Reflection & Self Assessment

My learning goal that was most successful was learning goal number two which was “Students can demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through hands-on experiments and activities based on pushing, pulling, redirecting, starting, and stopping.” One of the many reasons for this success is that more time was spent working with hands-on activities and having the students demonstrate their knowledge rather than describe it. The Students are more comfortable with this set up so I wanted to incorporate students being able to explain through words as well as sticking to what they're comfortable with, which is showing through demonstrations. Out of the 5 days of instruction there were 10 objectives spread out. Two for each lesson. Therefore the students were being challenged daily on working with new objectives. The set up of their objectives stayed very consistent throughout the unit being that they are all focused on explaining and showing their knowledge. Each one was more specific to their lesson that day so students could get comfortable with knowing their objectives and being able to refer back to them throughout the activities. The more successful learning goal matched up with Bloom’s Taxonomy of action verbs. This may explain why it was more successful. I planned and provided multiple scaffolds along the way as well as introduced different parts of physical science. I first introduced the different sections of the physical science unit but did not go into great detail, only provided some background information. I introduced it through the use of a group meeting/group conversation. The gradual score and sequence made the lesson challenging for the students but also engaging and interesting.

I decided to teach children about physical science because they love hands-on experiments and this was an opportunity for them to be implemented while teaching the students about something they have not yet been introduced to. Throughout the lessons, students were provided with scaffolds and support such as lessons not requiring students to read directions. Everything that the students may have had to read was also coded with the use of clip art images for key words and points. I felt that this helped students meet the objectives within the second learning goal. When looking at John Dewey’s concept of education he speaks out about how it is to “put a premium on meaningful activity in learning and participating.” (Source: PBS Online: Only A Teacher: Schoolhouse Pioneers). This is very true when working in all settings and age groups through teaching. Students will be more engaged and the lesson will be more powerful if you teach to the group of students presented to you. I knew that this group of students thrives off from group discussions followed by hands-on activities which is why I designed my unit in this manner.

The learning goal I was least successful with was Learning Goal 1: Students can describe and understand what it means when an object is in motion, and how to push, pull, redirect, start, and stop certain objects. Looking over the assessment data, especially when looking at lesson two, the students were able to show their knowledge and understanding but had a hard time finding a way to describe it. They had multiple ways to try and describe it, but the one they struggled with the most was verbal description on why and how something worked. Especially when looking at lesson plan number 2. The students had a very hard time with understanding the words to use when talking about what they did. I received a lot of "I just did it and it worked". This is where I dove deeper with my questioning to get the students thinking. I focused a lot on vocabulary with this activity when one-on-one with the students. The possible reason for this lack of success when working with this learning goal could be due to the fact that I did not spend enough time explaining to the students what it means to describe. I spent time providing demonstrations for the activity which met LG 1 of showing me their knowledge. I never questioned the students and demonstrated how to use words to explain your thinking which is why there may have been far less success with LG 2. Another possible reason could be the rush for time the students had since my lessons were implemented towards the end of the day. When the students were completed with their activity their next task was to pack up and get out their snack. This is apart of the day where the students are very high energy and lack focus. When they were done "showing" me what they can do, I feel that their mind was already on the next task for the day. This could also be a reason that LG 2 was less successful than LG 1. I dove deeper into working to understand how to give students the supplies and tools needed for explaining their thinking through research. After researching I found a source titled "How to Get Students to Think About Their Own Learning." One section that stood out to me was at the bottom of the article under the subtitle "Seek Feedback." It gives you as the teacher criteria on how to work towards getting the students to think for themselves. The three that they focus on are the questions "What am I working for?, What progress have I made so far?, and Where do I go from here?" I thought that these were strong checkpoints I could remind myself of when working to teach students about their learning. The source where I found this information is linked (https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-get-students-thinking-about-their-own-learning/). If I was able to reimplement this activity I would have spent more time in the group discussion focusing on vocabulary. This would have helped students know and understand the language when trying to explain what they were doing during the activity. When looking back at what we have done in the classroom so far it includes a lot of hands-on activities and not as much self assessment/self reflection on students' own knowledge. It was new for these students to be quoted as they were trying to find the right words to verbally explain why something happened, or how they know what it means when something is in motion.

Overall I think that there was a lot of realization and growth brought to my attention during this unit. I am very proud of the work I did through this especially when introducing objectives, and self assessment to the students. 7/10 students fell under the “meets'' category during the summative assessment when only 4/10 students received meets in the pre-assessment. This shows that the students truly grasped onto what I was teaching and were able to retain the information over time.