SCIENCE LESSON PLAN FORMAT

TITLE OF LESSON:

Leaves, Leaves, and More Leaves!

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

● The students will classify leaves according to self-identified criteria. ● The students will communicate various characteristics of unknown objects and

events.

● The students will make observations about leaf samples.

SCIENCE STANDARDS

Nevada Science Standards:N.2.A.1 Students know how to make observations and give descriptions using words, numbers, and drawings. P.2.A.3 Students know materials can be categorized by observable properties, such as color, size, shape and weight.

Next Generation Science Standards:K-LS1-1 Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals need to survive.-Use observations (firsthand or from media) to describe patterns in the natural world in order to answer scientific questions.

Cross Curricular Standards

Common Core Mathematics:

● K.CC.A.3 Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).

● K.CC.B.5 Count to answer “how many?” questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many

as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a number from 1-20, count out that many objects.

● K.MD.A.2 Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has “more of”/”less of” the attribute, and describe the difference.

Common Core English Language Arts:

● W.K.2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

● SL.K.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

PRIOR TEACHER PREPARATION

● The first thing I did to prepare for the lesson was discussing with my lead teacher the things she thought would work well in her class for a science lesson. We discussed that the students had been doing work on leaves and fall since the start of the school year-so I decided to choose this topic. I also bounced the ideas that I had for the lesson with her and got her approval.

● I also had to purchase a few supplies for the lesson. These purchases included a poster boards and various fake flowers which I cut fake leaves off of, and paper sacks. Then I made sure to organize the supplies that I wanted the students to use on the projects to make sure that instruction time wouldn’t be lost due to organizing supplies during the lesson. So, I cut all the leaves off of the fake flowers and separated them into the paper sacks ensuring that each student would have a sack. I also organized all the supplies into a small plastic tub so that I could easily carry them into the classroom.

● Last, I practiced the lesson-both the teacher and student components- to make sure that the lesson would run smoothly. This included cutting out the leaves, sorting them myself, and coloring the leaves. The purpose of coloring and cutting out the leaves was for pacing.

MATERIALS / RESOURCES

● Paper Sacks- 1 bag for every student.

● Various types of leaves (Either real or artificial) -A variety in every bag. ● Large poster board with a large leaf outline- One for the Class● Markers- to write on poster board● Leaf Booklet- One for every student● Crayons/Markers- Some for every table to use● Leaf cutouts- A variety for every group● Poster board with tree trunk on it- One for the class● Colored leaf examples-Three for the teacher

INTRODUCTION:(TW=Teacher Will, SW= Students Will)

1. Following the activity “What’s in the Bag” on page 66 of Elementary Science Methods: A Constructivist Approach, the SW be given “feely bags” at their seats. The SW be instructed to put their hands in the “feely bag” and using their sense of touch to investigate the leaves without looking. Using the “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” engagement strategy the TW have the students give a thumbs up if they think they know what’s in the bag and a thumbs down if they are unsure.

2. The TW then have the students share their responses for what they have identified in the bag. The TW then have the students open their bags and peek inside to see if their guesses were correct.

The students were so motivated to respond that there was not much of a discussion between the students because they all shouted out what they thought was in the bag.

3. The TW then flip over a poster board with a large leaf drawn on it. Then using the “Graffiti Board” engagement strategy the TW ask the students questions about their prior knowledge on leaves and the TW write down this knowledge on the graffiti board. The TW ask questions to help uncover misconceptions and elicit responses including information the students can remember from previous lessons like:

● Where do leaves come from?● Where can you find leaves?● Are there different kinds of leaves?● What happens to leaves in the fall? Spring? Winter? Summer?

After asking this question I realized that this was something that needed to be addressed within the lesson because a few students struggled to recognize that

red leafs meant that the leaves were probably from fall. So, in the presentation portion of the lesson the students had to present whether or not the leaves were from fall.

● What colors can leaves be?● What do leaves do?● What is important about leaves?● What are the parts of the leaves called?● How would you describe a leaf?● What characteristics do you notice about leaves? Are they big or small? Do they

have lots of veins or no veins?4. Next, the TW have the students dump their leaves out of their bags and count the

number of leaves integrating the Common Core Math Standard K.CC.B.5 which states that “students will be able to count to answer “how many?”.

5. The SW also be instructed to draw a picture of their leaves and write the number of leaves that they counted on the corresponding page in their booklet integrating Common Core Math Standard K.CC.A.3 which states that “students will be able to write numbers from 0 to 20”. The SW also be asked to label their drawings of the leaves to describe the leaves.

6. The TW then have the students hold up fingers representing how many leaves that they counted in their bags. The TW then have all of the students stand up. The TW ask the students to sit if they had one leaf, then two leaves, then three leaves and so on until all students are sitting again.

EXPLORATION

1. Next, the TW have the students turn to the page in their booklet that relates to the classification activity. The TW instruct the students to sort their leaves into two different categories or groups. The TW have the students draw on the page the leaves that they placed into groups and will encourage the students to label their pictures, offering assistance as needed integrating Common Core English Language Arts Standard W.K.2 which states that students will “Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic”.

What I observed right away was that the students struggled with fitting more than one leaf in the box that I provided them. So, they ended up just drawing a leaf in every box-because they did this it was hard to tell on their recording sheets the characteristics that they decided to sort their leaves with. The students also struggled with drawing the leaves on their paper so some conference time was spent on helping students draw their leaves (as you can see in the video) which

meant that I wasn’t able to conference with students to encourage them to label their pictures.

2. After the students have grouped and drawn their leaves the TW use the “Whip Around” engagement strategy and have the student’s share how they grouped their leaves (I.E based on color, shape, veins, size, and so on). As the students share their responses the TW write down on the graffiti board how they leaves were sorted. The TW also have students share descriptions of their groups (I.E “This group of leaves are all light green while these leaves are all dark green”.)

3. The TW guide the students into a mini-discussion on how they could sort their leaves and asking guiding questions if needed like:

● Are all leaves the same size?● Are all leaves the same color? Do they change color?● Do all leaves have veins? Do they have the same number of veins?● Can leaves be different shapes?● What are other differences between different types of leaves?

4. The TW then ask the students to sort their leaves into different groups using different characteristics. The SW sort their leaves and again draw pictures of their groups of leaves and the TW will encourage the students to label their pictures and offer assistance if necessary.

Due to the time it took the students to sort the leaves the first time based on characteristics we were not able to sort the leaves more than one time. I felt that this adjustment needed to be made so that the students’ needs could be met. The students needed to focus more on the characteristics of individual leaves rather than sorting all of the leaves based on these characterists. The students needed additional practice with looking at characterists before they could sort them multiple times and therefore the adjustments I made were necessary.

5. After the students have sorted and drawn their groups of leaves the TW use the “numbered fingers” engagement strategy to determine how the students sorted their leaves. For example the TW say “Give me one finger if you sorted your leaves based on color, Give me two fingers if you sorted your leaves by size, Give me three fingers if you sorted your leaves by color, and so on.

6. Last, the TW pass out the leaf handouts to the students and ask them to color and cut out a leaf. The TW reinforce the colors that the students should be using

and the features that the students should include in their leaves by asking questions like:

● What color should we use for our leaves?● What colors should we use for a leaf from fall?● What parts do our leaves need to have?

7. After the students have colored and drawn their leaves the TW have the students write their names on the back of the leaf and the number of veins that they noticed on their leaf. Notice the students will do ONE leaf.

8. Last, the TW model the formative assessment and the required components of the formative assessment as they relate to the rubric. The TW explain to the students that they will be presenting their leaves to the class by describing their observations and the characteristics of their leaf. The TW place the three teacher leaf examples on the board. The TW will one by one describe the leaf to the class, using the “Thumbs up/Thumbs down engagement strategy the TW have the students respond on if the description was good or not. If the description was not good the TW ask the students how to improve the description.

Description Examples:● The leaf is medium size, round, and has veins.

(Students could discuss that you could improve this description by mentioning the number of veins, the color of the leaf, how many points it has, ect.)

● The leaf has three points and is red. (Students could discuss that you could improve this description by mentioning the number of veins, a better description of the color, describe the ridges, and its size)

● The leaf is medium sized and has three sharp points, the leaf is dark red around the edges and a lighter red in the center. It has 6 veins which are read.

ASSSESSMENT The SW present their observations and descriptions of the leaves that they have created. The SW be asked to describe features of their leaves including the number of points, number of veins, color, size, shape, and so on. The rubric for this information is attached on the last page of this document.

An adjustment that I had to make to the assessment was to guide the students more with questioning. I had anticipated that the students would independently

present their leaves but they actually needed a lt more assistance from me so I immediately adapted all of the assessments to include me using guiding questions with the students.

Self-Refection/Video Reflection

So, to start, this was the first time I have ever used “feely bags” and I was quite nervous ahead of time on how they would go. I went back and forth between deciding if I wanted to do just one feely bag and have the students pass it around or if I wanted to do individual feely bags. I ended up doing individual feely bags and I do think that this was the best choice because it would have taken a lot of time to pass one bag around the classroom. I would consider these feely bags to be an absolute success! I could really tell that the students enjoyed these feely bags a lot! In the video you can see the excitement in their faces when I handed out these bags and they couldn’t wait to dig in. I had the privilege of having my field experience coordinator observing this lesson and she said this was her favorite part of the lesson.

Now, in the video I did notice one thing. What I noticed about these feely bags was that one student had peeked early so I went over to talk to them. Since the next step was to peek I should have just let this slide without devoting time to discussing it with her. In retrospect, I would have just moved on to having everyone look in their bags! What I noticed when watching the video was that as soon as I stepped aside to talk to the students the other students in the class began talking and becoming off task.

The other big thing that I noticed when watching the video was the fact that I was way to soft-spoken! There is a huge difference in volume, command, and tone between my voice and the lead teacher’s voice when she talks to students. Using a more firm voice is something that I really need to concentrate on because otherwise I think the students don’t take my directions as seriously and don’t listen as much. I know everyone says their voice sounds so different on a recording- but I thought I had a much more commanding voice when in reality I really don’t!

Also, in watching the video I noticed that the students were constantly playing with their bags and shuffling them around which created a lot of noise. Although I later picked up these bags-which my field experience coordinator praised me for- I should have done it a lot sooner because the students were rustling them around way too much before I decided to take them away!

One thing that I am proud of when I watch the video was that my management has gotten better. This is a rowdy group of kindergarteners and I was surprised when I did the thumbs up, or other attention grabbers how many of the students actually responded. When I first started working with the class the students hardly ever responded but in watching the videos I see that a majority of students responded.

Moving on into the lesson- One of the things that really surprised me about the lesson was that I had again assumed that the students were more advanced than they were and severely misjudged time because of this. I didn’t think twice when I printed out my leaves for the students to cut out but I quickly discovered what I thought would only take a minute actually took students close to five minutes. I also had multiple students struggle with cutting curves or turning corners when cutting and I had honestly not considered this at all during my lesson planning phase! This part was cut out of the video but what I noticed before the cutting incident was that many of the students even struggled with drawing the leaves. In the video you can see me working with a student who complained that they could only draw “racing rectangles” and not leaves-most students ended up tracing instead of drawing their leaves, which brings me to another point.

I intended each of the squares on the worksheet to contain a group of leaves done during the sort but what ended up happening with the tracing is that each leaf went into each box. So, this meant that they couldn’t represent their sort in drawings and could only do it verbally. This is another issue with the lesson. I had also set the bar too high for the students in sorting their leaves. I figured they would easily be able to sort their leaves multiple ways but it turned out being hard to get them to sort their leaves one way! We ended up only doing two sorts before time ran out and we had to move on. In talking with my lead teacher she suggested that I could have encouraged the sorting by telling them how to sort their leaves, “Sort your leaves by the number of points, then size, then color, and so on. That was a really great suggestion and in retrospect that is exactly what I would have done!

What I realized through this assignment was that I think one of my downfalls when teaching a lesson is looking at the standard for the lesson and determining in my mind that is what the students should be doing then. Instead, I need to make an effort to realize that the standard is what the students are working towards being able to do. I think this is why I have the tendency to set the bar too high. I assume that the standard is where the students already are and not thinking that is where they are trying to be. (I hope that makes sense!)

Now, on to the formative assessment which was also unfortunately cut from the lesson. I really wish this would have been recorded because I feel I did a great job at asking guiding questions! However, because I had to use so many of these guided questions I also realized that my rubric was too advanced. On paper I thought that the students would be able to describe their leaves completely on their own but in reality it took the use of multiple guiding questions to get the students to describe their leaves. Without these guiding questions the students would just hold up their leaf to show their classmates and wouldn’t

actually describe it. My rubric expected the students to be able to do the descriptions independently but none of the students were able to do this and all required guiding questions so I feel that this rubric was a little too tough.

● Student Work is Attached Below:

Rubric from Rubristar.com is attached below: