Post-Lesson

1. Instructional Decisions/Teaching

When putting this lesson together, I realized that you must look at the whole picture.  Understanding what the objective will be is looking at the whole process of the lesson: The engagement of the students, the ability of working with partners and/or groups, and if they will be able to transition to working on their own. 

Understanding the outcome or goals helps to maintain consistency of the lesson.  I can see how easy it would be to veer off course with this lesson, but if the goals are clearly defined and the lesson well planned, then it will stay on course.  The students stay engaged and meet the goals by doing lots of hands on activities. Each student will have a science journal that they can write their observations. While actively experimenting with how water evaporates and sweat test with the teacher and their peers, students gain a more deeper understanding of the lesson and thus meeting the objective.  

Students who need more support will work with the teacher or a responsible peer.  When writing the observation, if students struggle with writing or reading, pictures can be used to illustrate what they think.  The teacher or responsible peer can then be a scribe if needed.  

2. Assessment

Success of the lesson will be determined through the assessment.  The type of assessment will be an informal assessment.  As students work together and independently, the teacher can be walking around checking for understanding.  With the outside experiments, the teacher can walk around and ask higher level questions about what they are observing: What is happening? Why? How will this help animals survive?

When the students create their own animals that reflect how they have adapted to environment, they will be able to use the strategies that they have learned from their experiments and from the lessons that the class has learned.  The students who do not understand will have already been identified from past lessons and will receive more modeling from the teacher. 

The tech used in this lesson will also be a big portion of their informal assessment.  They will have to categorize the different traits that different animals have adapted to survive in their environments.  This will also help the students as they create their own animal.