Clinical Science Lesson

This past Wednesday I completed my science lesson in my clinical placement. I am in a First Grade classroom at Benjamin Elementary School. I have been a little disappointed by how my cooperating teacher conducts science. I absolutely love my cooperating teacher and think she does an amazing job in the classroom. However, when it comes to science she kind of drops the ball. She scheduled science at the end of the day, which is when the children are the most out of control. That doesn’t bother me too much because I think that if done correctly science can be a time when children are very engaged. My biggest problem with having science at the end of the day is that it often gets shortened or completely canceled if another subject takes up too much time. When I told her how much I love teaching science she decided to let me create the next unit, which was centered on animal adaptations and life cycles. She told me to plan eight lessons for two weeks. I put so much work into the lessons and they often were cut short or canceled and bumped to the next day. I think when I have my own classroom I will make sure I respect the schedule more to ensure that no subject gets less attention.

On the day of my lesson I was worried that I would get less than the already short 25 minutes for science. Unfortunately I was right. We started eight minutes late because math took too long. Also my cooperating teacher had not finished the lesson from the day before and I did not want to leave that lesson without closure so I had to take the first couple minutes to wrap it up. I was left with so many great pieces and not nearly enough time to finish them. We ended up not having time for the final piece of the lesson, the evaluation. My cooperating teacher told me she would carry it over into the next day. This also threw me off because I was so worried about time that I was not fully engaged in the lesson. Aside from that, my cooperating teacher and I agree that the lesson went very well and I had many strengths.

One of the things I did well on was giving the students guidelines so they knew exactly how to act. Every time there was a transition I made sure all the directions were clear before they started moving; where they were going, what their voice level should be at, and what they were doing when they got there. They responded well to the clear directions. I was also able to praise one student with a ‘Bear Buck’ for following directions. Another thing my cooperating teacher noticed that I did well was redirecting students to reinforce our classroom rules. One boy called out in the middle of class, which is disruptive, but I hate correcting it because he usually has something very wise to say. However I know that I need to be consistent with all of my students so I told him that if he had something to say he needed to raise his had because I was still talking. There is another student who gets easily distracted and was playing with something at her desk. I did not want to make a big deal out of it so I called her name to get her attention and held up a hand to show her to stop what she was doing. This nonverbal redirection was good to use with her because she gets in trouble so frequently she does not need to be called out verbally every time. Additionally my cooperating teacher noted that the lesson got the children up and moving which is great after sitting still for a read aloud. I also did this because they have so much energy at the end of the day. During that time I was very worried because each group was working together and I was not able to facilitate every group. I thought it was chaotic but they did what they needed to do. I told my cooperating teacher after the lesson was over that I felt that it was a little chaotic and she completely disagreed with me. She was the perfect outside opinion to tell me that it went better than I thought.

There were a couple areas for improvement that my cooperating teacher noted. The book we read on the carpet was about food chains and food webs but we were only learning about food chains. I knew there wouldn’t be enough time to cover both. While on the carpet one of the boys asked what a food web was. I told him that we would find out in the book, which I knew was not true because we were not going to read that far into the book. I think I responded this way because I was still worried about time. Then when I got to the stopping part in the book I never addressed the boy’s question about food webs. My cooperating teacher suggested that I could have just showed him the page in the book and gave a brief description or told him he could read the rest during Read to Self time. I did not show him the page because I knew the read aloud could not take up any more time. I thought for a brief second of telling the students the book would be put in the “Books We’ve Read” bin so they could read it later but I did not want to make that call without talking to my cooperating teacher first. In order to make sure that does not happen again I will have to make a conscious effort to engage the students’ curiosity when it comes up. Another area for improvement was that during one of the attention getters the students did not respond to it as well as they should. Instead of doing it again I just kept moving with the lesson. I need to make sure that I am reinforcing the class rules and attention getter is one of those rules. Now every time I do the attention getter I wait to see if the response is good enough to keep going. 

Overall I was very proud of my science lesson. I love teaching science and I know that when I have my own classroom I will make sure that every lesson gets the time it deserves. As I continue working in this placement I hope to learn to be more flexible and continue to make science fun and engaging.

Clinical Lesson Exceeds: 

I made the materials durable by laminating them and gave the to my cooperating teacher for her to use in future years.

I also added additional resources to the lesson plan.