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!

Ahh they are letting me teach?!

       I am so excited to have the opportunity to teach the adorable second graders about science! Even more exciting is the fact that we are teaching them about butterflies; a very interesting and intriguing topic for young children! (And often adults for that matter.) I am excited to learn about the metamorphoses of caterpillars to butterflies and to experience this remarkable event with young eager learners/scientists.
       I am also very excited to be co-teaching the lesson with the wonderful Mia. I think that the co-teaching will provide us (or at least me) with an even more exhilarating and meaningful experience. I am excited that we are going to be creating our own lessons for an entire unit of content and for the first time are going to be acting out each lesson in a "real" classroom. Working in a real classroom will allow us to gain realistic feedback from both the teacher and the students which is something we have not experienced thus far in the program. I am anxious and  nervous, at the same time, to see what the pros and cons will be of each lesson. I am also thrilled to be working with such an experienced teacher who can help guide us if necessary (hopefully it will not be) and can help us improve our teaching strategies, ultimately allowing us to become better teachers in the future.
       Although I am super excited to be teaching the second-graders about caterpillars and butterflies I am utterly petrified that I will fail the students by providing them with a poor learning experience. I am scared that the lesson plans that we create will not be effective and that the students will not gain a full understanding of the life cycle of the butterfly; thus missing out on one of the most exciting activities they will be thought in elementary science. I am also scared of deterring the students away from the field science by loosing their attention and by making science boring for them. Hopefully, we will be able to keep the students interested and involved throughout the entire unit. Lastly, I am very concerned about classroom management. I feel that this may be one of my weakest areas, if nothing else than from lack of experience, but I am hoping that the co-teaching approach that we are going to be using will allow us to manage the classroom smoothly and provide an exciting learning experience for all of the students.Although this is experience is very new and somewhat intimidating, I feel that it is going to be an amazing experience and I can't wait to start!