Group Trophic Pyramid Explanations: Checking for understanding within groups in 8A.

Excerpt from reflection on 3.23.16:

Teaching on my birthday was actually pretty nice, my students sang happy birthday to me in both periods. I decided to teach them about competition since I hadn’t really talked about it yet up to this point. I explained how competition drives the behaviors of animals and the types of relationships that they form.

I had spent some time on Tuesday night trying to come up with an activity that would help them be competitive and connect it to nature. Observations about warblers were involved in the research that formed scientific understanding about competition. Since I can’t get birds or reliably observe them, I decided to have students make paper airplanes and compete for different prizes instead. Each category had a prize and represents a niche that students could choose to compete in depending on what they felt strongest in. Paper airplanes are pretty easy for people to make in general. It would help students connect to the idea of competition and relate it back to symbiotic relationships.

Excerpt from reflection on 3.30.16:

Over the weekend, I found that creating the lesson plans was time consuming as usual but I wanted to build on the scaffolding of concepts so that they could include more in their drawings. James liked how last week’s lessons were put together so I think I have found yet another way to conduct lessons in a structured manner. I decided to introduce a new concept, feedback loops, while they are working on their independent carbon cycle drawings. Monday was spent going over a Ted Ed video on feedback loops in nature; I feel that the lesson was successful in introducing the concepts to them. They were definitely unsure about applying the concept, but I decided I would find some examples for them to understand it.

Excerpt from reflection on 4.6.16:

Afterschool, I was surprised to find my student Luis who needed help with his carbon cycle project. He’s been performing really well overall. I think the change in attitude is due to some positive reinforcement on my part and some change in his own self-concept: understanding that he is a good science student and that work pays off. I am particularly glad that he has turned around his performance.

A lot of students have been working hard on their projects and don’t have that much to do for tomorrow. I think the scaffolding and chunking has helped them a lot here. I need to figure out the logistics of the peer evaluation process, because they will mostly just be checking for quantitative aspects of the projects. I will do the bulk of the evaluation myself.

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