Lesson Reflection
I began planning my lesson after meeting my cooperating teacher a couple weeks prior to my IMB experience. She told me that the students would be learning about weather at the time of my lesson. After my first week in the class, I saw the students were learning about weather instruments but were not getting a chance to use any of these instruments. I decided to use the standard; 2.E.1.4 Recognize the tools that scientists use for observing, recording, and predicting weather changes from day to day and during the seasons. I would have liked to use a barometer or other tools while I was there, but I knew that it would require more time to set up the lesson then I had. I decided to go with thermometers and began planning around that particular tool.
The actual lesson itself started well. I used what I have learned in class to implement an indirect lesson and use questioning to peak interest and gauge understanding. My goal was to draw out the suggestion that we use a thermometer, not to simply tell them we needed thermometers to tell temperature. Eventually a student did come to the conclusion that we needed a thermometer, which led into the students using thermometers. This began the most problematic part of my lesson. The thermometers I bought would only read temperatures close to the human body temperature. The cups that were cold or cool would not register. I was unprepared for this considering I tested the thermometer in my hand before buying them. After the students began to have trouble measuring the temperature of the other cups, I moved the lesson along. This was something that my cooperating teacher commended me on. She explained to me that things often do not go as planned in a classroom and it is up to the teacher to move on and not linger.
Overall, I would say that the lesson was successful in meeting my standard. The children were able to recognize that thermometers are a valuable tool to gauge temperature and they were able to provide additional ways that both they and scientists could use thermometers. The children worked well together, I made use of technology with digital thermometers and my Ipad as a visual aid. I would use this lesson again. I would obviously change the thermometers used during the lesson though. I think the whole point of this experience is to walk away with knowledge of how to plan and implement lessons more successfully in the future. Something I definitely will do.