Manar Karaja

Second Observation/
Different Grade Level
04/24/2018

Kindergarten Living/non-living lesson

This was a 40 minute observation of a general education kindergarten classroom with 24

students and two teachers. Today’s lesson is part two of a unit on living/nonliving things. Students
planted seeds and have been observing and collecting data on their growth. Teacher’s name is Ms.
Gibson

Ms. Gibson started by reviewing what the classroom has been learning about by asking
questions about the topic of their learning. Students answered “plants”. Ms. Gibson continued
questioning them by asking: What do plants need? What are plants? What do living things need?
Students raised their hands and shared their answers. Ms. Gibson wrote their answers on the
whiteboard. When a student gave the wrong answer, Ms. Gibson questioned him/her till he/she
reached the right answer. Ms. Gibson then made a connection between today’s lesson and the class’s
field trip to the Chattahoochee Nature Center from few days back.

After the review, Ms. Gibson showed the students a video from youtube discussing two main
questions: “what do living things need?” and “what are characteristics of living things?” Ms. Gibson
asked questions about the video: “What did you see in the video? What was the boy doing? What were
some of things the boy saw in the video?” One question she asked to assess understanding of concept of
living/nonliving was “Is the boy living?”, and she instructed the students to raise their hands if yes/no.
There were 4 students who provided the wrong answer and 20 who were correct. Ms. Gibson continued
questioning the students about the information provided in the video. One boy answered “reproduce”
for the question “what do living things do?” She checked for vocabulary understanding by asking what
does “reproduce” mean?

The next part of the lesson was a game on the smartboard “How do we know if something is
living?” On the white board, the students had the information needed to answer the game questions
about living/non-living things. When students had difficulty answering or answered incorrectly, she
referred them to the information on the whiteboard. When the activity was done, the students noticed
the pattern in their answers.

The next part of the lesson was a Guessing game “Who am I”. The teacher was picking students
who had not participated so far or ones she needed to check for understanding. She also used the
thumps up/down method for assessment when answering questions about living/nonliving things. Then
the students sorted pictures into living and nonliving boxes.

The last part of this lesson was an activity in which the students were instructed to draw three
things of living and three things of non-living items on a provided sheet. After drawing the pictures,
students were instructed to label them.

This was the end of the lesson.