Clinical Lesson

On Monday November 10, I taught my science lesson to my kindergarten students. I taught them a lesson about leaves that coincided with my bag-it that I sent home, so I had one leaf expert in my class and it also helped start off our two week study (theme) on fall/harvest. I feel like I had a good understanding and knowledge of this topic before I taught it. Like I mentioned before I did a lot of research about this since it was based a little bit off of my bag-it that was focused around leaves as well. I was also asked to do a math station that focused on leaves as well for our math rotations. In this we did leaf sorting. You might say that I am now an expert on leaves! Before this time I had not had the experience of teaching a science lesson to my kindergartners besides the ones that were at Brigham. They do science on the days that I am not there so this was also different for them to have science out of routine. While it is best practice to keep schedules and routines with students so they know what to expect by incorporating it with their math time we were able to still make it fit into the schedule. To keep a good classroom management component I had the students constantly moving and using their muscles so that they are able to connected kinetically with the material and keep it longer in their memory as well as getting them up and moving every so often kept their attention and kept them engaged.

Whole Class Leaf Graph

While I thought that this lesson went pretty good, but there was still a lot that I could have improved on, I still had some strengths to this lesson. While I read a book about leaves to my students Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber, I had them stop and pause and do make inferences about what leaves do at different times of the year, especially in the fall. This way the students were engaged during the lesson and they were thinking about what is going on. Once I had them do this then they really started to listen and become focused on what I wanted them to be. With 29 kindergartners, sometimes it is hard to get them all to be on task and doing what you would like them to be doing. By stopping and asking questions I was able to get them to realize that they needed to be paying attention to me and the book so that they could answer my questions. After the book was finished I made sure that they knew what I wanted them to take away from the book. We were discussing what leaves need to grow and what happens when they do not get this. Once we talked about it a lot they started to get it! One of the strengths that I had was constantly asking the students what the leaves needed to survive. My lesson was integrated with math and we talked about graphing the leaves that we had. During the book we also talked about the different colors that the leaves could be. I wanted to use this as the basis for our graphing. Previously I had cut out leaves in different colors so that each student was able to get a leaf to participate in our class graph. I let the students pick the categories that could go on our graph with prompting from the different colored leaves that they were given. By letting them choose what would go on our graph they were able to feel like it was "their" graph and wanted to participate in it and pay attention because it was something that they made and not something that I was just telling them what to do. I also used the same colored markers as the colors that they gave me so that we were also learning to recognize our color words, with the help of the actual color! I also provided some engaging questions about our graph by having them come up one by one to tell us about their leaf and place it on our graph. Then I asked them questions about the most and the least as well as what our graph tells us. By engaging the students in higher level thinking questions they were able to fully understand what I was trying to get them to do. I also had the students engage in a group activity and where at their table spots they were able to go back and create their own leaf. We then were able to use questioning and descriptions to have them talk about their leaf and there it could fall on our graph. This got them thinking about the different colors that leaves can be as well as the different shapes that leaves could be as well. I was able to redirect the students who colored their leaves with rainbow colors back to the real colors that leaves are with these questions. I was also able to tie the lesson together with their own graphs that the students were able to complete, this also connected with their math journals that they are familiar with. This is something that we usually do together, but I wanted to see if they were able to complete it on their own after doing it numerous times. This was also good for my cooperating teacher to see so that we could see if there is anything that we need to cover for future use of these graphs in their math journals. This was the wrap up to the lesson because it connected it back to the big graph that they made in the beginning and they were able to then read books about leaves when they were done.

Group Leaf Coloring

While a lot of this lesson did go well there is still a lot that could be improved on. Timing is one big one. I struggle with this every single time I plan and execute a lesson and this is something my cooperating teacher and I have been trying to work on. I get really excited when I plan a lesson and it has so many awesome parts in it and I don't realize how long it will take. I also forget to realize that with 29 kindergarten students that things will take a lot longer than they normally take so I really need to be cautious about my time. I can also improve on my positive reinforcement so that the students will know what I expect out of them without me flat out saying it every single time. By making positive comments about what the students are doing that I like and want them to be doing then the others who are watching them will see what they should be doing and do it so that they could get complimented. There are a couple students who still struggle with raising their hand and instead they just like to blurt out what they would like to say. It would help if I remind all students my expectations for them and to raise their hands so they know right from the beginning that I need them to raise their hand and take their turn. It would also be helpful to make sure the students are not distracted by anything. One of my students had her coat hanging off her arm and asked if she could put it away. I wanted her to wait so that she would not miss instruction or disrupt the other students because I have come to find that once one student asks to take off their sweatshirts. Unfortunately she was being more distracting by not putting her jacket away than it was to just have her go and put it away quickly. I think that I should have given them clearer directions and tell them exactly what I want them to do, because they cannot read my mind. While they were doing their leaves in their groups I wanted them to make their leaves real leaf colors, but instead I had some tables make rainbow leaves. Like I mentioned before I was able to redirect them once we were talking about it and I was able to get them to tell me about what color real leaves actually are. I might have needed to model a step for the students so they understand better what I expect of them. At the end I collected their individual graphs so I could assess them. Even though I told them that they needed to put their names on it, I should have had everyone flip their paper open and write their name on it before they began or included a spot in which they could have put their name. I was also missing a paper and it might have been easier for me to see which students do not have their names on their papers by having them leaving their papers at their table spots when they are done and giving the students better directions for when they have finished.

Individual Leaf Graphs

These students were engaged the entire time and they asked a lot of questions. One quote that we enjoyed the most from one of my students is, "Why are we graphing? Is it just part of our day?" They understand our routines and were a little thrown off my me teaching science on a Monday. They were able to answer the questions that I posed to them as well. We were able to have meaningful conversations and they really enjoyed talking about their leaves. They thought that the graph was really neat since it was different from what we normally do, but since it is similar to what has been done before they had a good general idea of what I wanted them to do so they were able to participate to the fullest. The activity was not something that was newly taught to them so it was more review and going more in depth, but with different content. They are beginning to understand that we can graph all different things and all different ways and they get really excited to do this graphing.

Leaf Sorting Math Station

Exceeds: I went over 1,000 words, I included 5 objectives instead of just 2-3, I gave my CT the lesson to use in the future, I planned a math leaf station that went with along with my lesson that was used throughout the week at the math station and I included pictures of what we did.