Unit Reflective Summary

Teacher Candidate for Science Endorsement: Jodi Wilder

Instructor: Terri George

School: Big Shanty Grade: 5

Unit Topic: Watershed Wonders

Write a 1-2 page summary of your experiences teaching this unit, addressing the
following questions:

 How well were the unit’s student performance objectives attained? Were there
opportunities for the students to develop conceptual understanding through
engaging in the learning cycle (5E’s)?

 How did you use formative assessments to inform instructional decisions during
the unit?

 Were the lessons/tasks scientifically worthwhile for all students? Were there
students that had difficulty achieving the goals of the unit?

 Was there evidence of a classroom culture that honors inquiry, wrong answers,
personal challenge, collaboration, and disequilibrium as opportunities for new
learning by all students?

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

Use this page as a cover sheet for your summary.

 Lessons on the watershed and the school’s creek erosion problems kept the
student’s engaged and invested since they took ownership of the creek and nature trail
and really wanted to find solutions. The unit involved the 5 E’s in many ways, lots of
exploring, engagement, and explaining their thoughts and research. Lessons need more
than one hour and should be spread out over a couple weeks to promote more
exploring and explaining to each other. Before starting the unit, teachers need to create
groups of 2-3 students as consistent data teams throughout the unit.
In order for all students to be engaged in the data collection, rotations were used so that
all students had a chance to measure light and temperature as well as take pictures of
the changing area.
In order to improve student involvement and understanding, teachers should
assign jobs for data collection before going to the nature trail to prevent conflict. Clear
safety rules and more adult supervision like volunteers would be better for more focused
observations. When the students helped mark the site of erosion for observation, it
would be a good idea to have site post closer to the site for ease of movement
Teachers should model expectations using the shower curtain and chairs, desks
and a run off point and provide more direct expectations for building the run off model
of the school campus (what needs to be included, what needs to be labeled). Teachers
should review the C-E-R rubric before assigning the task and possible provide a model
for those learners who prefer visuals.