Overall Unit Reflection

Successes:
Throughout this unit there were many things that the students succeeded in and
activities that went well. It was such a fun experience to have the students invested in taking
what they learned and applying it to a country that they are excited and passionate about. The
biome posters allowed students work collaboratively in groups and create an artifact to share
with the class which was great (I encourage you to see these posters in the attached work
samples). Also, the activities that students did followed with class conversations were so
meaningful in this unit, the students were truly interested in these different aspect of our
world. The interdisciplinary part of doing social studies and science also worked so nicely
together. It allows students to get a background and truly understand different things within
our world. Lastly, the students were really interested in climate change and what we are doing
about climate change. The 5th and 6th graders created a climate change group for the school to
help educate others about climate change and help the school make better decisions. It is great
to have students invested in our world and the things that you are teaching them.

Improvements:
This unit was great, but there are activities and different things I would tweak and
change to make it an even better learning experience for the student. The first thing that I
would change is I would find a way to incorporate more activities or games that would involve
students writing, saying, or acting out an answer of a question that they have learned. This
would provide more experiences to pull the memories from their long-term memory, which
really makes the learning easier to remember and understand for the students. Secondly, I
would provide more concrete example when teaching. Now, this is difficult because you can’t
just take your students to see different biomes or climates, but I do think that it would be great
to look at different plants from different biomes or to bring in animals or plants that have
adapted. These are more general things that I would do.
Within the unit, I would also want to specifically change some things to improve the
final project. The project presented some challenges when I taught it. If I taught this project
again I would want to make it more of a structured experience for students, for some students
this presented too much of an open-ended activity. I would also have a lesson within the
project that would teach students how to research on the internet. Many students struggled
when trying to research the climate change within their country. I believe a lesson on teaching
them to research would have solved many of the difficulties that students ran into. Lastly, I
would pre-research some information and rewrite it in a way that my ELL students would be
able to understand the information on climate change. These are ways that I would improve
the final project.

Worldview:
As I prepared to teach this unit I realized how complex some of these scientific ideas
were. It made me think about how even though I am teaching these things, I still need to
continue to learn and deepen my understanding within what I am teaching. This unit allowed
for me to continue to be the lifelong learner that I am through doing my own research.
I believe that each student is made in the image of God and they should all succeed by
teacher’s creating equity for them. Within this unit, I was able to share my love for each
student by preparing these activities that would be engaging for the students. I differentiated
and incorporate UDL ideas to help my students learn. While I did all this, I was also able to help
the students see how complex and amazing our world is that was made for us. We were able to
consider how we could take better care of it, I have to say that it excites me how much these
students care about the world we live in.
Lastly, I pushed my students to do hard things within this unit. They had to learn
complex ideas and then apply these ideas to different countries that they were studying. It was
so great to guide the students and push them to see that they can learn and do difficult things.
They put in a lot of effort and hard work into their projects and it was great to learn from each
of their projects and to see how smart they are.