Week Eleven: Saying Goodbye to Middle School

2. This week was my final week of my field experience with Ms. Shema at Lincoln Middle School. For today's lesson, I administered my research project data collection plan to the students and to the teacher. I handed the students a survey asking them to fill in a pronoun (he, she, they) for each sentence associated with a certain career. When I first handed this to the students, they were confused. Johnny even said "this isn't an ELA class", to which I explained that research can be put in words and still involve STEM. After handing the papers, I explained to the students that I was collecting data for a project, but did not tell them what the project was about as to not skew their results. I told them they did not have to write their names, then collected the papers back from them. For the rest of class, the students worked on their evolution vocabulary words, and I walked around and asked if anyone needs help but they did not seem to want any (since they have already done this same activity so many times now). Interestingly, I forgot to collect my research survey back from Samantha, who handed it to me at the end of the period. She had written a paragraph below the survey (unprompted) and explained what she thought the survey was for: to analyze the students' career expectations based on gender. I told her I thought her response was funny because that is exactly what I was trying to find out. Besides this, the students did not have any other work for this class period since Ms. Shema and I expected that my partner would be there to do his own research survey, but he did not show up without telling us so the timing was off and there were not enough activities planned. Att the end of the lesson, I thanked all my students for helping me learned and said bye to all of them (and they all clapped for me, which I thought was so funny). In my overall experience of this field placement, I learned a few important things. One was that I did not like working with middle schoolers because it felt too much like they were both little kids and adults and I was not sure how to handle this dichotomy. Throughout my placement, I did not work with any students in particular, but rather the class as a whole, focusing on a different student each week. Some of the students I work with were more engaged in my help, while others were more independent. For instance, I have talked about David and Danny multiple times because they were two students that Ms. Shema told me would need extra help to begin with. Through my interactions with them, I learned that sometimes it is beneficial to separate students from their friends and I saw how much this impacted their willingness to work in a group. I also worked closely with Lucy, whose first language was not English. I watched her become more and more comfortable with asking me for help when she did not understand what something meant, and this gave me an interesting challenge in attempting to explain an example through visuals or drawings rather than through words. Altogether, after spending time with my students, I discovered that they are really funny individuals and that I shared common interests with some of them, like common music and TV shows. I also learned how much they appreciate being treated like an adult and that, as a teacher, I can't take what they say too seriously (in some cases) because they just say anything that comes to mind. 

3. For a teacher working with these students, I would recommend having a backup plan or a formative assessment available to hand the students in case they were done early. Otherwise, they will just sit and be bored and loud, like what happened today. I wish I would have prepared a formative assessment for them about evolution, but this was supposed to be a part of my partner's research project so I did not know to make anything ahead of time. Besides this, I would recommend that a teacher working with Samantha perhaps could engage her further about the research project she participated in. This is because she was clearly interested, so much so that she even wrote a paragraph about it. As for the semester as a whole, I learned about a couple of important ways to work efficiently in a middle school classroom. First, I learned how important scaffolding is for middle school students who need a lot more structure than the high schoolers I worked with last semester. An example of this was during my debate in week 10, where I realized that I needed to provide a lot more structure to prevent everyone shouting over each other. I also learned how important work differentiation is through seeing the impact of not having differentiation, where some students were very advanced and others fell behind and did not know how to catch up. In one of my weekly entries, I described working with a student who had fallen behind and did not know the basic content of the unit because no extra support was provided to her when she first started falling behind. This taught me how important it is to see each student as an individual and not as a class average, because I know she is smart and capable, but no one was helping her for a long time. Moreover, I learned that it is important to introduce students to group work and show them how to be part of an effective team, because I felt that this was lacking throughout the classroom I was in. The students almost never had group or partner work, so when I put them into groups they had a bit of a harder time collaborating instead of relying on one person to give them answers. 

4. I would rate myself a 3 out of 5 for my comfort level working with middle schoolers this semester. At the start of the semester, I would have given myself a higher level because of my experiences tutoring students this age and working with them in summer camp settings. However, I quickly discovered that school can't be summer camp as much as the kids wish it was (and act like it). My comfort level decreased as I kept trying to make activities and they did not seem to be working exactly in the way I wanted them to, and as a perfectionist I had a hard time accepting this. Some examples of this include the gummy worm lab, which worked well but not for every student since they had a hard time working as a team, and also my debate, which also proved the students had a hard time collaborating. I think something that would have helped would have been to give each student a specific group role, and that is something I will be trying if I work with students this age again. I did, however, appreciate the personal relationships I formed with the students and that they provided me a valuable learning experience. 

Week Ten: The Heated Debate

2. This week during class, I led a debate that involved the topic of artificial selection and genetic engineering. First, I divided the class into two groups randomly based on the order in which they had walked into the room (I pointed them each to a specific side). Last week, I asked Ms. Shema how she thinks the students should be optimally grouped. She said that random grouping is probably the best and we decided that we would also arrange the room differently in such a way that would easily facilitate a two team setup. Therefore, I randomly placed students in one of two areas of the room. When class started, I collected the formative assessment project that I had assigned to everybody the previous week, and I also showed the students a two minute video about genetic engineering as a recap of the topic for anyone who either forgot or did not do the project Ms. Shema assigned about the topic (I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page with knowing what the topic is). Then, I assigned a stance to each group: one group argued against genetic engineering and the other argues for its pros. I explained to the students that they would have five minutes to research among their topic among group using resources like their phones, textbooks, or any research they had done for their assigned project. Then, each team assigned a speaker (each student could only speak once to allow every student to have a chance) and this speaker introduced their group's research and stance in a 45 second speech. The other group then did the same, and the teams regrouped for a one minute discussion session in which they would examine which rebuttals they want to use. Next, the students had a two minute open rebuttal session. They were instructed not to talk over each other, but were allowed to speak openly without assigning a speaker. During this time, they were to consider the other team's arguments and think of how they could refute those. Following this round, the exact process repeated three times. First was this round with general pros and cons. However, for the next rounds, I asked the students to come up with topic suggestions based on their research projects, and coincidentally both classes had the same order of topics which was 1. general pros/cons 2. medical applications/gene therapy and 3. cloning. Overall, I thought the activity worked exceptionally well for some students, pretty well for others and did not work for the rest. I felt that those students who put in the most effort really got a lot out of this, but I will discuss more specific student interactions more in the next section. 

3. During this activity, I noticed some pretty interesting student interactions that would shape my recommendations for a teacher attempting to recreate a similar lesson. First, I would suggest a similar room setup to the one I used (one where the room is divided into two) because it created a clear separation between the two groups and everyone understood which team they were on. I also would suggest this sort of random grouping, but I did have some issue with this in my class, particularly with two students, David and Danny, who did not want to separate. I asked David probably five times to move to the other side of the room before he did it, but I know that I had to separate the two because I have noticed in previous class periods that they tend to distract each other and justify each other's being off task. When I separated them, I noticed that they were able to really get involved with their groups, even if they were hesitant at first. I would recommend for a teacher working with similar students to do the same because I do think the students were able to do better due to being split up. Moreover, I noticed that some students were very engaged while others were not so much engaged and were busy doing other tasks or using their phones to play games instead of doing research. In both classes, one of the two teams had every person involved and huddled in a circle trying to gather more and more research, while the other team had people who were distracted. I think that the more collaborative the specific team was, the more the students got out of it, while I had to constantly supervise the other group and try to encourage everyone to share their research with each other or join in on the discussion. This makes me wonder how I would have been able to better set up the teams to ensure that every student in every group was fully engaged. I even saw the students who were very involved in the debate continue to have it even after the class period ended, and they seemed to be very passionate about arguing and about the topic in general. This was awesome to see, and I was really glad to see that the activity made an impact at least for some of the students. Finally, one thing that did not go smoothly was the rebuttal period. Often, students who had already spoke were speaking over others and eventually the activity became chaotic and hard to control. I tried switching over to a hand-raising model instead, where the students had to raise their hands in order to speak, but even this barely improved the students shouting over each other and the rest of the conversations going on from students who were off-task were also getting in the way of hearing what the rebuttals were. I would recommend a teacher who is doing this to figure out a way to implement some more structure, which I discovered is absolutely necessary among middle schoolers (this was not a problem with high schoolers). Overall, I think this activity would have been greatly enhanced by more structure because it was really difficult to keep the students on task or get them to be quiet when instructions were given or the other team was speaking.

4. For next week, the class will already be done talking about genetics, and will instead be moving on to the topic of evolution and natural selection. To scaffold this, I hope to come up with an activity that relates natural selection and artificial selection, which was this week's topic, and help the students understand the differences and similarities of the two. I am thinking of doing a compare and contrast type of activity for natural/artificial selection, or otherwise doing an activity about evolution that will involve the kids getting up and moving around, because I have noticed they like to do this. I also will be preparing my survey for my special research project for both the students and Ms. Shema, and I will give this out instead of bellwork. The evolution/natural selection activity will be beneficial to the students in that they'll be able to connect something we have already explored as a class to a brand new topic and determine how well they can apply content. The survey will be helpful for me because it will help me collect data about gender roles and non-inclusive language in the class. 

5. My comfort level this week was a 4. This was my first time leading a debate for middle schoolers, and I love leading debates so naturally this was fun for me. However, as fun as it was, it was also really difficult to keep everyone involved and make sure they all got what they needed to out of the lesson. I found myself wishing I had some way to implement more structure, and even when I tried to it seemed to still be ineffective. Therefore,  I was not totally comfortable and was exhausted by the end of the two class periods. 



Week Nine: New Student Teachers

2. This Monday, I prepared an activity for the students that involved them watching over a transcription/translation project as part of their genetics unit. However, when I arrived to the class, Ms. Shema told me that they had not yet gotten to learning transcription and translation, nor had they learned about base-pairing. Therefore, the project I prepared would have to be given to them at a different point. Typically, she would have allowed my partner and I to teach about transcription and translation so the students could do the work we prepared. However, this week, the students were all in the computer lab learning about coding and AI from a group of graduate students doing a thesis in computer science. Ms. Shema explained she thought it might be a good opportunity for my partner and I to observe teaching as it is conducted by people who have never been taught how to teach. I personally thought they did a good job, and the students were generally engaged for the most part. While the lesson was going on, there were no students I worked with personally because they were all supposed to be working on the computer science material from the other students. Instead, Ms. Shema, my partner and I all went to the next door classroom to discuss what type of activities we could do with the rest of our time in her class. She handed us a textbook to look through, and we decided we would focus our activity on artificial selection. Then, we spent the rest of the class time researching and coming up with different ways to make an interactive lesson on artificial selection. 

3. This week, I again did not work individually with any student. Instead, I will comment on how I think the graduate students worked with the class. I thought that the lesson they taught was generally captivating to the students and most seemed focused. However, it is really hard to put seventh graders in front of a screen for the entire duration of class and not expect them to be off task. From my location in the back of the room, I could see numerous students playing games and being off task with their screens. Therefore, I would recommend that these student teachers ask the students to turn off their screens when they are not actively being used/when the students should be listening. Additionally, there were some students who were already knowledgeable in the content taught and others who were just now being introduced to the idea of coding for the first time. The goal of this multi-week project is for students to develop their own AI program that can speak back to them (like Siri or Alexa). Ms. Shema's students will be involved with the project for three days, and other students in the school will continue partaking in it for multiple weeks to come. Thus, I wonder if the graduate students considered the different ability levels of students in the class, and how someone's prior knowledge proficiency may cause them to be done earlier than some of the other students who have yet to be introduced to coding. 

4. During class, I spent a lot of time searching for projects that revolved around artificial selection. However, my partner and I decided that next week, we would do a moderated debate between the students where we split them into two groups, one arguing for artificial selection and one arguing against on the basis of morality and long term effects. We spent time researching different articles, and consulted with Ms. Shema about whether or not she would be able to start discussing the topic with the students. She found a project she had used years ago that involved the students researching their own topic of interest in artificial selection, and writing about that topic. We modified the project slightly, adding some pro/con articles and reducing some of the workload that was not necessary for our activity. Additionally, we found a video to show the students prior to the start of the debate. The debate will involve groups coming together, sharing what they learned individually through the project, then arguing their stance for thirty seconds with rebuttal periods. Students will be encouraged to only speak once to give everyone a chance to participate. This project will help engage students and teach them about this broad but very relevant topic in a way that will allow them to teach each other. Additionally, Ms. Shema said she would discuss transcription/translation with the students, so by the time we come back on Monday the students will have finished the project we prepared for this week. 

5. I would rate myself a 4 on my confidence level this week. I did not get to teach anyone specifically, but I felt that I was actively engaged in preparing next week's lesson and in understanding the timeline of the rest of Ms. Shema's class. This will allow me to better prepare activities in the future and have a more active role in the classroom. 

Week Eight: More March Mammal Madness

2. This week, we did March Mammal Madness again. The students were supposed to be done with this by the end of last week, but since they were not, this continued into another lesson plan, so this lesson was practically a repeat of last week's. The students finished presenting their animals, then watched a video revealing the results of the bracket. This video was in the form of a news report, and focused generally on which animals got voted for on the most brackets. Ms. Shema showed the students a google form with all their results and there were over 250 of them listed, showing the breakdown of who voted for what and who had the most correct choices on their bracket. The students got competitive at this point and were hoping they had the best results. Since I emailed Ms. Shema during Spring Break to find out what the students would be doing, she did not see my email in time for me to prepare a formative assessment activity. Additionally, I had already given out an activity on March Mammal Madness, and this lesson was not much different from the last one I attended, so there was not much more for me to do. Therefore, I did not end up preparing a formative assessment for this week, and instead used this class as an observation period. At the end of the lesson, Ms. Shema started to briefly introduce genetics to the students as their final unit. They went over some powerpoint notes and some quick vocabulary, and I found myself wishing I had known this was going to happen today so I could have prepared a preliminary formative assessment that would gauge where the students were at the beginning of the unit.

3. This week, I again did not work with any individual students because the nature of this lesson did not lend itself to individual or group work. Instead, the lesson was mainly teacher focused and was more about taking notes when it was not about March Mammal Madness. Once again, I will mention that I did not think March Mammal Madness was very helpful so I would not recommend teachers to do this activity with their students, especially when it takes more than a full week of school (almost two weeks) and the students were not prepared for the standardized tests and haven't began units like genetics and evolution, despite the test being next week. I do think that today's bracket reveal portion, however, was a bit more helpful because it focused a bit more on some of the ecology concepts that might tie into the evolution unit. I also would recommend a teacher who is starting anew unit on genetics to implement some form of a formative assessment at the very beginning of the unit, which would help determine where the students are in their learning. 

4. For next week, I plan to implement a genetics based activity, since the students are likely to already have some knowledge about this unit after about a week of doing it in class. I will be preparing an activity on translation and transcription using an online activity that I found from the University of Utah, which guides students through the process of transcription and translation using an interactive video that has students place in different nucleotides while learning about each individual process. The activity is only about 10 minutes and will be followed up with a formative assessment that will ask the students to make sense of the activity they just did. The students will take the activity home (because it requires listening to it) and bring it back the following week for me to analyze. I also am aware that some students may not have access to computers or internet at home, and Ms. Shema said she would address this with the students and explain to them that they can use the school computer lab to complete the project. 

5. For my comfort level this week, I give myself a 3 because I was not involved with the lesson again. Next week, I plan to be more active and have an activity prepared for the students. 

Week Seven: March Mammal Madness

2. For week seven of my field experience, I took a more passive role in the classroom as the students presented the work they had been doing for the last three school days. The seventh and sixth graders joined in a combined class to each give a presentation of two animals that they will then need to rank in a bracket format. This bracket, then, is submitted to the national March Mammal Madness organization, which uses a similar idea as March Madness for basketball but instead applies it to ranking mammals based on who would win if two of them were to be put in the same environment and had to battle. The students therefore spent the last few days of school diverting their attention from their studies of reproduction and genetics, and instead preparing powerpoint slides for two animals, each. Then, the students would spend the day I observed and the next day giving these presentations and creating their bracket. Because of the student-led nature of this lesson, and because it was removed from any of the curriculum topics, I was not involved much in the lesson nor did I prepare a formative assessment. Instead, I handed the students a paper that had them pick one presentation they were interested in and comment on what they found the most interesting and what they hoped to know more about. I did not work with any student individually this week, but the papers they turned in were mostly detailed and showed me that the students were able to engage with the presentations others gave. 

3. Since I did not work with any student alone this week, I do not have any specific recommendations for a teacher working with any of the students. However, if I had to make a recommendation based on observing this lesson in general, I would suggest the teacher just does not do March Mammal Madness. I thought the activity was kind of a mess, the kids had a hard time being quiet and listening to presentations in a room with 50 other kids, and it seemed like Ms. Shema and the 6th grade teacher were generally stressed more with trying to keep the students quiet and respectful than with the actual content of the presentations. If a teacher does choose to do this activity, I would recommend trying to tie in the presentations with something the students had already learned in prior lessons or units. That is, these presentations were not really grounded in any scientific interpretation of the research the students had done, and instead were just a collection of facts about really random animals that the students had mostly never seen nor heard of before. I think if the teachers had tried to tie the content more into relatable scientific knowledge, like the prior unit that just ended on reproduction, the students would have gotten more out of the lesson. As far as I see it, since the students did not have to do any scientific interpretation, the focus of March Mammal Madness shifted to just being about giving presentations, which were somewhat unsuccessful in the format they were given. 

4. For the next class session, Ms. Shema does not know what she will be teaching. March Mammal Madness held her back a lot (to the point that she might not be able to complete the curriculum the students should be completing), which means that the lesson timeline is not planned out yet, especially with the separation caused by spring break. Therefore, I was not able to come up with a topic for a formative assessment yet. However, Ms. Shema and I decided it would be best that I email her closer to the date and ask about what topic she'll be covering at the next lesson I come to observe. If this lesson does involve the students starting their genetics unit, I plan to create a formative assessment that will test student prior knowledge, perhaps by seeking to relate the new genetics topics to what they already learned about reproduction. This will help me determine student grouping based on their prior knowledge, and will allow me to design activities that will best suit specific students' needs for future lessons. Additionally, I plan to start my research project next week, which means I'll be handing out papers to the students that will help me collect data on use of non-inclusive language and its relation to gender roles in the classroom. 

5. This week, I would rate my comfort level a 3. This was the lesson I was least involved with at this point, and I did not see too much benefit from the lesson besides it just being something fun to switch up the pattern once in a while (except that it took up 5 days worth of class time). I wish that I had gotten to interact more with specific students, and therefore I am rating my confidence a 3/5. 


Week Six: Rate Your Own Confidence

2. This week in my field experience, my partner and I prepared a paper for the students to do as a way to wrap up our unit on sexual and asexual reproduction. The paper included questions testing the students’ general understanding of the topics and aiming at seeing if the students can apply vocabulary and identify the misconceptions we had talked about. Along with each question was a section for each student to rate their level of confidence. Furthermore, the students were instructed to turn in the sheet of paper and we wrote feedback and more prompting questions on it, then returned it to the students. Then, the students resubmitted the final paper after they corrected it, but my partner and I did emphasize that they were not being graded on accuracy. I thought this activity worked well and showed us each student’s progress, but I wish we had done it earlier in the unit so that I could use these confidence results and answers to place students in skill groups and assign fitting work for each group. During this activity, most students were able to submit their work early enough to get feedback, but other students did not seem to care for the work. These are the same two students (Danny and David) who typically sit in class and do not do their work, so I tried to work with them more closely at the end of class upon seeing them asking other people for answers. I tried asking them prompting questions and telling them that the assignment is meant to be a reflection of what they know, not what they should know. I told David to make an educated guess on the answers, then told him he got the right answer and he seemed really excited, which made me happy. However, class ended before I got to work with Danny, and he submitted his sheet the best he could but did not get feedback from me. Still, I thought he knew what he was doing, at least partially, and I wish that he had put in more effort.


3. To offer insight to any teacher, I would recommend doing an activity like this. I felt that it worked well both in showing me and in showing the students what they can work on. However, I would recommend this type of activity earlier in the unit and with enough time to then place students into groups based on their confidence level. As for working with someone like David, it seemed that he really just needed the extra support and motivation. I have noticed he has a hard time in class before and often misbehaves, and perhaps the extra attention is helpful for him. However, I wonder if this extra attention would instead reinforce this behavior as a mechanism of asking for help, and I wonder how I could address this. As for Danny, I have worked one on one with him before and I think he does not realize how capable he is. I think it is important for a teacher working with to really emphasize that he should focus on doing his best, because I think being graded and scoring badly has the opposite effect from motivating him, instead discouraging him from trying at all. 

4. For next week in class, the students will be working on projects about animals and doing a bracket with them, sort of like March Madness but with animals. This marks the end of the sexual and asexual reproduction unit, but since there is such a set plan in place, there is not much time for me to implement any formative assessment for the next unit they are starting on genetics. Instead, I’ll be preparing a sheet asking each student to comment about what they learned from one other  student’s presentation. I hope that this activity will help ensure they are attentive and that this will increase their understanding of their peers’ work.


5. This week, I would rate my comfort level a 4 out of 5. I think the activity I implemented worked out well, but I wish I had gotten the chance to give feedback to all of the students. Still, I can use what I learned from this week in the future unit on genetics.



Week Five: Having No Mentor Teacher

2. This Monday, Ms. Shema was not there and the students had a substitute teacher. I knew head of time Ms. Shema wouldn't be there, but the substitute teacher did not know whom my partner and I were, which made for a confusing experience at the start of the class, and also the class period was a bit chaotic and loud as a whole. However, once we figured it out, we started doing the bellwork, which was a formative assessment that we had designed about asexual and sexual reproduction with the prompt "I used to think... but now I know", designed as a way for students and for my partner and I to reflect on their progress. This activity did not work too well in the first class period. The students filled out what they could, but were a bit confused, likely because they were not used to doing activities like these. Additionally, when we discussed the activity, it was not very effective and was moreso students just calling out what they wrote down. In the second class period, I decided to change up the activity to be a bit more collaborative. The students each worked on their own to fill out their charts, because I still wanted them to have the opportunity to self reflect. Yet when it came time to share, I prompted one student to share their "I used to think..." while another student would then share what they think the student now knows based on their initial statement. I found that this worked well because this allowed students to identify what they think other's common misconceptions might have been and also created a more interactive and fun activity. Following this, the students had to do an activity where they analyzed two articles and determined whether they represented sexual or asexual reproduction, then filled out a table with questions about the topic. I noticed that one of the students, Zoe, did not even have a pencil out when we were starting the bellwork. Additionally, everyone in the class sits together and she sat a table on her own. Therefore, I spent the majority of this class period working with her, while periodically checking in on the other students to see if they had any questions. The students had been working on this unit for over a month now, yet Zoe did not even know how to differentiate between mitosis and meiosis, or any of the characteristics of sexual and asexual reproduction. In order to explain some of these questions to her, I tried to relate them to things she would already be familiar with. For instance, when it comes to the question of parental care I asked her 'how many kids do humans usually have at once?' and 'how many does a flower have at once?' then I asked her to analyze what this number difference might imply about the relationship between level of parental care that an organism provides to its offspring and offspring numbers. We also went over some terms that may stand out in each article and differentiate them between sexual or asexual, such as "gametes" or "binary fission". Overall, she was able to complete the activity and she seemed really willing to receive help and to learn more, and I am hoping that the time I spent with her will help her realize she is capable of knowing and understanding all of this complicated material. 

3. Insight: When giving suggesting about working with a student like Zoe, I think it is really important that the teacher start off with scaffolding from the very beginning. As I mentioned before, the students had been working on this unit for weeks now, and Zoe seemed as though she had never been introduced to it. This week's class reading (https://www.nctm.org/Standards-and-Positions/Position-Statements/Access-and-Equity-in-Mathematics-Education/ ) related to the idea of creating access in a classroom, but specifically ensuring this access is equitable for all students. That is, creating a learning opportunity for students that will challenge them at all levels. It seems that in this class, every student does the same activity. Some find it very easy, and others, like Zoe, remain confused and do not get the help they need. I think that this needs to be addressed early on so that it does not come to be a month into the unit and the student still does not understand the basics of the topic. It is important for a teacher to perform a formative assessment at the start of the unit, determine students' starting levels, then use these results to assign work that challenges each student to the extent where they are able to do work and also able to work hard at what they are doing to achieve desired results. I think this type of differentiation would have been really helpful for Zoe. Beyond scaffolding and differentiation, I also think that the individual work I did with Zoe will likely help, and I would recommend other teachers to spend that extra time with students who seem like they need help but may not know how to ask for it. 

4. For next week's session, I still have to talk to my partner about it, but I hope to have students rank themselves on their understanding of the unit they'd been working on for a long time now. Based on this, I hope to have around three different types of activities that students will work on together with other students who ranked themselves in the same level of understanding (from 1-3, corresponding with the worksheet difficulty). I am not toally sure how effective this will be or if it is a good idea to have the students know what others ranked themselves, which is why I still need to discuss this with my partner and with Ms. Shema. However, I think the idea of having differentiated work will be really helpful in this classroom, especially since it is a general science class that seems to encompass many different experience levels in different students. 

5. I would rate my comfort level this week a 3.5. As I mentioned in the beginning, Ms. Shema not being here made it so the students were not listening as well, especially in the first period. I even remember myself thinking at some point that there is no way I was ever going to teach middle school students again because it felt like I was babysitting at some points. However, now that I look back at it, I don't think it was actually that bad -- everybody got their work done and they all participated in our class discussion. I  also was glad to help students who were confused and I think we had an impactful formative assessment. 

2. Context of the session: This week in my field placement, I was involved in several different part of the lesson. First, my partner and I designed a formative assessment activity designed to help students distinguish between mitosis and meiosis. During this activity, I walked around the room and some students seemed to struggle with getting started making their comparison charts. The part that particularly challenged the students was the section in which they had to reason why they placed certain concepts in either category. I found this interesting as it seemed that most students justified their thinking by saying they used their notes or they remember what the teacher told them. To me, this signified that these students may be lacking some experience with the claim, evidence, reasoning model, especially the reasoning. Furthermore, as I talked to students during this activity, I noticed a common pattern in which students attributed mitosis to those organisms who asexually reproduce, but not to ones that sexually reproduce. I explored this with the students as a class when we were discussing this activity, by asking them, "which side of the chart should mitosis go on, and why?" Most students argued for the asexual section, but Melissa raised her hand and said that it can go in both. This led to addressing the misconception where students believe mitosis doesn't happen in sexually reproducing organisms. I discussed the example of a scraped elbow, and how those cells are not gametic and do not use sexual reproduction to heal. Beyond this activity, we did a lab that involved M&M's that represented sexually and asexually reproducing populations through their difference in M&M color (where the multicolored cup represented a sexually reproducing population). The students were tasked with working with a partner while I announced different events that killed off certain M&M colors, then the students analyzed the differences between which populations survived and how this relates to advantages and disadvantages of sexual and asexual reproduction. During this activity, I worked generally with Steven who seemed to be having a hard time that day, having had his phone confiscated and seeming generally distracted and confused. He did his best to answer the question, and we discussed some answers together. I tried to carefully guide him through the thinking process, especially when he was determining the advantages and disadvantages for the forms of reproduction. He struggled, but seemed to understand the concept by the end and even stayed after class to finish his work. 

3. insight: For my recommendations this week, I will be focusing on Steven. This student seemed to be struggling, not only today but in general. He got in multiple disputes with Ms. Shema and had to be moved around. Furthermore, he did not ask for any help on his work, but was not filling it out, which indicated to me that he was simply confused about how to start. I was glad to have noticed that he needed help, because I think working together on the problems helped ensure that he had a complete understanding of the lab activity. For a teacher working with Steven, I would recommend ensuring that he is actually understanding the work and being wary about giving away any of the answers. He seemed to be trying to get the answers out of me while I was helping him instead of trying to understand the work. Instead, I responded to his questions with more questions, and through this process he eventually came up with his own answers. I also would recommend being patient and emplying proper wait time when working with this students. I believe wait time is something I could have improved upon in my own interactions with him, which would have both helped me to determine his level of confidence and avoid giving away any of the answers. 

4. For next week's session, I plan to bring another form of formative assessment, this time not focusing on reasoning and analysis, but moreso on self reflection. I hope to use prompts that will encourage students to address their own preconceptions and how those have changed throughout our lessons. For instance, I can use the "I used to think... but now I know..." table to help students organize their thinking. This will be especially interesting for students like Steven, who had been struggling with some of the concepts. I will be looking for ways in which the activities I organize have influenced student thinking, and allow these to influence my future lesson choices. 

5. My comfort level this week was a 5. I had a lot of fun with this lab! In fact, if I were to ever teach this subject again to a similar age group, I think I would implement something similar to it. The students were engaged with the lesson, and furthermore I was happy that I was able to identify and address a common misconception on this topic.  I also enjoyed how well my formative assessment flowed into the lab activity (the two both involved comparing and contrasting, and made a lot of sense when taught together). Therefore, I was comfortable this week. 




1. Week Two: If a Cell Was a... Super Mario Character

 2. Context of the session: This week's field experience was another observation of the way Ms. Shema runs her classroom. This week's topic was about asexual reproduction; however, only one of the two classes I observed actually got the chance to begin learning this topic. This happened because at the start of the lesson (after bellwork), Ms. Shema presented the students with the opportunity to present a project they had done on cell structure and function for extra credit. In the first class, only three students volunteered to present, and two of them had identical presentations so Ms. Shema knew they were cheating. In the second class, so many students volunteered that it took up the entire class period and they did not get to start on their reproduction notes. Since this took up so much class time, there was not much time for me to personally tutor any students yet. I did notice the way in which the students interacted with each other, however. I noticed that (all pseudonyms!) Yana was very adamant about class control and even attempted to tell other students to be quiet a few times. I noticed that Steve and Mike bounced off of each other often, and when one made a comment the second one would play off of it. Sometimes, this distracted the class. Overall, I discovered that these students are all very playful and were so engaged by these presentations, especially in the second class. I believe the reason for this is that they got to pick their presentation topics themselves, meaning they ended up being humorous and engaging to other students in the class. 

3. Insight: Since I didn't tutor any one specific student this week, I will instead discuss the learning needs of the class as a whole. Some recommendations I would give to a teacher working with this class after observing this lesson would include knowing how to control the classroom while still letting the students have their fun. The class seemed like it could fall off track very easily with the students being so talkative and interactive with one another. However, the fact that the students were having so much fun made the lesson more engaging and it felt more informal than a lecture would. Ms. Shema was able to balance her classroom by allowing her students to speak out of turn, but reminding them frequently that they must stay on task, listen and stay respectful when others are presenting. 

4. Planning: Following today's session, I discussed with Ms. Shema ways in which I could actively help out in her classroom, since the students don't typically do individual or group work and are instead listening to her talk (as far as I have observed). We agreed that I would come prepared with an activity to do on recombination, so my partner and I decided we would bring in gummy worms and have students work in partners to create a model that would display chromosomal recombination (most likely done by ripping parts of the gummy worms and attaching them elsewhere). This activity will give me a chance to walk around the classroom, hear student thinking and note if anyone has any misconceptions or confusion regarding the topic. Then, I can identify which students might need extra support and tutor them individually based on this observation. This lesson plan will enhance student understanding as students love candy, which will motivate them, and they'll have fun while still forming their own models to represent phenomena. This will also emphasize to them the importance of modeling and forming models in science.

5. My level of comfort this week was a 4 because I was not involved much with the lesson, since it was just the students presenting their projects for the most part. I feel more comfortable with the students as I am starting to be around them more and hear the way they function in the classroom, helping me get to know them and form helpful relationships that will encourage them to ask me for any help they need. I am excited to get more involved in the coming weeks.