reports from February 28th, and March 13th.
Reflections on Evidence
I chose the lesson from Day 2, because it is the lesson I am the most proud of from the Unit Plan because it features the most inquiry and because the students were the most excited about it.
My administrator's feedback was useful because it was from a different perspective from my own, and most of my other team members. Her feedback gave me a good idea as to how the politics work in schools.
Overall, I learned that students are not always excited about student driven learning, because it requires to think for themselves more. I think this lesson would be a good intro to a more student driven classroom because it gives them a taste of responsibility and empowerment of inquiry without them having to exert as much work. I learned that in your first year, you are at the mercy of your predecessor and whatever they left for you to work with. I learned that you must re-read lessons/activities you receive from others because sometimes there are inaccuracies or blatantly awful flubs in alignment. I learned that I cannot stand fill-in notes, because they don't let you or your students explore the narrative of their learning during lectures/discussions.
I am slowly building the variety of activities I have for my topics so that I can pick and choose in the future to suit the needs of my students better. In the future, I will incorporate more science literature and article reading with scaffolding and puzzle piece reading because it helps build community compassion and because my students find it very difficult to read critically. I think collaborative struggling will aid building that skill.
I realized that I lean heavily on videos like the Amoeba Sisters and Bill Nye for a second voice in the classroom. I am better than that, my kids deserve better than that, and I am moving away from it. I only used one video in Unit 10. I think I will continue to cap those videos at once a unit and try to expand the number of hands on activities. I want to move away from the fill in activity sheets associated with these videos and have the students do more 3,2,1 type activities with the videos we do watch.
My goal is to have more class time doing labs than traditional notes. I may experiment with a flipped classroom to make that happen.
My university supervisor is right when she says that we need to restrain ourselves and that the more instructional strategies you have at your disposal the better. My final evaluation did not tell me anything that I did not already think about, but gave me some of the solutions I discussed above.