Today my group (group 1) presented our lesson on the 5 Senses. We had such a great direct and inquiry lesson planned for the students, but unfortunately it didn't go as planned. The students came to us very late, which made us run out of time for our direct lesson and made us rush through our inquiry lesson. We had a lot of information for the students to learn and go over in our direct instruction, which would prepare them for the inquiry instruction. For our direct instruction we did an overview of the 5 senses and then we were going to focus on the sense of taste. In our direct instruction we had planned for a quizlet, plickers, and a kahoot game to check for understanding and to keep the kids motivated. We also planned to show two videos to help keep the lesson fun and engaging. Check out our direct/inquiry lesson and videos below:
Here is our first video (Engagement)
Our second video (Scientific Method)
The sense of taste was our main focus for our inquiry instruction.
We wanted students to become "Sense Detectives" and work through the scientific method in a fun way, so we decided to have the students try different flavored liquids and decide if sight and color influences the way things taste to us. We made science journals for the students to record their data and we set-up stations with 4 different flavored drinks for them to try. The students were able to rotate through the stations very quickly and try each drink. One of our drinks was water and it was dyed with orange food coloring. Ultimately we were able to conclude that sight and color doesn't
influence they way food and drinks taste.
At the end of our inquiry we lesson we wanted the students to make a Flipgrid to Mrs. Benfer and tell her what they learned in our lesson, but we were extremely short on time and we weren't able to fulfill this activity.
Take Away
- TIME MANAGEMENT (make sure you have enough planned, but not too much where you can't get through it all)
- Don't overload students with information in direct instruction, make it quick and simple, but teach what is necessary for inquiry
- Teach/Go over vocabulary
- Make lesson fun and engaging
- Don't say, "Good Job!" or the word "Guys", instead use "boys and girls" and "who agrees/disagrees?"
- ***** Remember: Teaching doesn't always go as planned and that is part of Learning*****
Most importantly, my group worked extremely hard and we put a lot of hours in trying to make our 5 Senses lesson the best it could be. Dr. Smirnova was with us the whole way and gave great feedback and helped us in every way possible to make sure our PowerPoint and Lesson was a success.
Hopefully from your observations you enjoyed our lesson and got to learn a little bit more about the 5 Senses!
Honora~ you ladies did a fabulous job in your lesson and we all have lessons that do not go as planned. You learned from it. I loved the idea of sight and taste in inquiry. I even wrote in my final blog about how this was my favorite lesson!
ReplyDeleteHonora, I like that you walk your viewers through our lesson in order to provide some background to the situation and emphasize the creative ideas we had but unfortunately did not get to try or implement. I agree with everything you said. However, despite the challenges and hurdles we faced we still come out on top. As discouraging and disheartening it was to ineffectively implement the wonderful lesson we took days to prepare and perfect, we still learned SO MUCH from the experience! I especially like that you mention some of your take aways from the experience.
ReplyDeleteTeaching doesn't always go as planned, sometimes the best laid plans go awry..and that's okay! It's going to happen and it's going to happen again! We are new, let's learn and evolve our practices and do better next time!! You are going to be an awesome teacher! It was a pleasure working with you!