Student Background and Readiness

Throughout the year I have learned that my class, overall, works well in groups or partners in comparison to others in their age group. Recently I have realized that most students can work well in a group, however this setting is not always the best learning environment for each student. Therefore in the interest of giving each student access to the experience or material, I will be using the design of partners more often than groups. The students will still work in group at times because I feel that this is a skill they must improve on, but I will rely on partners because my students do a wonderful job keeping each other engaged and helping them with material understanding if someone is left behind.

An additional strength which I recognize in my students is their ability to question concepts. We have enough of these attentive questioning students in this class group that when assigning groups I can insert one of these questionnaires into each group which will help the students explain the reactions they are observing by questioning and problem solving.

A final key strength which will be beneficial in the students learning will be their excitement for science. It’s a shame that the students do not have science very often in their schedule, however this often becomes a strength because you say “It’s time for science.” and immediately they respond with an almost all encompassing “Yesssssss.” This excitement will be a strength because it will help to keep the students wondering and therefore engaged.

Student Needs

As previously mentioned this unit is very vocabulary heavy. There is not way to talk about these concepts without at some point attaching vocabulary. Not only will the ELLs struggle to keep the different vocabulary words organized in their mind, but I believe that all of the student will also face this same struggle. In the first five lessons I will not be focused on the students understanding vocabulary, rather I will be focused on whether or not they are able to explain why certain reactions are occurring. Throughout the lessons I will be giving the student opportunities to show me that they have obtained the knowledge and are able to apply it. The key in the start however will be that that can explain reactions. At the end of the unit is where I will be looking for students to be able to demonstrate both explanation and vocabulary knowledge.  In order for the students to succeed in remembering and applying the content vocabulary they will need to connect each word to an experience they had during an experiment or to an example we discussed during class discussion/ and example they have encountered in their own experiences.This will be the best way for them to remember the differences. During this unit I will be forward with the fact that they will need to memorize and apply a large amount of vocabulary. I will also be teaching them different styles and techniques to achieve this memory.

As previously mentioned, the students will be working with at least one another person almost the entire unit. Overall this is a strength for this group of students, however as with any group of 21 humans it is to be expected that at least one person will say something another group member is upset by or someone comes into the group with a bad attitude. As my students are still relatively young it is not uncommon for one of them to become upset and spiral quickly o the point where it takes a long time for them to refocus. As science is often a relatively short block time it will be easy for the student to become upset and essentially miss the entire lesson and therefore all of the present and interacted with content. As group members the students often do their best to pick one another up, but what often occurs is that they try, they get yelled at by that person, and then they just leave that team member behind with the occasional side eye. Usually, just enough side eye to send the upset person right back into the spiral they were coming out of. In order to try and help this situation I have created pre tested (and then adjusted) groups. In addition to this I will be pre teaching and giving frequent reminders about how to work in a group and if need be, how to address conflict.