Ivan Marquez

EDUR 5254/487
Science Methods
5E Lesson Plan Reflection
When first attempting my lesson plan I felt as if my engagement
activity was a complete waste of time and failure because of lack of
structure. Just after beginning the activity I realized that the activity was
going to be hectic as the students began to become overly excited about
getting into a circle and throwing a yarn ball. I felt as if the purpose of the
activity was lost, as I had to stop activity to several times to repeat directions
and address directions that impeded the success of the rest of the class. I
could revamp this activity by providing the students with written instructions
that they would read and repeat as a class before we started the activity.
Another solution that I am moving towards is to get rid of the activity
completely and solely watch the video how wolves changed rivers. As the
video plays I would have the students answer reflective questions and
discuss how important the role of predators are to the ecosystem. This will
allow us to think of other relationships within nature and what they are
specifically. After reviewing the 5 artifact exit tickets, 2 students (Noe,
Jocelyn) emphasized the helpfulness of the video while only 1 student
(Jasmine) expressed the string activity as helpful.
In my explore activity I have the students complete a claim-evidencereasoning statement sheet to clearly outline their thinking process. I would
change this activity by completely eliminating the evidence box from the
worksheet because I never provided the students with any type of support,
articles, or data during the activity. For all 5 students and their claimevidence-reasoning worksheet, the evidence box was an extension of their
reasoning or a repeat of their justification. This box is misleading to the
entire activity and many of the students feel as if they have to fill it out even
though they are given nothing but pictures with the animals names. A way I
could adjust this activity is by providing a small description for each animal
to be used for the evidence box but that would defeat the purpose of the
explore activity which is to allow students to investigate possible
relationships among the organisms.
The explore activity felt like a large failure because I would not assist
the students in categorizing the organisms. After the students stopped
asking for support they began to make connections on their own and create
some interesting relationships between the organisms. My IEP student was
able to categorize the organisms in relation to size and similar species. This
allowed my advance student to be on the same level as the rest of the class
because each answer was in itself unique and correct as long as they were
able to justify their answer. I found that 3 out of 5 artifacts organized the
species by habitat or environment. All this information allowed gain a better
understand of what connections the students are making and what they are

looking for when they analyze the pictures. This in turn was the most useful
for instruction because I no longer had to guess whether the students were
familiar with the content and students were ready to make more
connections.
Lastly I believe the guided notes to the most helpful to the student
learning, 4 out of 5 students expressed how useful the notes were because
they allowed them to follow the slides and avoid missing information. The
way each slide chunked the information was not overwhelming and allowed
the students to refer back when they were answering worksheets. I would
change the notes by providing some images or have the students draw in
images so that they can make better connections to the content.