Last Thursday at Brigham Elementary, Amanda and I taught a
recycling lesson to one of the ELL kindergarten classes. Our topic was land, water, and air, so when
looking at the NGSS standards, we picked- K-ESS3-3 Communicate solutions that
will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living
things in the local environment. After
reviewing this standard, we decided that a recycling lesson would be the
perfect way to teach kindergarteners solutions that reduce human impact on the
world. We worked together to create a 5E
lesson that would engage and assess the students understanding of recycling.
The first E of the lesson was engagement. Looking back on our lesson, I thought we did
a good job engaging the students. They
were all eager to answer our questions and knew what each object was as we held
it up. One way that we could have
improved this section would be to have the objects up on the SMART Board with
the images and labels in both English and Spanish. One other thing we could have done was learn
the words paper, glass, aluminum, and plastic in Spanish so that the students
would better understand us. I think
having this verbal and visual aid would have lead more students to
success. It was interesting to hear all
of their responses when we asked if they knew what it means to recycle. Some of the students knew and some did
not. I think this was a good transition
to our next E, which was a read-aloud.
In the second E, or exploration, we did a read-aloud of Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel. In this section of the lesson we tied in a
literacy standard. The Common Core State
Standard we chose was- SL.K.2 Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or
information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering
questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not
understood. After reading the book, we moved
into E number three, explanation. We attempted
to prompt the students in a discussion by asking questions, but many students
had a hard time recalling information.
We tried to redirect the discussion and restate the sequence of events
so that the students would be able to accurately answer our questions, but we
did not have much luck. Something we
could have done here would be to have made story sequence cards. After reading the book we could have placed
these cards on a timeline in the order that the events happened in the
book. I think this would have helped the
students because they would be able to refer to the visual instead of just
trying to recall information on their own.
For the fourth E, elaboration, we directed the students into
a cut and paste activity at their tables.
The objective was to cut the items and accurately sort them into the
categories glass, paper, plastic, and aluminum.
We had one teacher helper at each table to help the students. I think that without these teacher helpers,
the students would have been totally lost.
Something I’ve learned through my teaching experiences in my current
clinical site is that my students need modeling, modeling, and more
modeling. I often forget how young these
students are and that they need to be scaffolded in order to succeed. We could have modeled this worksheet by
having a similar template up on the SMART Board and working together to place
one object in each of the categories. We
did model one of the categories, but I think the students may have benefited
better from seeing an example in all of the categories. Another thing I noticed while working with
students during this portion of the lesson was that many of them were having
trouble identifying the items they were asked to sort. I did not even think that some of these would
be difficult to identify or could be portrayed as something else. If I were to do this again, I would label all
of the images in both English and Spanish so that the students would actually
know what they were. I feel like more
than half of the questions I received from students was “what is this?” If the students already knew what the objects
were, then we could have concentrated more on sorting them into the correct
categories and less on finding out what the objects are. I also think that more students would have
found success easier if this option had been presented.
To conclude our lesson, we had planned to engage the
students in another discussion and review all of the boxes and which objects
they placed in each. Unfortunately the
previous section of the lesson took longer than anticipated and we ran out of
time. We were able to collect the student’s
worksheets to analyze and assess whether or not the students understood the
concept. If we could change this section
of the lesson, I would also like to include the SMART Board into the
conclusion. The students could take
turns coming up to the board and dragging the items into the correct boxes and
then we would discuss why the student made the choice they did.
Overall, I think the lesson went pretty well. After reflecting on my teaching, I realized
some things I could have done to better accommodate the student’s needs. I think we also would have benefited from
having this be a two-day lesson. One activity
I really wanted to do with the students was to have them physically sort recyclable
materials into various labeled containers.
I think that they could have benefited from something hands-on like
this. I also think that we could have stressed
more the benefit of recycling and why we should recycle. If I were to teach this lesson to my second
graders, I would have the students write a letter to their parents and explain
why we should recycle and what materials are recyclable. I think this would be a good way to assess
the students understanding of the material as well as allow the parents to
become involved in the curriculum.
Exceeds: Included a link to the cut and paste worksheet we used and included connections to my clinical classroom and how I could adapt this lesson for those students.
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