REFLECTION OF SCIENCE LESSON

On the 5th of May, Lara and I had the opportunity to teach the first lesson of our
science unit to the grade 1 students of St Dominics school in Broadmedows.
The unit was on climate change, with a Bioethical teaching approach. The first
lesson was designed to be an introduction to the concept and the unit of work,
and we prepared for children to have some prior knowledge of the issue of
climate change.
We started the lesson with a Graeme Base story called Unos garden, which
introduced the ideas of the unit by showing the demise of a jungle rich with flora
and fauna into a concrete city with no plants or animals. We quickly found that
the children had no prior knowledge of climate change, so the next activity was to
introduce key terms and explain the effects of climate change through something
they would be interested in; animals. We went through a list of everyones
favorite animals and explained the problems each one will face if the planet gets
warmer. We found this to be an effective activity as an introduction task, as it is
such a broad topic and this put it on a more personal level.
Unfortunately we had planned on showing a short video to the class with visuals
of climate change in action and a comprehensive explanation of the causes, but
the classroom interactive whiteboard was broken, and we were unable to play the
video. We had not prepared for this situation, and in the future, I will plan for
alternatives activities in case of an ICT meltdown.
The video not working meant that the worksheet Lara and I had prepared had
some information that was no longer relevant to the session, however, we were
able to discuss the worksheet together as a class to discover the answers.
The lesson ended with a recap of the new information learnt, key ideas and new
vocabulary. The students seemed to have taken a good interest with the unit, and
I am looking forward to next weeks session.