CUP 3 – Sound and Light – Sophia Maselek

This was my final unit I taught this year, and it was a science unit focusing on sound and light.

Lesson 1: We started out by learning about sound and what makes up sound.
Lesson 2: We went on a “listening walk” listening to sounds in our school and outside at recess.
Lesson 3: We defined three new science vocabulary words that helped us understand more about light: translucent, transparent, and opaque.
Lesson 4: We worked with flashlights to test out many different objects to see if they were translucent, transparent or opaque.
Lesson 5: We wrapped up our unit by creating our own kazoos.
Complete Sound & Light Unit CUP found here.

Prioritizing student feedback:

- - - When I plan my units, I have to keep many things in mind that control what happens over the course of the unit. I have to think about the MA standards, my students and their needs, the time I have to teach the unit and plan for it, my materials, my support in the room, and more. When I started to teach this sound and light unit, I knew I wanted to prioritize my students.
    - We do not get to do science every day, and I knew they were going to be so excited by this new content.
    - This is why I was dedicated to hearing their feedback after the lessons and what they imagined “science” to be.
    - I continued to keep everything else in mine (standards, timing, resources, etc.) but, I was constantly thinking about my students when planning the unit.
      Student work from the “listening walk” lesson.
    - After the first and second lesson, my students were disappointed by how our “science” lessons were looking. After I did my “listening walk” lesson (lesson 2) I decided to commit to the rest of the lessons to be more hands-on where students were getting to access the material through a project or an experiment.
    - I heard what my students said to me about the listening walk. They enjoyed it, but they felt like we could have been more involved with it. They told me it felt “too quick” and they “wished we went on a longer walk”. Knowing this after lesson 2, I decided to get more hands-on and creative with the rest of my lessons, because I prioritized what my students were telling me.
      - Here is a video example of a student telling me what he thought about our “listening walk” lesson.
        
        Here is another video of a student explaining that she liked the kazoos the best, which was a common opinion across all the students.
        
        Here is another student explaining that he would have done the “listening walk” lesson differently. This was one of the students who explained that he thought it was “too short”. Through these videos, you can see that I value what my students tell me about my lessons and about my teachings. I was able to change up my unit as we went and made our lessons more hands-on and creative while still following my learning goals!
        
        I also used a collective anchor chart that we turned into a question and response later on in the unit.
        
        Collective anchor chart on sound.
        
        Attached here is a video clip of our class using our kazoos to say what is on our anchor chart.
        
        I also was dedicated to providing visuals in my worksheets that I used. The visuals for LAP 4 helped students to identify which object they were going to be shining the light through.
        
        You can see this student was very excited by this lesson, and was so happy we were doing something hands-on.
        
        In the observation section on the right, I left the directions open-ended on purpose. I let students choose how they wanted to show me how they described what they saw. Here, this student wrote what made sense to him. This looks different from the observations other students made, but it still shows me that he understood the activity.
        
        Here are two students during this lesson, where they applied what they knew about light to do the experiment.
        
        Here is a scientist after she completed her light experiment!
        
        More scientists using their flashlights.
        
        Here are two students working together for this light lesson, and going item by item and writing down their observations. I was so proud of this partnership and their ability to work together and take their time.

CRT places students at the center of learning. I placed my students at the center of this unit. I was able to value their feedback about what they thought was meaningful about lesson 2 (listening walk) and I applied it to the rest of our unit. I was able to value my students and what they thought was enjoyable, and also still follow the MA curriculum. I want science to be memorable for my students. I want them to grow up and want to be scientists. Through this unit, I was able to hear about what they liked about science, and be able to do some projects that related to this.