Lesson Teaching Reflective Summary

Teacher Candidate for Science Endorsement: Alana Davis

Instructor: Dawn Hudson & Wes McCoy
School: Mableton ES

Grade: 5th

Lesson Topic: Plant & Animal Cell Analogy Videos

Write a brief summary or blog of your experiences teaching this lesson,
addressing the following questions:

What went well? What did not go well? (Cite specific examples)
This activity
For this lesson, students were tasks with designing and creating
cell analogy videos to show their learning at the end of the unit.
These videos turned out to be the best activity for class of
advanced learners to do! They excelled at creating and
designing the iMovie videos to show an analogy of a plant or
animal cell to a movie, book, or place. It really made them think
abstractly and process their thinking to apply it to a new idea.
The students worked in collaborative groups really well, and they
worked well with the technology. I did have some groups that
were quicker than others, but having a technology guru who
roamed around and helped other groups was a great asset to
have. I also ended up differentiating this activity by providing a
script and cell part charts to groups that needed additional help.

How well were the lessons student performance objectives

attained?
The students did a fantastic job meeting the overall student
performance objectives! I am proud of the way they chose to
think outside of the box to create such innovative and
imaginative videos for this lesson.

Did classroom activity center on science understanding, inquiry,

and sense-making by all students?
This classroom activity relied heavily on science understanding in
order for them to apply it and make an analogy. It really showed

me how much the students learned, and their technological

capabilities with limited instruction or direction. I really did not
give students too many constraints in that all I required was the
use of iMovie for their final product.

Did your scientific content knowledge enable you to support

students construction of knowledge and understanding of
important scientific concepts and processes?
My scientific content knowledge definitely gave me the ability to
support students construction of knowledge and understanding
for this activity. I was able to help connect their thinking with
what the objective of the activity was when they werent really
thinking clearly when creating their analogy.

When you have the opportunity to re-teach this lesson, what will
you do differently (strategies, teaching tools, assessments, etc.)
to improve student learning for all students?

I definitely think that the next time I re-teach this lesson, I will have
a mini-lesson on how to use iMovie before unleashing them to
design and create cell analogy videos. They turned out spectacular,
however, it would have been a faster process IF most students were
versed in using this app. I will most surely keep the job title of
Technology Guru for a student that has mastered or knows a lot
about the app to help others when their groups is done.