Lesson Teaching Reflective Summary

Teacher Candidate for Science Endorsement: Janice Belcher

School: Dowell Elementary

Grade: Fifth

Lesson Topic: Erosion-Lesson 5

Write a brief summary or blog of your experiences teaching this lesson,
addressing the following questions:

What went well? What did not go well?

The students really enjoyed being a part of the engineering design process
and were motivated by the design task, budget, constraints, and real-world
aspects of this task. They also enjoyed meeting as a group and sharing their
individual designs. From that, they created the best possible group design,
which they were then able to build. Most of all, the students loved working
hands on with a wide range of materials to help create an effective erosion
control.

How well were the lessons student performance objectives attained?

Students learned that the size and shape of soil particles influences erosion
patterns. They also observed that the amount of slope changes erosion. The
slopes impact on the rate of erosion was the main learning. Methods of
gathering and measuring the run-off were introduced. Accurate recording of
data on charts improved on this day.
.

Did classroom activity center on science understanding, inquiry, and

sense-making by all students?

Teaching students to communicate their results in our evaluation phase is

also hard because students lack extensive experience expressing their ideas
in writing. Oral discussion of the success, or deficiencies, of designs while
using the newer vocabulary is a challenge. Assessing, evaluating, and
organizing thoughts in a written format requires a great deal of support from
the teacher.

Did your scientific content knowledge enable you to support students

construction of knowledge and understanding of important scientific
concepts and processes?

Collaboration, listening, and problem-solving skills were enhanced. All teams

demonstrated an improved level of cooperation over the first design task
(different team members). Sketching on whiteboards promoted better
communication. Students were challenged by using the science concepts
and vocabulary in the explanation. Preparing the material reinforced
knowledge of the terms and concepts.

When you have the opportunity to re-teach this lesson, what will you
do differently (strategies, teaching tools, assessments, etc.) to improve
student learning for all students?

In the future, I would like to have a better, more thorough introduction with
the engineering design process and process skills. We reviewed the skills as
we went, but I think having the prior knowledge before starting our own
engineering design process would have better prepared the students to think
and act like engineers. Also, I would like to have sketching lessons before
starting our design process to further enhance the students planning and
preparation. I think this would make for a better individual design, group
discussion, and final group design. When implementing this task again, I
would set aside time for a redesign after we had tested each original group
design. We talked about what worked and what didnt work as we tested the
designs, and the students even reflected what they would have done
differently or the same. However, I think giving the students a day or two to
sketch another group design and even letting each group create another
design based on their original design, I think it would have led to even better
understanding and mastery of the engineering design process.