Embedded Files
FIELD EXPERIENCE INFORMATION
Mentor Teacher: Mr. Gulledge
School: Eastside High School
Course Title: Pre-IB Chemistry
Grade Level: 10th
Topics Covered: Lab reports, Polyatomic Ions, Ionic and Covalent Bonds, Formal Charge, Chemical Bonding, Cations and Anions, Lewis Structure, Octet rule, Bohr Model, Orbitals and quanta
Lessons Taught: Four 5E based lesson plans written and carried out fully by myself and my partner; 5 shorter lesson plans and observational lessons co-taught with my mentor teacher. In these lessons, I created ice-breakers and interactive activities to engage the class with a chemistry topic. See lesson plans linked below.
LESSON PLANS
There is no lesson plan for my first observational lesson.
FIELD EXPERIENCE REFLECTIONS
Weekly, I wrote a reflection following each one of my lesson plans detailing my role in the classroom, high and low points, what I learned and my comfort level for the lesson. These observations are all found in this document:
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Formative assessment is used to determine student understanding and progress throughout a lesson. In my lesson plans, my partner and I made sure to include several different types of formative assessment opportunities at different points in our lessons. Some example are listed below:
Exit Slips:
At the end of several lessons, I handed the students note-cards on which they answered a question specific to the lesson. During my lesson on lab reports, the students answered about what they thought the one most important part of a lab report is. My lesson on classification of elements included an exit slip asking the students to name one thing they learned and one question they still have.
Exit slips serve to show what students paid most attention to during class as the student chooses to write about anything they want. These slips were all handed out at the end of a lesson, and I selected this type of formative assessment as a way to determine which parts of my lesson were memorable or stood out, then later analyze why by watching over my recorded lessons.
An Always True, Sometimes True, and Never True Chart:
During my lesson on chemical bonds, I used a chart labeled always, sometimes, and never true at two points int the lesson. First, I used this chart as a formative assessment mid-lesson, when the students and I set it up together on the board as a way to discuss what students gathered from the worksheet they had just completed.
Using this chart here was a way for me to ensure that every student is where they needed to be after the worksheet, allowing us to move on to more advanced topics. If the students showed confusion and could not bring up any ideas for the chart, this might have indicated that we needed to go back and do more work before moving on. I also was hoping to use this chart to address any misconceptions.
Second, I used the always, sometimes and never true chart in the form of an exit slip at the end of the lesson plan. I handed out the students a blank notecard and instructed them to construct their own table and fill it out based on the lesson.
I used the information collected from these notecards in a similar manner that I used the other exit slips: ensuring that the students understood what they should have from the lesson, and seeing where I can improve.
3. "You Say - I Say" Game
This game involved the teacher choosing one student to give a fact or question about a topic. Then, that student picked another student who does the same, and we keep going until everyone in the class has shared. I used this game during my lesson plan on polyatomic ions. Unlike the previous formative assessments which were designed to test what the students had gathered from the lesson, this formative assessment was at the very beginning of the lesson. Therefore, I used this game to determine how much students already knew about the topic and which ideas we should spend more or less time on throughout the lesson.
EXAMPLES OF STUDENT WORK
Always true, sometimes true and never true exit slips: I included these exit slips from my lesson on classification of elements. I chose the first exit slip because one of the big things we talked about in this lesson was that the octet rule is generally correct, but does not apply everywhere, like in hydrogen and helium. I included the second exit slip because the lesson was also largely about bonding patterns, with cations and anions losing or gaining electrons. These exit slips allowed me to determine what the students understood from the lessons, and these two students did a nice job with understanding the main points we discussed.
2. Student Claim, Evidence and Reasoning Worksheets: These worksheets were handed out to the students during my lesson on writing a lab report. Prior to the worksheets, we had discussed the importance of claim evidence and reasoning and what belongs in each part. The activity involved the student reading an article, then using the CER model to discuss with their groups what happened within the article and determine the type of plant being grown. Both papers I selected chose the Fiddle Leaf Fig to be the plant, demonstrating their use of scientific reasoning in the reasoning category and using evidence directly from the article in the evidence category. Following the group work, feedback was given to the students as we went through the worksheet as a class with everyone being encouraged to share a part.
3. Exit slips about the most important part of a lab: For this student artifact, I chose to include two exit slips from my lesson about writing a lab. These exit slips belong to the same students who wrote the two worksheets I included above. In these exit slips, we see both students choosing a different section of the lab report but explaining in the same way that the idea of a lab report is to communicate results from a lab to other people. Both these students chose to include sections of the lab report in whic the CER model is used, showing me that the worksheet was effective and that the students understood the idea of CER is to communicate results in a scientific manner so that people understand them.
4. Student feedback form: During my last day teaching, I asked the students to fill out a feedback form regarding my teaching. This was not a form of feedback from me to the students, but the other way around, as I am able to use these feedback forms to improve my teaching in the future. I included a feedback form that commented on a bingo game I did with the students particularly because they had chosen the activity as their favorite one we did. This was surprising to me because I did not love the bingo game initially, but it seemed to work well for the students and I was glad to receive that feedback. Additionally, the student suggested I use more powerpoints and more comprehensive notes, which are both things my lessons were definitely lacking and I can improve upon.
5. Chemical Bonding worksheet #1
During my lesson on chemical bonding, I created a worksheet that encouraged students to use resources like their textbooks and phones to research certain elements. In the example I included, the last question has several different representations of one element. Specifically, this student had asked me questions about why certain elements are represented with their electrons grouped while others show lone pairs. The arrows drawn on the last question show the discussion we had and feedback I gave the student. I related her prior knowledge about each arrow in the orbital being filled before doubling up the arrows to explain to her that the reason that we see certain elements with lone pairs and others with single electrons is the same reason we fill the arrows up the way she knows.
6. Chemical Bonding Worksheet #2:
On the same worksheet as my previous example, certain students had differing elements in their last question to encourage a greater variety of teamwork and classroom discussion. The worksheet included below shows a student who researched lithium (rather than sulfur in the worksheet above). I included this student's work because she showed multiple facets of her element's bonding pattern, which was the intent of the activity. For feedback, I walked around the class and discussed answers with students, then we went over everything together as a class.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse