Lesson Plan



Jennifer Hains

MSEd 453

November 27, 2006

Lesson Plan- Water Cycle

Date: November 7, 2006

Subject: 5th grade science

Topic: the water cycle

Materials: textbooks, students’ science notebooks

Driving Question: Will the Earth ever run out of water?

Lesson Outcomes: students will answer comprehension questions at the end of the chapter and know the vocabulary words associated with the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration).

Students will be able to draw and label a diagram of the water cycle.

Anticipatory Set: preview chapter. Ask students where water comes from.

Procedures:

Read the lesson from the textbook aloud. Stop to ask questions, explain the meaning and relate vocabulary words to words and concepts students already know. Give students time to write definitions for vocabulary terms and to copy notes from the book while reading.

Draw diagram of water cycle on the board and have students help me label the parts to reinforce the vocabulary words.

Ask students application questions such as:

When moisture accumulates on a cold drink on a warm day, where does that moisture come from?

Is there more or less water on Earth now than there was one thousand or one hundred years ago?

If the amount of water on Earth stays relatively the same, why is it necessary to conserve water?

Closure:

Questions

Assign homework from textbook.

Standards:

ICAS: 4B, 4C*. 4D*, 4E, 4F

IL Teaching Goals: 11.A.2b*, 12.C.2b, 12.E.2a, 13.A.2b* 13.B.2f

Technology Standards: 5C*, 5H*

(*Standards based on modified lesson that includes students experiments, not lesson actually taught.)

Reflection:

This is a lesson that I taught at my observation site. I taught the same lesson to two classes of fifth grade students over two consecutive class periods. I did not know I was teaching this lesson until the day I taught it. The mentor teacher gave me the teacher’s edition of the textbook and no other resources or guidance. It seems that this is how she normally prepares to teach science. The class follows the textbook and uses the textbook for all assignments and tests. The textbook does include idea for demonstrations as well as ways to integrate science into other subjects, by these resources are not utilized. The teacher specifically told me that the demonstrations and experiments are not worth the energy they require to set up. The main role of the teacher in teaching science is to highlight the main points and vocabulary terms while students take notes.

Luckily, the water cycle is a popular topic and I have been in classes where my classmates have taught the water cycle. I was familiar with the subject area and had a few ideas about the classic application questions (why does a cold beverage “sweat” on a hot day?) and demonstrations that many teachers use when teaching this unit. Since the textbook devoted only one day to this topic, I did not have to go into very much detail to “cover” the material.

I would describe my approach to this lesson as a textbook guided discussion. I tried to rephrase everything from the textbook and support it with my own drawings and examples. I also paused often to ask questions that I believed could be answered if the students were grasping the concepts in the text. I told students that I doubted some of the things that were stated in the textbook and tried to get them to form arguments or give examples to the contrary. I gave students the example of a cold beverage creating condensation and asked students about it. I got several theories and kept asking leading questions until the students said the correct explanation. I also asked students where they see examples of condensation, evaporation, or precipitation. As students gave examples, I reiterated using the vocabulary words and describing the physical changes of liquid to gas or gas to liquid.

I was pleased to see them thinking about the material beyond the scope of what was in the textbook. One student asked me how water gets back to the water cycle after we drink it. He showed real doubt that in the idea of the water cycle because his experience (paraphrase the student) is that after he drinks, “the water turns into pee. It doesn’t rain pee, so how does that water that I drank get back to the water cycle?” I was not especially thrilled that this student asked this particular question, but I was thrilled to see that he was actually thinking about what we had read and trying to relate it to his own experiences. I was also happy to see that he felt comfortable to voice his doubt and ask this question. This question was very valuable for moving the discussion along, and because it was posed by a student, it hit on a topic that other students were interested in. (What fifth grader doesn’t like the opportunity to get his teacher to talk about pee?) I think that many students thought that I was not going to answer his question or that he was going to get in trouble for asking it. I just restated the question using more scientific terms and explained creating a parallel with an example that was given in the book. These students are used to having discussions and saying whatever is on their mind, but not during science. (The science lessons that I observed were very fact and textbook oriented) However, they were very cooperative and seemed to enjoy the opportunity to do more than read the chapter aloud and answer comprehension questions.

What was interesting about the discussions in the two classes is that some questions were immediately answered in one class, but discussed and debated at length in the other class. I learned that I need to be prepared to go in several directions with the discussion because different groups of students can respond very differently to the same material. For example, one class was very interested in the weather and its relation to the water cycle. I did not expect those questions, but having the students pose these questions allowed me to supplement the established learning outcomes with information that they found useful.

If I were teaching this lesson in my own classroom I would want to have some demonstrations set up to show the students that they can observe the water cycle. I know that some teachers have been successful at setting up terrariums in the classroom, but these can be labor intensive. The textbook suggested placing a plastic bag over a plant overnight and observing the moisture accumulation. Another very simple experiment for students is to have them fill cups of water and place them in various locations around the room. The students predict what will happen and measure the water levels over a period of a few days. These simple inquiry exercises do not require much in terms of materials or set up and give students a tangible experience to associate with the information they learn about the water cycle. I would do at least the experiment with the cups of water and the plant. I would also bring in a cold (colored) beverage and ask students to figure out where the clear liquid on the outside of the container was coming from.

In addition to these demonstrations and experiments, I would present the material differently. These students are all used to reading the chapter and taking notes. I do not think that students are actually picking out the main concepts and thinking about the material by doing this. When I asked students in one class how many had drawn a diagram of the water cycle in their notes, no one had. I drew the diagram on the board and asked them to put it in their notes. They seemed very hesitant about putting a drawing in their notes. They kept asking if they should really draw it and when I walked around the room I noticed that most of the students had scrunched up the diagram in the margins of their notes. I would think that this would be the most important thing to have in their notes. As a teacher, I would prepare a handout with an unlabeled diagram for students to complete. I may also include a brief description of the water cycle where students filled in blanks using vocabulary words. I think this scaffolding is necessary in this group because they have not shown that they know how to pick out important information or apply it.

Having written work of this type would not only give students a way to organize the information and practice using it, the written work would give me an opportunity to assess the students. With frequent informal assessments, the teacher has more opportunities to correct students and look for error patterns to guide instruction. I think some type of application of information is a more valuable assessment than giving a grade for copying vocabulary terms and answers to questions from the textbook, which is what students normally do in this class. Students are also assessed with end of chapter tests, which are more like a performance than a learning opportunity for students because once the students take the test, that information is not revisited.

While teaching the lesson, the only opportunity I had for assessment was very informal. I asked the students questions, but in a class of 34 students, it is easy for the students who do not know the answers to not get called on. I tried to get a thumbs up/thumbs down response about understanding, but the students were very hesitant to do this. The best I could do with assessing the students was to look at their faces and gauge their understanding by the questions they posed and the answers they gave.

This lesson also lacked accommodations for students with learning differences. There is typically no differentiation in this classroom, except that some students are pulled out for extra help with a different teacher. By having presented the information in different ways, I believe that I could have helped accommodate more learning styles. Demonstrations for the visual learner, experiments for hands-on learning, and organization of the information in a diagram for students who have trouble with reading comprehension or who prefer images to text would have all been accommodations to support different learning styles.

After teaching this lesson, I was working as a teacher’s aide in a sixth grade middle school classroom where the same topic was being taught. The sixth grade class devoted three one hour class periods to this unit. There are many differences between these two classrooms. One major difference is that the sixth grade classes are much smaller (about 20 students), the teacher teaches only sixth grade science, and these students rarely use textbooks. When this unit was introduced in the sixth grade class, there was no lecture, reading, or other presentation of material. Groups of students were assigned to research different parts of the water cycle and then present the information to the rest of the class. All students in this school have their own laptops, so they did this research on their computers using web pages provided by the teacher.

The next day, the teacher introduced the concept of dew point. He filled a glass with water and then added ice until condensation appeared on the outside of the glass. The students recorded this temperature. The students had a worksheet that went along with this demonstration, which included fact and application questions that they completed this sheet as a class.

The third day focused on clouds. The students were given a chart that gave descriptions of clouds that they had to match up with pictures of clouds. They also watched a short video on clouds that included several demonstrations. The students completed a worksheet that went along with the video. The teacher also visited some websites about clouds that included quizzes which the students enjoyed taking.

The sixth grade class is assessed on the contents of their science notebooks, which contain all worksheets done in class, at the end of each unit. The students were also given an assignment to be completed at home on the water cycle. I did not get to see this assignment because students did not get handouts, they downloaded the information from the school server. I do know that it included some kind of description and diagram of the water cycle.

The sixth grade teacher takes a very different approach to teaching science. He generates a large bulk of the material and also incorporates many more sources of information than the fifth grade classroom. He also keeps the class more active by always having them follow along with some kind of worksheet or study guide. Even though these students are older, they are not expected to learn the material on their own and take their own notes as the fifth graders do. The positive qualities I see in the sixth grade classroom are that the students are more active, students work in groups, there are many opportunities for hands-on activities and demonstrations, technology is incorporated in science, and the students get information from several sources. While this teacher does an excellent job of presenting material to the students, I feel that students would benefit from more discovery.

Over the course of four days, I saw very different approached to very similar material. I learned that resources create a much different learning experience for students, but that the biggest differenced in quality of the educational experience comes from the teacher. I think that I gave the students a learning experience that was very different from what they usually experience using the same resources their teacher normally uses. Although I was dealing with many restrictions in teaching this one lesson, I felt that my learning philosophy, which is student-centered, made a big change in how the lesson was taught. While resources are very helpful, the most important resource a teacher can use is the students.

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