Lesson Teaching Reflective Summary

Teacher Candidate for Science Endorsement: Alana Davis

Instructor: Dawn Hudson & Wes McCoy
School: Mableton Elementary Grade: _5th
Lesson Topic: Plant and Animal Cells Vocabulary Introduction Lesson
Write a brief summary or blog of your experiences teaching this lesson,
addressing the following questions:

What went well? What did not go well? (Cite specific examples)

How well were the lessons student performance objectives

attained?

Did classroom activity center on science understanding, inquiry,

and sense-making by all students?

Did your scientific content knowledge enable you to support

students construction of knowledge and understanding of
important scientific concepts and processes?

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

During this lesson I engaged students with a short informational

reading book called Enjoy Your Cells to introduce them to our topic.
Then, we transitioned into a short Brainpop video in which students
were given basic vocabulary words for plant and animals cells. Having
the students use their interactive notebooks and gluing in vocabulary
words in after we discussed them really helped out with student
understanding. Students could choose to construct their own
definitions or use ones that we discussed, but I wanted them to use
these throughout the unit. It worked out great that students had these
terms when they made their cell analogy videos at the end of the unit.
Nothing really sticks out that did not go well, but there is always room
for improvement in the time management area. The book took a bit
longer to read that I anticipated.
I feel confident that the lessons student performance objectives
were attained because they were introduced to the basic vocabulary of
cells through a book and video. We worked together to glue in the
words and construct definitions that made sense to all students.
Classroom activity centered on science understanding related to
the vocabulary words associated with plant and animal cells. I think it
was beneficial to have students glue the key words in their interactive
notebooks because they could refer back to it when they needed some
help remembering the specific parts of a cell.
My scientific content knowledge enabled me to support students
construction of knowledge because I was able to clear up any
misconceptions they had while we formed our definitions for the
vocabulary words.
When I reteach this lesson I will most likely differentiate the
words more. I will use more student friendly definitions to guide
students who are ELLs who had a hard time pronouncing some cell part
vocabulary and understanding their functions.