Sunday, January 15, 2012

Reflection: STEM Strategies Lesson Plan

Reflection: Lesson Plan

Hello Fellow Bloggers,
Welcome.  I am looking forward to a sharing my teaching experiences and graduate school experiences with you.  To recap, I am a Certified Science teacher in Georgia.  It is a joy to teach science and work with middle school students in a science classroom.  Obviously, I hope my passion for science will spread to my students and they will share the same enthusiasm for learning as I do.  
On the other hand, I want to reflect on this week's application.  Our assignment was to use a Science Lesson Template to plan a lesson that centered around Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) strategies for diverse learners.  We were given the 5 E's Strategy to assist us in this process. 
The following will explain the terminology:
Engage - Hook
Explore - Experiment
Eplain - Introduce New Material
Elaborate - Real World Connections
Evaluate - Assessment
Candidly speaking, it was an extremely frustrating and overwhelming at times planning this lesson using this new strategy.  I really could have used a face to face group meeting or an exemplar.  This assignment would have made an excellent cooperative learning experience.  Consequently, I did not feel confident that I had completed the Science Lesson Template correctly.  After another colleagues, and viewing questions that were posted on Q&A I gathered I was not alone.  It seemed that with all the planning I did for the lesson plan, the template and the plan just were not a match.  
Time was a factor in completing this application.  Time is valuable not only to a teacher, but in general.  Time would be a factor trying to perform this lesson in a classroom given some classes are not an hour long.  There were some parts that seemed redundant. Although, there were sections that were helpful.  I can see where the historical perspectives and real-world context could be a challenge in come cases.  Just like our students, on some assignments, I think we need that constant feedback and collaboration that comes from being in a group or in pairs.

2 comments:

  1. Alethea,
    I could not agree more about it being better to learn some of these new topics via a cooperative group. I noticed it took a very long time to complete the assignment.

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  2. I totally agree with you Alethea. I had a difficult time and felt that it would be an impossible expectation to have such a lesson plan for every lesson. I do see the need as a singular exercise to make us focus on the bits and pieces that need to be considered when designing lessons; but between parent meetings, staff meetings, student meetings, grading, training, and the myriad of other time consumers this would be grueling.

    Lori

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