Internship Blog Portfolio #4

Internship Blog Portfolio #4

4. Content Knowledge - The teacher uses content area knowledge, learning standards, appropriate pedagogy and resources to design and deliver curricula and instruction to impact student learning.

4.4 Designing Coherent Instruction in the area of Lesson and Unit Structure

The lesson or unit has a clearly defined structure around which activities are organized. Progression of activities is even, with reasonable time allocations.

Designing a coherent lesson plan depends heavily on clear learning targets and well organized student activities. Along with this, during internship, I have come to understand that appropriate pedagogy focused instruction involves numerous opportunities for high student engagement and positive student learning outcomes. 

For example, my mentor teacher has demonstrated a method of writing a lesson plan that starts with specific learning targets and ends with a recap of these objectives.  Sometimes, the instruction is unable to cover all of the originally presented classroom objectives.  The recap allows for students and the teacher to get a clear understanding of what was covered and what needs to be looked at again in the future.  As I put together my own lessons, I keep these learning objectives in mind and try to place a time frame for each activity that supports these goals, ending with a five minute period for returning to the “focus questions” presented at the start of class.

During my third trimester of teaching, middle school students I knew that I needed to start a unit that would get my students excited about science and at the same time cover the life science curriculum that fits my content objectives for this year. To do this, I assigned small groups of students specific organ systems and began calling them my the doctors title that specializes in this region of the body (i.e. neurologist).  I used a number of interactive activities that allowed students to not only research their assigned system but to find the interconnections between organ systems.  We concluded with organ system posters covered in sticky notes that each group used to write the connection of their body system to the others. I used this engaging group work method to move my class of academically burnt out middle schoolers to become actively participating learners.

The image shows the organ system posters both before and after the activity. An interesting feature of this example is that the students spent two class periods, 1 researching their own organ systems and the other researching the connections of their organ systems to the whole.   The learning target where met in an organized fashion allowing students to use of group-learning to make connections to the world through human system interactions. This activity also provided information so I could strategically plan the next lesson, where which I will allow students the opportunity to demonstrate their organ system knowledge through identifying symptoms that indicate a diseased state in a given body part.

Organ system board following research and connections.

Instructions for students of what to include on the sticky notes.

Focus Question, learning target

Organ System Posters prior to group additions.

Through this experience, I learned that it is important to get students moving (literally) and to get content specific objectives through student research and group discussion.  Both of these activities are necessary for improving achievement. 

A next step for me would be to incorporate some specific student presentation and demonstration of knowledge acquisition into the lesson plan.  This would allow me to formally assess that appropriate learning targets were met.  I could also add a student self-reflection of learning target understanding.  This might be even more important as this was a group activity and

Reference
Delta Education. Foss Science Resource, Human System Interactions. 2016