Reflection 2/11-2/12 and 2/22-2/24
“The Monday that we came back we had a review day where students did a vocabulary exercise called a “list-group-label”. They had used terms like anatomy, natural selection, evolution, genetics, dissection, and others to find some connections between them and explain why. It was difficult to get class going, I need to be more mindful of time management. Specifically, I want to build in some attention grabbers so that I don’t only resort to the rainstick. When the activity was going, they were able to get some good ideas down. Some students did this more than others but they were finding ways to combine concepts together to help remind them of what we’re learning.”
“Wednesday, I had another activity planned and had built off the feedback from the round to give them some discussion questions to work with. They had the data table printed for them and they had to connect to natural selection and species diversity. Another thing I added in was some silly questions for the starter that relate to the activity. More people were able to contribute answers at the beginning of class because of this. I still need a faster way to check homework. Maybe I should have them put their journals on the desk opened up to the homework? Then they can’t finish the homework in class. Perhaps if I give them advanced notice that might help.”
Post-Teaching Reflection
To what extent did different students achieve the learning goals?
Students learned a lot about adaptations and habitats; they were able to synthesize this information in their tree of life projects and the phylogenic tree that we made in the class. They learned a lot about the parts of the Theory of Evolution and the evidence, fossils, anatomy, and more, that are used to support the theory itself. I think I could have done a better job of having them intentionally synthesize these links. I noticed a lot of my high performing students still struggled to make the connections at the end.
What do you learn from differences in performance, or puzzling student performances (hard for you to explain), about the particular challenges of learning in this unit?
I really improved my lesson structure and am doing a better job at managing transitions. I am much more aware of these situations where I am managing the movement of the lesson. Specifically, I am working to identify the moments where I should help students move on to their next task. Things that still puzzle me are the students who don’t do the work because they don’t believe in the theory of evolution. That issue is exacerbating a preexisting poor work ethic from them. I think that framing the issue in a way that is not forcing beliefs upon them would helpful in the future. Emphasizing this might have lowered their affective filters and hesitance to engage.
What do you learn from differences in performance about the effectiveness of your planning for the needs of different students?
At the end of this unit, I did a student survey; it will be interesting to see where I can improve in my teaching from their point of view. I also had the students complete a self-reflection for their notebook checks, in which I ask what I can do better. Going forward, I will gradually include more of their feedback and address their needs. I learned that I could really improve the flow of class and behavior issues by being as specific as possible in the topics of each part and helping with the movement from part to part.
What would you change to improve this plan and why?
I would include some more small summative assessments to link each additional concept back to the key idea of evolution. In the future, I would build in more low stakes discussion and provide more vocabulary as tools to help with linking ideas together. For the comparative anatomy lab and the fossil lab, I would try to model lab safety better. Including MCAS questions each week could have provided a sense of connection between their learning and eventual goal of taking the test.
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