Coming to an end.....

Another successful lesson down and one more too go (sadly)! During the lesson this week, it was a big wrap up of the life cycle of a butterfly. The lesson on Monday was very engaging, educational and fun! All of the students seemed to really enjoy it as well. The lesson was based upon the life cycle of a butterfly and the student's got to make a model... out of pasta! This activity went over very well and it surprisingly connected to "engineering and technology."

In order to make the activity connect to engineering and technology we mainly focused on the use of glue, scissors and other basic classroom tools. I realized that it is very difficult to connect all activities with engineering, so as a teacher you want to choose certain activities that concentrate almost specifically on engineering and technology.



After each student made their own model of the life cycle, we then played a Brain Pop video about a butterfly's life cycle. The student's really enjoyed this video and it gave them a better understanding of the concept. It was a great summarizing tool to present to the students as well as providing great visuals!

Overall the lesson went very well... again! Success! Unfortunately next Monday is our last day with the second grade students... the students are very sad about this; as are we!

Butterflies!!

So for the lesson today, Katelyn and I were hoping that our caterpillars would be butterflies… but of course not ONE of them was a butterfly yet. Luckily we have AWESOME classmates/friends, who let us borrow one of their flight cages for the beginning of our lesson (thank you Alisha S. and Lindsay)!! Now that is what you call teamwork! So for today’s lesson we were focusing on the use of technology and writing in science. Overall our lesson went great and the students enjoyed it!

Personally I LOVE using technology, no matter what subject area is, the only problem Katelyn and I have is that our classroom does not have ONE piece of technology (not even an overhead.) This makes it very hard for us to show worksheets to the entire class or show pictures/diagrams. Instead we draw the diagram on the whiteboard for all the students to see. So for today we needed to include technology, therefore we used a computer. On the computer we showed the students a slideshow called “All About a Butterfly’s Life.” The students were split up into groups and we did learning centers, and the computer was one of them.

As for writing in science, this is a feature we always include in our lessons. No matter what the lesson, the students are always doing a writing portion. For today’s at the end of the lesson, the students were to write about “if you were a butterfly, what would you spend your day doing?” This question was one of our key questions and also went along with the slideshow they seen prior. This made it easier for them to recall information they just learned and to review. Before having them write on their own however, we always have them up at the carpet and we go over the question they will be writing about. We also have students give some ideas of what you could write about and we write them on the whiteboard. We also demonstrate how to properly start the sentence, because many second graders need reminders.

Overall our lesson went very well. It was the first time we have conducted learning centers and they went smoothly. One was the slideshow as I mentioned and the other was an observation center, where the students observed the butterflies. Students were amazed by the butterflies and learned about their parts and what they do in a day!

4th Lesson - Molting!

This was our 4^th lesson that we taught, and we focused on “molting,” which the students seemed to have a good grasp on. Throughout the lesson we were to concentrate on the flow of the lesson, common misconceptions and content vocabulary.

Katelyn and I are a great team and we really work well with one another, so the flow of the lesson is never an issue for us. For this particular day, the flow went very smoothly like usual. The students do a great job transitioning from the carpet area to their caterpillars to their desks. With the students already being trained on good classroom behavior, of course this makes the flow of the lesson go a bit smoother. Having good classroom management will increase this flow.

For the misconceptions, we chose a couple to cover with the students. The first misconception was that a caterpillar has skin like humans. So we made sure to inform the students that although some people may call it “skin” it is actually an exoskeleton, or an external skeleton which is rigid and not soft like our own skin. The students seemed to understand this. The other misconception we talked about was that some people may confuse the caterpillars “head capsules” to their “frass,” or waste. We were sure to explain to the students that the head capsules are the small black circles and the frass is actually almost the same color as the food except rolled into a small ball. For their observation worksheets we had them count the head capsules and tell us how much frass there was, just to see their understandings of the difference between the two.

Finally we concentrated on content vocabulary, which is something we do in all of our lessons, as we make use of our word wall from day 1. Each week we introduce new vocabulary and place them up on the word wall which we review towards the end of the day and during each lesson. This week we actually did a vocabulary review game which included old words they learned about in our prior lessons and the words they just learned that day. We made the review game into Jeopardy, which the students loved! This was a great way to have the students work together in teams, to communicate with one another and review the vocabulary. The students did a great job with it! So again our lesson went very well and the students are enjoying every minute of it!

3rd Times a Charm.... *

On Monday Katelyn and I did our 3^rd lesson with the 2^nd grade kiddo’s! This lesson was a very exciting one, as this was the first time the students found out they were learning about caterpillars and were actually each getting a caterpillar of their own (actually 2 caterpillars!) You should have seen the look on the student’s faces when we said everyone was getting a caterpillar, firsthand! – Their mouths dropped (LITERALLY!) It was rather funny and of course they were so excited. The overall lesson went extremely well and the three areas we were concentrating on went great as well: classroom management, process skills and the lesson conclusion.

So far classroom management has not been an issue for us, and a lot of that has to do with the classroom teacher, as she has done a great job with management. The students for a big majority of the time are always listening and have their eyes on us, they transition from the rug to their seats quickly and quietly, they are very respectful to us and their peers and they hardly speak out of turn. Although their regular classroom teacher is not teaching at the time, the students still take what they have learned about classroom behavior towards Katelyn and I. Having a class that has been taught proper classroom behavior really makes it easier. However there are some times when students may speak out, but we just simply remind them to raise their hands. Also reminding them about proper transitioning (from the rug to their desks) occurs from time to time. As many, if not all teachers say, that classroom management is a HUGE part of teaching and for the first quarter to half of the school year, this is what you will be practicing with your students constantly.

When it comes process skills, in science they are particularly important. In this lesson plan, we focused mainly on observation. The students got to observe their caterpillars and write down their data. They were to observe the different parts of the caterpillar, the color, size, how they moved, what they ate and anything else they noticed or found interesting. The students also used hand lenses to “get a closer look,” at the caterpillars. Observation is always a great way to get students engaged and interested, especially if they have a living creature!

A lesson is never complete until the closing or conclusion. Lesson conclusions are very important, as it is a time where the students should come back together to share their thoughts and experiences. It is also a time for the teacher to review the activity and revisit the key question, in our lesson is was “what are the parts of a caterpillar?” The conclusion should be a time where the teacher observes what the students actually learned. It will give the teacher an idea of how much they learned and if there is something he/she needs to do in order to clarify the material. Just like in the lesson introductions, the lesson conclusions should be very engaging and should connect to the student’s lives. Reviewing what they have just learned and also introducing what they will be doing for the next related lesson.

I’d say this was one of our best lessons so far; perhaps because of the caterpillars or maybe because we have become more experienced as teachers and learn from our mistakes. Below is part of the last activity the 2nd grade students helped create! (Each student got a circle and wrote one fact they learned about caterpillars - Katelyn and I displayed it after the lesson was through.)