Lesson Reflection
The lesson that I decided to create focused on one main question, “ Does the weather change on a daily basis?” In order to answer that question we will conduct an experiment. For four days we will take the temperature in the morning and in the afternoon. After we have done that we will discuss our findings read a chapter in our science book that will give us more information on that topic. We will end the lesson with a worksheet to assess how much the students understand from the lesson.
I was not able to teach this lesson to my students this week, because we were on Spring Break. I decided to teach it to my nieces and nephews this week and when I go back to school next week I will teach it to my students. I think that will be a benefit for my students, because I did see some things in my lesson that I would like to change and my nieces and nephews get the benefit of a free science lesson.
I started the lesson out with the question that I mentioned earlier. I used that question as a 'hook' to get them thinking about what we would be learning in the lesson. That seemed to work well, because they were curious and interested to find out what the temperature would be. It was fun to see them so interested in the lesson. I hope that my class will react the same way.
I had them form a hypothesis and they all thought the same thing. They all agreed that the weather would be cooler in the morning and warmer in the afternoon, so they were not surprised by the results at all. The lesson was more confirmation inquiry, because they basically already knew the results before we completed the experiment (Banchi & Bell, 2008) I think that when I teach this lessons in my classroom all of my students will not agree on the same hypothesis. I think that it will be more of a structured inquiry lesson (Banchi & Bell, 2008). I actually would like it if they have different answers to the question, because I feel that they will be more interested with this particular experiment if they have different thoughts on what the results will be. Overall I feel that the lesson accomplished what I wanted it to.
I taught this lesson with children who were not all in the same grade, so I received various types of answers. For example my nephew who is in 5th grade gave me a more in depth answer than my niece in 2nd grade. One of the questions on the worksheet has 3 pictures with the time of day and the temperature during that time. Then the students are asked to write about how the temperature changed in the pictures. My nephew in 5th grade answered by saying exactly how much each temperature changed in each picture, but my niece in 2nd grade just answered that it became warmer throughout the day. I would expect to see more answers like my nieces when I have my students complete this worksheet, because that is more of their level. By looking at the worksheets that my nieces and nephews completed I could see that they all understood the lesson and that they had proven that their original hypothesis was correct.
I feel that my nieces and nephews were positively impacted by this lesson. They understood the concepts that I was trying to teach them, which is shown by the assessment that I gave them. I feel that, because this lesson is inquiry based it will also help them become more scientifically literate individuals.
I will make a few changes to my lesson when I implement this in my classroom. I will make sure that I take the temperature at the same time each morning and each afternoon. I will also make sure that we take the temperature at the same location each day . I would like to also make sure that the location that we choose to take the temperature is in the shade, so the sun does not shine on the thermometer and skew the results. Overall I think that this lesson went very well and I think that my students will really enjoy it when they get a chance to do it.
References
Banchi, H., & Bell, R. (2008). The many levels of inquiry. Science and Children, 46(2), 26–29.
