My Fieldwork Experience: Science teaching and Me!

Science Teaching and Me! 

My group, Group 4, finally got to teach our lessons about week ago. I was very nervous and excited about teaching to the whole fourth-grade class in front of all of my colleagues, but I felt more at ease in the moment. Planning is key when it comes to making a successful lesson plan. In our direct instruction, I believe we planed the content well, we planned for behavior management well, but we did not plan for hiccups. What I mean is we didn't plan for the unexpected to happen. To begin, we did not plan for our powerpoint to freeze. Bishop Dun did not have Google Chome on the computer, so when we opened our Google Slides on Firefox, it did not work. When we then converted the slideshow into a Powerpoint presentation, the formatting was off and some pictures overlapped the words. We also made the mistake of not double and triple checking our note sheets before printing them out. Some of the things we wanted the students to fill out were on the sheet twice and others were missing. Though this was just as confusing for us as it was for the students, I believe we were able to work through the situation effectively and the students were able to follow along in the end. Also, despite having a great plan for behavior management, our implementation of it was lacking. We had planned to do a Students vs. Teachers game where everytime the teachers noticed the students being good, the students would get a star. In contrast, when the students were not following the directions, the teachers would earn a star. In Behavior Management, I had learned that it is very important to not take away things that the students have earned as punishment. It is far more effective to use reinforcement both positive, giving the students a star, and negative, not giving the teachers a star if the students behave. There were several times that the teachers should have earned a star because the students were too loud or were having side conversations. During our direct instruction, we never gave the teachers a star and we gave the students three. I feel like at times we did not give the teachers a star because we just wanted to get the students back on track and continue with the lesson. When the students were too loud, we would say our chant "hands on top everybody stop" and the students were meant to put their hands on their heads and stop everything they were doing. Since the students would respond to this chant every time we used it, it was hard to decide which behavior should be focused on. Other times when we did not give the students a star, there was disagreement among the teachers if it was necessary or not and times when a teacher was ready to give a star, but another had already moved on. So in reality, our Students vs. Teachers game despite being well thought out, needed to be rehearsed more to be effective in practice. Time management was also another area that we could have improved upon. We had to skip the section on the Mars Rover and shorten our Jeopardy Game to fit in our independent practice. In the end, I suppose it is better to have more planned than you can get to rather than not enough to fill the time. However, if we had anticipated the amount of question the students were going to have a bit better, then our lesson would have been that much stronger. 
Our inquiry lesson took a lot more planning than we thought it was going to. We found it very hard to decide on a lesson that would pose a question to the students to get them to use the scientific method while incorporating technology somehow. We wanted something that was different from the other groups' that was also a hands-on, exciting way for the students to discover the material for themselves. Eventually, Nessiah came across an idea to have the children act as the different pieces of technology to explore a new planet. The students would use telescopes with blue cellophane at the end representing Earth-bound telescopes, telescopes with the blue cellophane removed representing space telescopes, and then use their hands to explore representing rovers. We modified this idea to better fit the inquiry model by making the planet Neptune, instead of a new planet, and having the students use careful observations and clues to come to this conclusion. Once we had our concept sorted out, the ideas started to flow a bit easier and our plan seemed to fall into place. I felt that our inquiry lesson went well when we taught the class because of our planning. The students seemed to really enjoy being able to explore the planets using different means to match what they saw with clues that we provided about the characteristics of the planets. The question of the lesson was "what planet in the universe is Buzz Lightyear on?" Almost 100% of the students eventually got to the answer that the planet was in fact, Neptune. It was interesting to see how their hypotheses changed over the course of their exploration. Some students had changed their minds once they started to get the clues, while others were confirming their hypotheses with them. The students had great reasoning behind their initial hypotheses and their conclusions at the end. Once again, our behavior management technique could have been implemented more frequently. The students had to be told many times to leave the telescopes on their desks until they needed them. I felt that it was harder to implement the Students vs Teacher game being in groups, especially since my group was all the way in the back of the room. I think if we were to do this lesson again we would definitely need to have individual Students vs Teachers games for each group. I would also like to find a way to have the groups be able to separate a bit more. Having two groups at each table was convenient in setting up the planets because it allowed us to use fewer materials, but at times having the two groups so close caused a bit of a challenge. Sometimes it was hard to have the groups share because my group and Allie's would be talking at the same time, making it harder to hear their ideas. However, the groups were able to collaborate amongst each other a bit more being close in proximity than if they were spread across the room. 

Working as a group on a lesson plan was certainly an experience that I will never forget. There are always challenges when working with a group. Everyone wants their ideas heard and to make sure everyone shares the workload. I believe my group was successful in both of these aspects. I believe we all put in a great deal of effort in both of our lessons. I think this group has been one of the most collaborative groups I have worked in. At times it was almost like a puzzle, I had the answer to one piece, Allie or Alisha had it for another, and Nessiah had the final piece that brought it all together. It was certainly helpful to call Dr. Smirnova on FaceTime as well. We were struggling to find that last piece of our inquiry lesson. We did not know how we would reveal the correct planet to the students. After some time, we decided to have QR codes that gave facts about the planets that the students could match their finding with. If the students were still incorrect at that stage, we had planned one last piece of evidence that would help prove or disprove their hypothesis. This last piece of evidence was atmosphere composition. Though the students could not see what the atmosphere was made of, we were going to tell them Pandora of Star Command had made a new discovery and we would have supplied them with the composition of their planet's atmosphere to match with the next clue sheet. 
The ultimate lesson I have to take away from our fieldwork time is to start planning super early to ensure everything goes the way it is supposed. That way, once everything is planned out, there is plenty of time to go back and double and triple check that everything that the students will see is correct. I also learned that it is very important to not be afraid to call the students out for misbehaving. Once the students are left to hold their side conversations for too long, they can start to think that is acceptable behavior and there is a slim chance of regaining complete control. I felt confident about the way I presented the material to the students. I felt that I talked loud enough for the students to hear me and that I had a pretty good knowledge about my topic. I did notice myself saying "guys" multiple times during the lesson. I was very mad at myself about that. I would often say "boys and girls" and "guys" in the same sentence. It is one of those things where you do not even realize you do it until you are made aware of it. Since "guys" is such a common phase in our vocabulary, it will be a tough habit to break.
I really enjoyed the experience of watching my colleagues teach. In many of our other methods classes, everyone has one or two students of their own to work with, so you never really get to see each other in action. I was really impressed by group two's lessons. They were very enthusiastic when teaching and I think the students really loved their topic. I also was very impressed by Astronaut Annie form group three! I thought that was a super creative idea to get the students engaged. Let me not forget group one. I felt that their group did an excellent job of covering an extreme amount of material in one lesson without making it feel overwhelming. Overall, I think all of the groups in our class should be proud of how they did.