Presenting our lesson

Today, we presented our first two lessons. It was hard because it is an after-school program and there were not a lot of students and students how to be recruited. Students were also coming in and out. Being the first group there were some things that could have gone better but also getting 6 days to complete 2 lessons one 30 minutes and the other an hour was unfair. For the direct lesson, we started it 15 minutes later than we were supposed to so that put a time crunch on the lesson. I felt we were rushed and so did my teammates. I thought the lesson was thought out and presented to the best of our ability. Hearing classmates feedback and device was helpful. We also learned a lot of things we could have added to the lesson and things that could have been taken out. The inquiry lesson went really well and the students were engaged in the activity.  

For the direct lesson, we taught the students about combustion. We provided them with a powerpoint that was linked with pear deck and had words that were highlighted to write in their guided notes. Then we had the students complete a smart board activity. Since we were rushed for time, we had to cut our lesson short in order to complete everything we needed for our inquiry lesson.

For the inquiry lesson, we introduce the students to Firefighter Fred on Powtoon who needed the students’ help. Powtoon was a really amazing and fun resource to use and would love to use in my future classroom. Inquiry involves the students taking what they learned and solving a problem on their own or with other classmates. Firefighter Fred will welcome the students by saying, “Hello scientists! My name is Firefighter Fred!”. The next slide will show Firefighter Fred asking the students for help. He will say “We know just how smart you all are and we need your help today!” The following slide will go on to say “Earlier today a house caught on fire. Luckily everyone is ok and no one got hurt. The house only has minor damage because us firefighters responded quickly!”. The students had to listen to another slide of Firefighter Fred saying, “This is where we need your help scientists! We cannot seem to figure out how the fire started. There were a few things that we found in the house that could have possibly started a fire but we are having trouble narrowing it down. We need some real science investigators!” I will project a slide of the steps of the scientific method as a reminder of how to conduct an experiment/investigation and collect data for their hypothesis. The question will be provided on the sheet for them, which will ask “How did the fire start?”. As the students were collecting their information and moving throughout the room, Firefighter Fred randomly makes announcements that there is breaking news. The breaking news will help the students narrow down their inferences and assist them in forming their conclusion.

The teaching program is all about learning on how to be the best teacher we can be.