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CT Observation Reflection #2

The Reflection
There were a few things that I implemented differently. Originally, my pre assessment
was going to be 10 questions long but due to time constraints I changed it to 5 questions. There
was 4 multiple choice questions and a short response. Based off of the pre-assessment I knew I
had to spend a little more time than I originally thought to go over the steps of the scientific
method. If I was going to teach this lesson again to the same group of students, I would have
made sure that I pulled up the right PowerPoint and spent a little more time demonstrating the
directions on the activity. For the most part, I would have kept the rest of the lesson the same but
I felt that the wrong PowerPoint was a little confusing for the students because even though the
PowerPoint contained the same information the example the it used was not as effective because
the experiment example was not strong enough, so when the students went to work on their
activity they had several questions.
What surprised me the most out of this lesson, was that the students kept getting results
and conclusion confused. At about 22.54 minutes into the lesson I found myself going over the
differences for the 4th time. The scientific method is not something new to these students and
based off of the pre-assessment, it was not an area that lacked comprehension. Looking back at
this experience, it reminds me of something that we went over in my childrens literature class
about reading your material ahead of time to make sure it is appropriate. I took the gamble by
showing the other PowerPoint, granted I did skim the PowerPoint ahead of time to make sure it
was age and school appropriate but I didnt really stop and think about how the examples that the
PowerPoint gave could be misleading.

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CT Observation Reflection #2

The Analysis
Looking over my video recording and my student work, I can see that the students were
learning during my lesson. During my wrap-up of the lesson, I had a classroom discussion to go
back over what we have learned and did a comprehension check. At about 1 hour and 3.12
minutes into my lesson I was able to observe my students giving and explaining the different
steps of the scientific method and they also showed how they would apply their knowledge to a
real life problem that I gave them for their task. My activities were somewhat effective. The
foldable that the students filled out for their science notebooks worked out really well, however
my application task didnt work out as well as I had hoped. I felt that the problem that I gave
them was a little too broad because I had to repeat the directions at least 7 times. There was one
student who also wanted to argue the problem was not testable, which I can see where she is
coming from but that was not what the directions were that were given. I think in the future I will
spend more time giving an explicit set of directions to avoid confusion.
There were a few students who did really well with this task. This group of students were
engaged throughout the lesson and were able to apply what they learned to a real life scenario.
These students also activity participated during classroom discussions and shared their student
work with the rest of the class. I feel that at least 2 of these students performed really well
because I was teaching rather than their teacher. I have a good relationship with these two
students and I think that is what kept them more engaged during the lesson. Based after what
happened during this lesson, I will make sure that my directions are more explicit and review the
differences between results and conclusion.
For the an evaluation for this lesson I would like to do more with performance tasks
considering my pre-assessment didnt go as well as I had hoped it would have. The point of this

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CT Observation Reflection #2

lesson was to review the steps of the scientific method and to show how you would apply it to
real world situations, so I feel that a performance task would be the better option for this lesson.

CT Observation
Notes