Lesson Sequence Report

Zoltan Raffai
TE 861B
Dec. 10th, 2014

In this final report of the lesson sequence I offer an account of the successes and shortcomings of my
lesson design and implementation. The lessons success is assessed by reflecting on how well the
students have met the performance expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and
the lesson objectives (the two largely overlapped), and by considering whether as a result of the lessons
the students knowledge of science literacy has deepened. The first part of the report discusses
students performance, and the conditions under which they worked. The second and third parts
present some samples of student work, and discuss areas for improvement in my lesson design and
implementation.
As a matter of convenience here are some of the key parameters of the lesson design:
Research Question:
"Based on the evidence you gather, which type of grass seems to be best adapted to its environment?"
Lesson Objectives:
The objective of these lessons was to engage students in the fundamentals of the scientific process, with
emphasis on the NGSSs practices of asking questions and engaging in argument from evidence. The
lesson sequence broadly modeled the steps involved in scientific research from asking an initial question
to answering it with some confidence.
Performance Expectations:
HS-LS4-4: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of
populations.

1. Learning Circumstances and Performance Expectations

I taught this lesson sequence to a group of 10-16 students (numbers depending on absenteeism on a
given day) that I dont usually teach, and whose level of knowledge of life sciences I couldnt know
beforehand. The students grade level varied between 7th-10th grade, most of them were 9th graders.
Because this wasnt quite a regular science class, and we were not equipped with a laboratory, our
activities were not scientifically rigorous, in our work we didnt refer to genetics, and didnt use
sophisticated terminology and biological theories. In the spirit of the National Research Councils K-12
Framework of Science Education our activities aimed to broadly model a scientific research cycle,
promoting students science literacy by deepening their understanding of core ideas of life sciences,

crosscutting concepts and scientific practices. Relative to some of the shortcomings of the lesson design
the students work met the performance expectations of the NGSS.
Before the beginning of the lesson sequence I assumed that the students knew the major tenets of the
theory of evolution through natural selection, while in our activities we didnt explicitly refer to natural
selection only to adaptation. I think that I didnt emphasize natural selection in this lesson because the
environment the students examined, the school garden, is manmade and not a true ecosystem because
it requires external interference for the maintenance of its state. In a future lesson I would have to
discuss natural selection, or some of the plants favorable treatment by people to explain why some
species thrive in the examined area. Another key point in the NGSSs performance expectations was
adaptation. Students did understand the concept of adaptation; this was of major emphasis in every
activity throughout the lesson sequence. In other words the idea of adaptation was well understood,
and the activities required the students to recognize evidence for adaptation, while the mechanisms for
adaptation, namely selection through mutation and inheritance were largely ignored in our discussions
and other activities. In the first activity of Day 2 students have shown that they were aware of biotic and
abiotic factors affecting the plants. They listed such factors affecting the plants and recognized that in
the given microclimate the abundance, or the lack of, a given factor, precipitation for instance, would
benefit some grasses more than others. In fact, students partially based their arguments on examining
the state of the different grass types as a result of the amount of climatic factors affecting them, finding
that some were thriving, green and lush, while others were struggling, brown and burnt. Students
demonstrated that they understood the concept of plant adaptation to given environmental factors.
They gave evidence of this by listing abiotic factors such as: water, temperature, nutrients in the soil,
atmospheric gases, sunlight; and biotic factors such as other plants, animals, and humans. They then
went on and connected these factors to plants life-functions and to the plant structures that support
those functions. For instance, they connected sunlight to grass-blades (leaves) and to photosynthesis.
During the asking meaningful questions activity of Day 4 students asked questions from me about
signs of evidence for a healthy looking grass-blade that receives adequate amounts of sunlight, and later
found that some grasses were struggling with the intense sunshine of our region. Considering how
broadly constructed our research project was, partially on purpose and partially by default, I think that
students performance and understanding of the main principles and their connections was adequate.
A main concern in this lesson sequence was for students to engage in the scientific practices of asking
meaningful questions and arguing from evidence. There were a number of activities during which
students were asked to engage in these practices. I emphasized these practices, as opposed to hard
science and facts, because I felt that teaching overarching processes (core ideas and crosscutting
concepts) and the real life practices scientists engage in was a main vision of the K-12 Framework for
Science Education and the NGSS. To the most part students performed these practices quite well.
I think that students understanding of the Nature of Science has developed well during the lesson
sequence. On the first days orientation activity I asked the students what they taught science is. They
responded by listing the steps of the scientific method. They knew these steps quite well using the same
terminology American students would use to speak about the scientific method (remember, these were
Brazilian students). Next, we went on discussing some of the things that were different in the real life

science practice and the textbook version of it. The lesson sequences activities were designed in part
for the student to get a firsthand experience, though very much simplified, of the real life scientific
process. For instance students were assigned to research groups in order to model the scientific
communitys sometimes collaborative and often competitive behavior. Two cycles of sample collection
and brainstorming (hypothesis building and asking questions) were designed in the lesson sequence,
again, to model the cyclical nature of the scientific process demonstrating that it is not straight-forward
and linear. Though evidence for this is hard to point at, I believe that students grasped the difference
between the real and the textbook version of science. Furthermore, because the arguments the
students built were very hypothetical, students understood that science assigns probabilities to
statements rather than absolute certainty. At the end of the presentation activity on Day 5 I evaluated
the groups arguments and explained to the students the merits in each groups argument, and
emphasized that each is argument is valid to a degree. Finally, we followed up the lesson sequence with
an additional activity requiring students to explain their reasoning process by which they selected the
type of grass that was best adapted to its environment. This activity was another cycle of arguing from
evidence, the students enjoyed explaining their reasoning.

Examples of Student Work

Some of the meaningful questions that the students asked in activity 1 of Day 4:
-

Whats a more important indicator of adaptation: lots of grass of the same kind, or healthy grass
of the same kind? (directed to the teacher)
How can we tell the grass has enough water? (directed to the teacher)
Where [within the garden] did you find type-E grass? (directed to other research group)

Students succeeded in connecting the crosscutting concepts of structure and function with the practice
of arguing from evidence. They used evidence based on structure and function to build their arguments
about adaptation. For instance a typical argument was Group Cs:
Statement: Grass Type-F is best adapted to its environment.
Argument 1: Type-F is well distributed, students found it everywhere in the garden and all groups
found it.
Argument 2: Photo evidence shows that type-F is healthy ,and green everywhere it was found.
Argument 3: Type-F is flowering, this is an evidence that the plant is reproducing and thriving.
The level of the arguments sophistication was similar across the research groups.

Students were not entirely successful in their efforts of sample collection and evidence construction.
They could have been more systematic in collecting samples, documenting where the samples came
from, comparing and contrasting the characteristics of areas that different grass types seemed to favor.
Students could have made plots of the grasses distribution on scale-drawings of the garden, and could

have used simple statistical methods to provide quantitative evidence for grass abundance pointing to
adaptation. These were simple tools students could have used to make their research more scientifically
founded.

Areas for Improvement in the Lesson Design

Next time I would either work with the students in a natural environment or would work in the school
garden again but would emphasize that its a manmade environment. In a future lesson sequence I
would put more emphasis on natural selection, or by contrast selection by man, and would discuss the
role of inheritance in natural selection. This change would improve the lesson sequence by bringing in
core components of the theory of biological evolution.
I would also like to make use of at least some laboratory equipment, microscopes foremost, and do a
more detailed study of structure and function, and collect evidence for adaptation in a more
scientifically based manned (stomate counts on blades for instance). Next time Ill give a better
orientation to students about systematically collecting samples and other evidence, and would use
statistical evidence for adaptation. For instance measuring the area that a grass type covers versus the
area that others cover, or counting the bunches of grass (some grasses grow in bunches others grow as a
carpet) in shaded versus sunlit areas. By these changes the lesson sequence would better model the
details of the real life science process, and would involve mathematics in the support of arguments.

Conclusion
Within its intended scope the lesson sequence was largely successful in deepening students knowledge
of the nature of science, and in improving students understanding of scientific practices of arguing from
evidence and asking questions. The lesson sequence can be improved by a more careful selection of the
natural environment under study, by placing more emphasis on the idea of natural selection to explain
biological adaptation, and by the use of more detailed and scientifically better founded sample
collection and evidence building processes in support of the scientific arguments proposed.