Last Day with the Second Graders =(

      It is so sad that Monday was our last lesson with the second graders. They have been a wonderful class to work with all semester and I am going to miss seeing their smiling faces and listening to their excitement about science every week. For our last lesson Mia and I wanted the students to have something to remember us by and have something that would help them remember what they have learned about butterfly's. As a result, we decided to have the student's create an ABC fact book about the Butterfly and its life cycle. The students really seemed to enjoy the activity and had fun searching for important words and facts in non-fiction books. As a whole, the students did an excellent job and the book is adorable. After the students read their facts aloud to the group we entered their fact as a page in the book and awarded them with a "Butterfly Expert" badge. The students appeared very excited about the book and the badges. In the book we also had a cover page for the students to sign and a concluding page in which Mia and I thanked the students for all of their hard work and help this semester and wished them the best in their futures.
      In terms of our observation for our final lesson, we were graded on our assessment tools and our ability to differentiate instruction. For our assessment tool we decided to create a checklist to assess student progress. The checklist was based on a V+ to a V- system (met requirement, partially met requirement and did not meet requirement). As for differentiating instruction, we assigned more common/easier letters to the students we felt would have difficulty with the assignment. For example, we assigned the letters "B" and "C" for the two students who knew would have the most difficulty with activity. We also allotted additional time for students who needed it. For the students who excelled in the activity and finished early, we gave them a second letter (more challenging) letter to complete which ended up working out real well. Most of the students ended up finishing right around the same time. As the students finished we had an additional cloze activity for them to work on as their peers finished up which summarized the entire butterfly life cycle. For the most part the students who worked on this activity did an excellent job and even appeared to finish the activity in the short time frame they were allotted.

     I have to mention, one of the best highlights of Monday's class occurred when Mia explained to the students that we had kept all of their work in folders and were giving the students the folders to take home. All of the students became extremely excited and started cheering; it was really rather amusing. It just goes to show that the little things in life can still get the young students excited! 
      Overall, teaching the butterfly unit to the second graders has been a wonderful experience for me. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to co-teach with Mia she is a wonderful teacher and truly cares about the students which makes teaching with her a joy. I feel that I learned so much from her as well as the students that I can take with me as I try to build my own classroom in the future. I hope everyone else had a great experience and I wish everyone the best of luck in the future!
    As for the second graders, I hope that they continue to work hard and build an excitement for learning. I would love to see their names in the paper years from now winning awards and scholarships; especially in the field of science!

Engineering and Technology

      I feel that it is very important to incorporate technology and engineering into all different science units; even those presented at the elementary school level. By providing children with a strong foundation or understanding at a young age, I feel that they will be much  more comfortable with the process and will be able to conduct the design process effectively as they get older and into more challenging concepts.

      In terms of the younger grades and developing a foundation, I feel that it is very important to teach students bout the different materials that they can use to construct and build models or prototypes. It is important to have students explore these materials or tools to learn how to operate them properly. For our lesson this past week, Mia and I decided to focus on the MA Frameworks standard Technology and Engineering 1.3 for Grades PreK-2.  This standard requires students to identify and describe the safe and proper use of tools and materials (e.g. glue, scissors, tape, ruler, paper, toothpicks, straws, spools) to construct simple structures. Therefore, we decided to have our students create a miniature model of the butterfly life cycle about of pasta requiring them to use glue. We also had the students arrange six stages of the butterfly life cycle in order which required them to cut the six paper squares/illustrations out, place them in order and pasted them to a folder. All of the students did an excellent job holding the scissors correctly (safely), pasting properly and gluing efficiently. The students seem to have a strong understanding of scissors, glue, glue sticks and paper and are all able to handle and properly use the materials; thus I feel that they will be able to proceed to the more intensive engineering design process that we learned about in class. 

      The Engineering Design Process that we discussed in class last week is an eight step design that involves, identifying a need or problem, researching the need or problem, developing possible solutions, selecting the best possible solution, constructing a prototype, testing and evaluating the solution, communicating the solution and redesigning the solution and prototype as necessary. 

     I am rather sad that this Monday is our last lesson with the students =(. It will also be interesting to see what questions the students have for us because we took the butterflies out of their classroom after they left on Monday. 

Butterfly Fun!!

For the first half of our lesson the kids were the most excited/rambunctious we have seen them yet; but all in all I would have to say that our lesson went well. We did much better this week with time management and we were able to complete all of the activities that we had intended to without running over into recess or specials.  We were also able to incorporate another short video (about the emerging butterfly) into our lesson this week which the children love and constantly ask us to show more of. Unfortunately with the way the class is designed, it is very hard to find a wall to project a video onto; as a result, we have the students sit in a close semi-circle around a laptop. Although the kids aren’t phased by it, their close proximity to each other tends to make them a little more chatty than usual which tends to make it more challenging for us to explain what is going on and to have the students watch for certain things. From our helpful feedback from our lesson, we realize that if we show this video or another like it in the future, it would be helpful to show the movie twice and to pose questions for the students to watch for previous to watching the video.

We also took a risk this week and asked the students to write about two things they saw in the video. This can be challenging for young students because they have to think back about what they say and then explain this in writing. As a whole, the class is very slow at writing and often needs to be further prompted to complete writing tasks. In past weeks we have written the beginning of sentences (or cloze sentences) on the board for them and had them complete the sentence based on their observations. For example, one week we wrote “I see __________ head capsules” on the board to help prompt students to write about the head capsules which we were learning about. We also wrote something like “My caterpillar looks like it is_____________” . For this lesson however, we left it open to the students to see what they could come up with on their own. We made sure walk around and assist students who appeared to be stuck or struggling with the activity. All in all, however, the students do seem to be doing better with their writing, several of them were able to write complete sentences about what they saw with proper capitalization with very minimal if any assistance. 

Over the weekend, Mia and I created a large 3-D model of a butterfly to help us develop an interactive lesson to teach the students about the different parts of the butterfly. We told the students that the butterfly came in pieces and that we needed their help putting it together by following the clues that were with it. Each group was given 2 pieces (body parts) of the butterfly and had to decide if they thought they had the part that the clue was describing. After we read the clue aloud groups would raise their hands if they believe they had the right piece, if there was more than one group that thought they had the correct piece we would read additional clues to help them decide which piece was correct. After each piece was added we had the students label the body part on their worksheets. The students seemed to really enjoy this part of the lesson and now they have a large 3-D model of a butterfly with labeled body parts hanging in the room to help them remember what they learned this week. We wanted to have the students name the butterfly but we did unfortunately run out of time for that.

Overall, the lesson was a lot of fun and I can’t wait for next week!

           

Chrysalis/Pupa!!

The students were extra excited and anxious during our lesson this week but they still managed to do a great job! Although we tend to introduce lots of new vocabulary each week, this week we seemed to have even more than usual. Since we had so many words to review and so many more new words to teach decided to start our lesson by reviewing words that we presented in our previous lesson before moving on.  I have to admit that I was completely blown away by how much the students remembered. They also did a good job learning the new vocabulary from this week which I felt were rather challenging words and concepts to comprehend. Things like an "exoskeleton" and the process of "molting" can seem very odd and abstract to young children.  To try to make challenging vocabulary more understandable for the students and more fun for them to learn, we decided to create a game using cards and manila folders. We made three cards for each of the seven new words that we taught. One card featured the vocabulary word, the second card featured the definition or a description of the word and the third card featured an image or picture of the word. The object of the game was to have the students match each vocabulary words with it's correct definition and correlating picture. Just having learned these new words most of the groups seemed to do pretty well with the activity; unfortunately, we did ran out of time at the end of our lesson so we will go over all of the words, definitions and pictures with the students next week. We will also have the students add these words to our portable word wall during our review next week.
       The flow of our class went well this week. I would not say that it was our best flowing class but by no means was it bad. As I mentioned before, the students were extra excited to begin with this week and then to boot, this was the first week that we incorporated videos in our lesson. (The kids loved watching the videos and wanted to see more.) As a result the kids became even more excited which became obvious in their transitions from their desks to the circle area and vise versa. This however, was a great learning experience for me and will help me think to remind the students about the expectations we (or the teacher) have regarding good behavior. In future lessons, we will know and be able to keep in mind how excited the students get about videos and will address the expectations that are to upkeep during transitions and viewing periods before making any moves. Even with the students' elevated excitement levels, I would have to say that the lesson went well overall.
     One of the things that we were asked to address in our lesson on Monday was a common misconception that students (people in general) have in relation to caterpillars and chrysalis - or the butterfly life cycle in general. The misconception that we decided would be important to clarify in our lesson is that fact that not all caterpillars form cocoons. The truth is that caterpillars only form a cocoon if it is going to become a moth. Caterpillars that become butterflies form a chrysalis (or pupa). Ironically and rather fittingly, most of the students made comments about the caterpillars forming cocoons which lead us right into our explanation/clarification of the misconception. We took this time to explain to the students that what they  observed  was actually called a chrysalis which is a protective shell that is hard and smooth and explained that a cocoon is actually soft and fuzzy. Most of the students seemed to come in to this lesson with the misconception that all caterpillars created cocoons and seemed to leave the class with a notion that some caterpillars (like theirs) can create a chrysalis instead. I can't what to see how excited the students get over the butterflies!

Caterpillar Excitement!!

      After a long week of waiting and anticipation, our caterpillars were still caterpillars for our lesson on Monday which was great news!! Somehow Mia and I were able to keep the caterpillars a secret from the kids until our lesson this week so the kids were super excited about them! Before letting the students observe that caterpillars however, we first had them guess what our mystery insect. The kids listened to the six clues that we gave them about the "mystery insect" and then came up with several great guesses about the insects the we were explaining. Throughout the beginning of the lesson the students were quietly asking us one-by-one if  was had lives insects (caterpillars) in the room for them. We told them that we would soon find out but we would have to wait just a little while longer. This seemed to really build the students excitement and anticipation.   

       In addition to the caterpillars, there were several other factors that could have impacted the atmosphere of our classroom and could have created a need for effective classroom management strategies: the students had six days off, went back to school for a day and then had another two days off leading up to our lesson; their was a substitute in our classroom and it was the morning after the students celebrated Halloween (went trick or treating). Despite these several factors, however, I felt that the students did a great job focusing and maintaining their attention on the task at hand. There were only a few times in which we were required to use the "1.2.3. All eyes on my" approach. Over the past few weeks we have found that the students respond well to this approach. We also asked the students follow/conduct a few minor motor tasks (physical movements) to regain their attention and to make sure that they were listening. (For example, we asked the students to put both of their hand high in the air if they were done with their journal entries.) Overall, I was very impressed with the way that the students handled themselves and controlled their excitement throughout the lesson. 

        In terms of our actual lesson planning and presentation this week, we quickly realized that we had over planned and created more than the students would be able to complete in the hour. As a result, we decided to improvise as we went along. Although we normally conclude our lesson with a summary and word wall presentation in the circle area of the room, we decided to improvise and skip this portion of our lesson. However, this did not mean that we completely skipped or canned our lesson conclusion we just concluded the lesson in a different way than originally intended. Since we used a K and a W chart to introduce the lesson, we decided to conclude the overall lesson with the L "what we learned" portion of the K-W-L chart. This appeared to be very effective, the students volunteers several things that they had learned from the lesson. (As the teacher, this was great to see and made me feel as though our lesson was successful even though we improvised.)  Where we skipped the word wall activity and the reviewing of the Caterpillar body parts on the large poster board, we realized that this will be a great way to start next weeks lesson.

 The process skill that we incorporated in this week lesson was observation. We asked the students to observe their caterpillars by properly using hand lenses (which we previously taught) and encouraged them to record their observations in their Science Journals by making a drawing and writing at least on description sentence about what they observed. We also left the student with the task of observing their Caterpillars and recording daily detailed observations in their Science Journals. We tried to encourage the students to record as much detail in their observations because we weren't going to be able to see the caterpillars all week and we wanted to know what they did. I am hopeful that this approach was influential to the students and encouraged them to make detailed observations throughout the week. I am very interested to see how/what they did!    

Great Detective Work!

          I was so nervous for our lesson this week! We wanted to incorporate a lesson that allowed the students to practice using hand lenses while also incorporating an introduction to life cycles  After a while of thinking, we finally came up with this great idea to have the 2nd graders become detectives helping us find our friends "Annie Acorn" and "Eddy Egg" that had gone missing. The idea seemed like it would be a fun way for the students to work on the process skill of observation by learning to manipulate the hand lens while also exploring the life cycle of plants and animals (all of which are in the second grade curriculum frameworks).


       
           Since we were incorporating multiple objectives, this lesson had a lot going on and as a result, required a lot of planning and preparation on our part. I would have to say that the materials management was half our battle with this lesson. Both lifecycles had four clues for each of  the students to examine and record into their booklets, as well as a physical acorn and egg (waterbead) for the students to manipulate and examine which meant that Mia and I had to keep track of all the objects, clues, and booklets for both mystery cases and figure out a way to manage the materials so that we would not loose (or waste) valuable teaching time. Overall, I would have to say that the lesson progressed rather smoothly and that we were able to manage the large number of materials that we had very well! Although it was a little nerve wracking at first, the process and the materials management become easier as the lesson progressed.
        

           The second half of the battle was promoting and maintaining student engagement in the lesson. Fortunately, this way very easy. By developing a mystery for the students to solve and by introducing the lesson to the students as a mystery that we needed their help to solve, the students were very interested and as a result were engaged in the lesson from the beginning. Since there was so much going on and so many new things for the kids to look at throughout the lesson, the students seemed to maintain their interest and excitement for the entire hour. They also enjoyed solving the mystery and made excellent, rational connections as to why we could not find our friends "Eddy Egg" and "Annie Acorn"

  This lesson was very exciting for me because it was rather challenging and thought provoking to create. It was also amazing to see that the students really seemed to enjoy the lesson that we had created! Throughout the lesson the students appeared to be having a lot of fun acting as detectives; they also appeared to enjoy reading the miniature clues with the hand lenses. In addition to learning how to manipulate the lenses they also seemed to learn a lot about the lifecycle of the tree and the lifecycle of the frog (the two cycles we incorporated) which was very exciting and rewarding for us! All of the planning and preparing was well worth it to see the students excitement and engagement in science! As crazy and involved as it was, our lesson plan actually worked!  We cannot wait to bring in our mystery insects next week for the students to examine. They are going to be so excited!

First Day!

      Monday was our first day teaching science to the second graders. The kids were absolutely amazing and remained engaged  throughout the entire mystery bag lesson!  I personally feel that my co-teacher and I worked very well together both creating and presenting the lesson as a team and I  am very happy/pleased  with our teamwork. Working together is making this learning experience very enjoyable for me. I feel that it is also teaching more than I would have learned working on my own. Having someone to bounce ideas off of has allowed us to create more creative and effective lessons than we would have designed independently (at least this is true in my case, I cannot speak for my co-teacher).
     In regards to lesson planning, I like the standard lesson plan format that the university has created and feel that planning lessons with this template will help us become stronger lesson planners in the future. Planning our first lesson took us a little while to do but I am hopeful that as we continue to create more and more lessons, the process will become much quicker and easier to do. Also, now that we have had the opportunity to have others review our lesson plan and provide us with feedback has aided us in thinking more critically about lesson planning which I believe will help us drastically with future lessons. (We now know which areas to provide more detail and which areas do not require as much detail.)
      I also like how the science lesson plan incorporates safety considerations. As we know, science experiments and lessons can sometimes get messy and can contain harmful materials As a result, I feel that the safety section of the lesson plan is one of the most important aspects to consider. Our lesson this week did not contain any harmful chemicals or materials but we still had considerations to make. We did not want children attempting to eat or mouth any of the materials in the mystery bags and we didn't want students sticking any objects in their eyes or ears. We also made sure that the  materials that we placed in the mystery bags were things that the students in the class would not be allergic to. Similarly were made sure that we did not put anything sharp or breakable in the bag that could have the students during the "touch" phase of the lesson. Although we made several considerations for safety concerns, we unfortunately encounters one thing that we did not foresee happening, one of the boys in the class was not sure if he poked himself in the eye with the bag or if his eye was just itchy from touching the bag and rubbing his eye. Fortunately, the boy was okay and returned to the class after a quick visit to the nurse and was ready/excited to finish working on the lesson. Aside from this occurrence, the students engaged in the lesson rather safely and the considerations we made appeared to be beneficial. The incident with the boy  is a helpful learning experience for us and will help us make even more effective safety considerations in the future.
Overall, I feel that our first lesson was a success and has instilled an excitement in us as well as the students for our future lessons! I cannot wait for next week!