Cleaning Up The BDMS Sensory Garden

On October 23, I was lucky enough to be a part of cleaning up the BDMS Sensory Garden with the fourth grade class and my peers. I had been looking forward to this experience in the weeks prior. I was not sure what I expected to gain from the experience, but it ended up being a beautiful way to end our fieldwork time with the fourth graders. The fourth grade class was so excited to go outside and work in the garden. We were fortunate enough to be working in the garden on a gorgeous day. It was sunny and not too cold. The students dove right into cleaning the garden. The students were asked to remove any weeds and dead plants. The students were allowed to pick any ripe vegetables they found. Their teacher gave each of them a ziplock bag. Students spent their time finding anything they could pick to bring home. Some of the boys worked together to rip dead plants out of the ground while some of the girls worked with their teacher to cut basil leafs off of plants. Students were able to pick and bring home peppers, tomatoes, basil leafs, and other herbs.                                                                                               
Working together in this hands-on activity really brought the lesson full circle, for the teachers and the students. Teachers and students got to spend quality time together; working to achieve a goal while still considering the aspects of  each lesson we taught them. Overall, this was a wholesome experience that I will carry with me into my future teaching science to children. Hopefully I will be able to be a part of a similar experience in the future at another school.

My Experience Observing my Peers Teach In a Digital Science Classroom: 2

My Experience Observing my Peers Teach In a Digital Science Classroom:

The second group to teach a science lesson to our fourth grade class was impressive. The students in this group have more experience in this type of classroom setting than some of the other groups did. This experience gave group two a very helpful advantage when teaching their science lesson. I was impressed at the organization, preparation, and execution of group two's lessons.
My favorite aspect of their direct instruction lesson was the note-taking booklet that each student was provided. It was colorful, organized, and easy to follow. None of the students had a hard time filling out their booklets during this lesson. This idea definitely inspired all of the following groups to create a note-taking packet for the students. I really admired the way that this entire lesson was executed, and I think that it was very successful. My only wish for this lesson was that the students were less rowdy and were able to stay on task for longer periods of time; they were very talkative and excited.
Group two used an inquiry lesson plan that was similar to what group one did. They told the students they had to write an informative letter to a farmer. Then, they provided the students with riddles. These riddles both provided reinforcement and review of the previous lesson and guided the students toward creating their letter to the farmer. My favorite part of group two's lesson was the fact that they gave each student their own small plant to observe and then take home. This motivated students to participate in the lesson and excited them to continue their science journey.
                               

My Experience Observing my Peers Teach In a Digital Science Classroom: 1

My Experience Observing my Peers Teach In a Digital Science Classroom:

In my opinion, the first group of my peers that presented teaching a science lesson were successful and should be proud of themselves. It was very hard to be the first group to teach, and group one must be given credit for setting the stage for the rest of the class. This group had not observed this type of lesson before; they went into it blindly and still did an excellent job. They were able to captivate the students, get them excited, and motivate them for the lessons that would continue over the following weeks.  Group one explained to the students that by the end of these lessons, they would be "plant botanists". This was a creative and clever incentive to engage and motivate the students. All of the groups that taught after group one referred to the idea that the students were working to become "plant botanists".
Group one had an excellent direct instruction lesson. They conveyed information to the class, checked for understanding, and made sure the students were repeating all new terms and retaining information.
My suggestions for this direct instruction lesson include: making sure the students have proper materials to take notes on, like maybe a booklet or packet that they can keep for future reference.
I found group one's inquiry lesson to be very creative. They were the first group to go, so they had no other ideas to work off of. They proposed a problem to the students at the beginning of the lesson: they had to write an informational letter to an alien that does not know anything about plant life. They had the students solve various riddles in order to collect information that related to the direct instruction lesson, and that would guide them through the letter they would write to the alien. I thought this was a creative and captivating idea. The students enjoyed it. Each teacher took turns walking from table to table and presenting the students with different riddles to solve. I liked this because it was basically a modified version of a centers activity.
My only suggestion for this inquiry lesson would be to manage time better. The lesson would have been more effective than it was if the students and teachers had more time to work through the inquiry process and complete each part of it in class.
Overall, group one did a great job! They really set the bar for the rest of us.

My Inquiry Lesson

October 4, 2018

This Thursday, my group and I presented our Inquiry Science Lesson to the fourth grade class. My overall though is that my group and I executed the lesson to the best of our ability, but it did not go as it should have.
This lesson involved a lot more preparation than our direct instruction lesson did. We continued to teach about plant morphology. An activity that Dr. Smirnova recommended we do was a flower dissection. She shared this video with my group and suggested we attempt it with the class at BDMS.

https://www.whatihavelearnedteaching.com/life-cycles-plants-animals/ 

For our lesson, we provided each child with a real, fresh alstroemeria flower. They were each given a chart with columns labeled with parts of a flower on it. Under each column, they had to tape down the correct part of the flower after it was pulled apart. One teacher stood at each table with the students. This activity did not go as planned. There was not enough tape in the classroom, the children were not staying on task, and some students were struggling to follow instruction. We also were not able to manage our time because so many students left to use the bathroom, and there was not enough tape. The whole class had to share one roll of tape. Having the teachers take turns cutting tape for each student was very time consuming. We did not prepare for this issue.
It was also very hard for the children to do this activity independently. This idea was suggested to us, but I do not see how the students would have been able to do this independently. There was too much confusion and excitement; I wish my group and I would have been able to execute this lesson plan more effectively. By the time this part of the activity was completed, the students were antsy and disengaged. They were required to write down observations about each part of the plant they dissected. Again, it was hard to keep the students on task for this.

The biggest mistake my group and I made was not presenting the problem that needed to be solved in the very beginning of the lesson. When planing, we thought the placement of the problem solving activity made sense- after the students had their research and observations to reference. Unfortunately, that is not the correct format of an inquiry lesson.
The biggest challenge when teaching to the fourth grade, in my opinion, is the time management. I do not believe we have enough time to touch upon all aspects of the lesson completely. We lost so much time in the beginning of the lesson because the students just came from lunch and they all needed to go to the bathroom. We lost about 20 minutes of our lesson time due to this.

How it could have been better:
In a perfect world, we would have had enough time to fully complete all aspects of the lesson. We also would have had enough supplies, so that the activity could have been completed more efficiently. Instead of modeling at each table, I think it may have been easier to have one teacher model the flower dissection in the front of the class while the students followed independently at their desk. Really, there was just too much happening at once during this lesson.
On the bright side, I believe that my group and I did the best we could. Even though we ran out of time, and our lesson was not a perfect example of an inquiry lesson, I think that the students had a fun time and they got a lot out of it; it was a great learning experience for both the students and the teachers.

My Direct Instruction Lesson

My Direct Instruction Lesson:
On Tuesday, October 2nd, my science group and I presented our direct instruction lesson plan to the fourth grade class at Bishop Dunn. My group and I put a lot of time into preparing this lesson for the fourth graders. Prior to the lesson, we were all nervous. Prior to this experience, I never taught a whole class before. I began the lesson with the introduction. I was proud of my decision to grab the classes attention by saying "If you can hear my voice, touch your nose... if you can hear my voice, touch your chin... if you can hear my voice, touch your cheeks". The students enjoyed this and it successfully brought them together. I received compliments on this from a few of my classmates. After my group and I introduced ourselves to the students, I quickly reminded the students of our class rules. I explained to the students that they should hold up a thumbs up when they felt comfortable and confident with information, and that they should hold up a thumbs down if they felt confused or were not comfortable with the information. Next, I lead a review of the information the students learned over the past two weeks from the other college students. The review went well. Many students participated. All of the students showed understanding of previously learned material. This showed us that the college students that presented before us were successful. It also showed us that the transition from previous lessons into our lesson would be a smooth one. Lastly, I introduced the topic of plant morphology to the class. I asked them if they had heard the term before or if they wanted to guess what it might mean. One student gave an impressive guess. He said he thought plant morphology was the study of how a plant grew and changed over time. I was very impressed with this guess. I then passed the lesson over to Miss Brown.
My Thoughts:
Overall, I was pleased with my groups presentation. I think that my group members and I did a great job for our first time teaching a lesson to an entire class. I was pleased with my voice projection and the way that I introduced the lesson. I think that the other members of my group did a great job feeding the information to the class.
Some Things I Would Change:
Dr. Smirnova had several critiques of our lesson. She suggested that we do not ask the students what they think something means before we introduce it. She also suggested that we ask students if they agree or disagree with something in a different way than we chose. Lastly, she suggested that we work on our closure activity; she told us that our closure activity was unclear and needed to be explained better.  My group and I will take all of these comments into consideration when teaching our inquiry lesson on Thursday and when teaching whole class in the future.