Science
Source: WikiCommons
CONTEXT AND BELIEFS:
For me, the model solar system seemed to be at the confluence of everything that I wanted this lesson to be for my sixth grade students. It is hands-on, engaging, meets two components of the state standards and connects to several components of the NSTA Framework. The hands-on aspect particularly spoke to my guiding question, which concerns the confidence and engagement of struggling learners (I am specifically thinking of four students in my classroom). That the activity required little reading or writing avoided putting these students at what would otherwise have been an immediate disadvantage. Thus, they could turn their attention to the actual content rather than the processes of reading and writing, which is laborious for them.
I knew from discussions that the students in my class, generally speaking, lacked knowledge about Earth’s solar system. I wanted to provide them, then, with some foundation: the names, order, and distances of the planets. Previously in the year, they had done a lesson on models, and they created a model of their classroom. Since that activity, however, the concept had not been revisited. The model solar system provided an opportunity to revisit old content and build from pre-existing experience while exposing them to new content simultaneously. In other words, the activity could reinforce their understanding of using models while breaking ground toward an understanding of the solar system. All at once, it was inspired by experiences they had and experiences they didn’t have.
I also wanted to give these students a memorable experience. They rarely get a chance to do science in their classroom, largely due to their low PSSA scores in reading and math. Given this opportunity, I wanted to give them an idea of how interesting and exciting science can be, and that it represents a whole other field of academics outside of ELA and math, a whole other possibility for future study. What could be more memorable than going outside during instructional time? I suppose this is my vision for them: that they continue to hold in their minds an idea of what else school can be, other than a place where they continually prepare for a daunting and influential test.
Furthermore, I wanted an activity that relied little on reading or writing. As I wrote in my piece for Field Seminar, my aim for these lessons was to increase the engagement and confidence of academically marginalized students. In my class, these students are struggling most acutely with reading and writing. In order for these lessons to strive toward this goal, then, it would not make sense to rely on the skills that currently set these students at a disadvantage.
REVISED LESSON PLAN:
The students seemed to enjoy the hands-on nature of the activity.
ANALYSIS:
In this lesson, I had students construct a model solar system using Bruce Larson’s (2009) scale. First, given a diameter on an index card, the students were asked to make a model planet using clay. Once all the clay planets were made, they used a poster to decide amongst themselves which planet they had constructed. Following this, we all went outside to measure the relative distance of each planet from the Sun. Students used a trundle wheel to measure each distance. Last, we returned back inside for a reflection and closing activity. In their science journals, the students wrote about what they were able to learn from the model and what the model could not teach them about the planets and the solar system.
This was my first lesson for Term III, and ended up being the most difficult (though I still consider it an overall success). When I planned the lesson, I anticipated having a group of five students, the students who do not participate in the drumming program at Stanton. Furthermore, within this group of five, I expected to have two particular struggling students (my inquiry question, after all, is about increasing the participation of ‘academically marginalized’ students). The group with which I ended up, however, turned out to be quite different. First of all, the students took the ELA Benchmark Assessment that day and the two struggling students were still working on the exam by the time I was ready to begin my lesson, at 1:45. Second, the drum teacher decided to begin splitting the group into two sections, with beginners meeting during school and more experienced drummers staying after school. So rather than five students left in the classroom during drumming, I had eight. Of course, a group of eight lent itself nicely to this lesson given that each student could then be responsible for one planet, so I decided to just take them all.
In the end, the sudden change in the size and composition of my group did not force me to make any meaningful change to the content or structure of my lesson. It did, however, cause me to adopt a different instructional style. Eight students take up more space than five, so I found myself standing and moving during the clay modeling portion, whereas I originally had envisioned all of us sitting in a circle of desks. Monitoring more students also made me feel a little more anxious about management, especially since this was my first Term III lesson. Altogether, I think a result was that I became overly focused on sticking to the lesson plan, rather than on the students themselves. I may have used the plan as something of a safety blanket, thinking that I could use it to ward off any potential management issues. Then again, I may be too hard on myself. After all, the lesson did not feel rushed and there was time for reflection and discussion.
In this lesson, I had students construct a model solar system using Bruce Larson’s (2009) scale. First, given a diameter on an index card, the students were asked to make a model planet using clay. Once all the clay planets were made, they used a poster to decide amongst themselves which planet they had constructed. Following this, we all went outside to measure the relative distance of each planet from the Sun. Students used a trundle wheel to measure each distance. Last, we returned back inside for a reflection and closing activity. In their science journals, the students wrote about what they were able to learn from the model and what the model could not teach them about the planets and the solar system.
This was my first lesson for Term III, and ended up being the most difficult (though I still consider it an overall success). When I planned the lesson, I anticipated having a group of five students, the students who do not participate in the drumming program at Stanton. Furthermore, within this group of five, I expected to have two particular struggling students (my inquiry question, after all, is about increasing the participation of ‘academically marginalized’ students). The group with which I ended up, however, turned out to be quite different. First of all, the students took the ELA Benchmark Assessment that day and the two struggling students were still working on the exam by the time I was ready to begin my lesson, at 1:45. Second, the drum teacher decided to begin splitting the group into two sections, with beginners meeting during school and more experienced drummers staying after school. So rather than five students left in the classroom during drumming, I had eight. Of course, a group of eight lent itself nicely to this lesson given that each student could then be responsible for one planet, so I decided to just take them all.
In the end, the sudden change in the size and composition of my group did not force me to make any meaningful change to the content or structure of my lesson. It did, however, cause me to adopt a different instructional style. Eight students take up more space than five, so I found myself standing and moving during the clay modeling portion, whereas I originally had envisioned all of us sitting in a circle of desks. Monitoring more students also made me feel a little more anxious about management, especially since this was my first Term III lesson. Altogether, I think a result was that I became overly focused on sticking to the lesson plan, rather than on the students themselves. I may have used the plan as something of a safety blanket, thinking that I could use it to ward off any potential management issues. Then again, I may be too hard on myself. After all, the lesson did not feel rushed and there was time for reflection and discussion.
A trundle wheel
The weakest part of the lesson, and the part that I would change the most if I were to teach this again, occurred when we went outside to measure the distances. First of all, the students were very excited to go outside during instructional time, as I knew they would be. They listened attentively as I explained how to use the trundle wheel, and were eager to see where their respective planet would be located. They oohed and aahed when they saw how far Jupiter was from the Sun, especially after seeing how bunched up the inner planets were. Most of the students were with me right up until the very end, and when they were asked if they wanted to see whether we could measure all the way to Neptune, they responded with an emphatic “Yes!” The weakness with this portion (as my classroom mentor, who was also my observer for this lesson, explained to me) is that I had nothing for the students to do once they had found their place in the solar system. I should have anticipated that they would not want to just stand there while the rest of the measurements were made, particularly as we moved further and further away. Realizing this mid-lesson, I improvised to find stand-ins to hold the students’ places, so that we could all walk together to each newly measured planet. However, some students had already begun to lose some patience and got a little silly. If I had come into the lesson with items that could hold their place so that the students were not just standing in the middle of the lot then they may have maintained better focus. Even better, I could have thought about incorporating some type of task for them to perform to engage more deeply with these distances, which might also have kept them more focused.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from speaking with my classroom mentor following the lesson was a reminder that how a lesson is taught can often be as new, and thus require as much scaffolding, as what is taught. For example, after the class returned inside and we began our closing activities, I asked the students to reflect for a few quiet moments on what they found interesting, what surprised them, any questions that came up for them, etc. Some the students looked at me with what seemed a puzzled expression, while others began to look at their friends nervously. Then one student asked, “So, what are we doing exactly?” I began to understand the odd looks I was getting, and realized that they did not know what I meant when I asked them to reflect. This was something that they had not been previously asked to do (at least not in those terms), and even after I explained it they were incredulous that I would ask them to “just think” about something. It seemed that, to some of them at least, this felt akin to being asked to do nothing. As my classroom mentor explained later, these students have grown accustomed to a very process-oriented approach, and expect to be producing something tangible, something you can see or hear. Not just thinking. This was something of a revelation to me, another reminder of how much I take for granted sometimes.
Ultimately, the reflection produced a pretty good discussion, highlighted by one student asking whether a year on Mercury would be shorter than a year on Earth. I also had a student ask whether meteors were on fire. These questions showed me that these students were engaged by the content and interested in discovering more. However, I still felt the need to produce something that I could away, look at later on and, yes, put on this website. So I asked the students to write two things: what the model showed them about the solar system, and what it could not show them about the solar system. I felt that this would give me a glimpse into how much they took away from the lesson, and how curious they were to know more. The students consistently answered the first part with “size” and “distance” (both of those measures being in relative terms, of course). They struggled more with the second part, as you can see by scrolling through a few of the examples included below (FYI, the planets’ appearance was an example I provided):
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from speaking with my classroom mentor following the lesson was a reminder that how a lesson is taught can often be as new, and thus require as much scaffolding, as what is taught. For example, after the class returned inside and we began our closing activities, I asked the students to reflect for a few quiet moments on what they found interesting, what surprised them, any questions that came up for them, etc. Some the students looked at me with what seemed a puzzled expression, while others began to look at their friends nervously. Then one student asked, “So, what are we doing exactly?” I began to understand the odd looks I was getting, and realized that they did not know what I meant when I asked them to reflect. This was something that they had not been previously asked to do (at least not in those terms), and even after I explained it they were incredulous that I would ask them to “just think” about something. It seemed that, to some of them at least, this felt akin to being asked to do nothing. As my classroom mentor explained later, these students have grown accustomed to a very process-oriented approach, and expect to be producing something tangible, something you can see or hear. Not just thinking. This was something of a revelation to me, another reminder of how much I take for granted sometimes.
Ultimately, the reflection produced a pretty good discussion, highlighted by one student asking whether a year on Mercury would be shorter than a year on Earth. I also had a student ask whether meteors were on fire. These questions showed me that these students were engaged by the content and interested in discovering more. However, I still felt the need to produce something that I could away, look at later on and, yes, put on this website. So I asked the students to write two things: what the model showed them about the solar system, and what it could not show them about the solar system. I felt that this would give me a glimpse into how much they took away from the lesson, and how curious they were to know more. The students consistently answered the first part with “size” and “distance” (both of those measures being in relative terms, of course). They struggled more with the second part, as you can see by scrolling through a few of the examples included below (FYI, the planets’ appearance was an example I provided):
I was very pleased to see that one student (the first one above), without provocation, listed a slew of questions that she had about the solar system and space in general. This was exciting for me, because it seems to show that the lesson provoked a strong interest for her in the subject matter. Furthermore, this is a new student who has struggled at times to find her place, so it was especially nice to see her express so much interest.
MOVING FORWARD:
As I wrote in the previous section, I received an important reminder about meeting my students where they are. Based on their previous classroom experiences and the norms of their current classroom norms, my students needed scaffolding to understand not just the content but also some of the tasks. To re-use the example from above, they needed extra support to understand what exactly I meant when I asked them to “reflect” on constructing the model solar system. This was not problematic in terms of the execution of the lesson, but if I were to rewrite the lesson, with hindsight, I would incorporate into the plan itself a clear explanation of the expectations for “reflecting.” I may also even discuss why such an activity is important for their learning, in order to get buy-in.
Similarly, I would be sure to incorporate more structure into the outside portion of the lesson, since this was another new situation for the students and the expectations could have been made clearer. One easy way to build more structure into this portion: rather than have the students stand in their place while the other planetary distances are being measured, cones or some other visible object could have been used as stand-ins. Then the students would be expected to remain as a whole group while all of the distances were measured. Some of the students became restless due to the fact that they were standing in their spot even while some of the other students and I were fifty meters away. This was probably an unreasonable expectation; it is also pedagogically less-than-ideal, since the students were no longer actively engaged in the activity. Using the cones (perhaps with their clay models resting on top) would have allowed the students to walk each measurement, and then step back and see the whole model from the side. Larson (2009) built in a measuring activity into this portion of his model solar system lesson that involved the students recording the number of steps it took for them to reach each planet. This may reinforce the idea of just how far from the Sun and spread apart the outer planets are, especially compared to the inner planets.
I also would have liked to leave more time for discussion. When we returned to the classroom following our time outside, I had already gone past the 45 minutes I had planned for the lesson; fortunately, I had time to extend it another ten minutes. Seeing the questions that were beginning to be raised by the students left me feeling frustrated that I had to rush them into writing into their science journals. This is not necessarily a problematic aspect of this singular lesson. In a more realistic classroom context, I would presumably have had time to revisit the subject the following day and continue to build from the students’ apparent curiosity.
If I did have the opportunity to build from this lesson as part of a continual unit, what would I do? There are follow-up lessons that I know would be important to cover in order to deepen the students’ fundamental understanding of the solar system. For instance, discussing the ways that the planets orbit around the Sun, rather than sit in a straight line, would be an important insight. This could be explored using another model, one in which each planet moves a particular distance on their orbital path for each ‘turn,’ showing how the planets are in different parts of their orbits at different times. I would also like to use the questions that the students generated to guide the progression of the unit. What is most puzzling or interesting to them? Where do their misunderstandings lie? This is, to me, the very definition of formative assessment: using student responses to guide your instruction. Based on some of their journal responses, my students have given me plenty with which to work.
MOVING FORWARD:
As I wrote in the previous section, I received an important reminder about meeting my students where they are. Based on their previous classroom experiences and the norms of their current classroom norms, my students needed scaffolding to understand not just the content but also some of the tasks. To re-use the example from above, they needed extra support to understand what exactly I meant when I asked them to “reflect” on constructing the model solar system. This was not problematic in terms of the execution of the lesson, but if I were to rewrite the lesson, with hindsight, I would incorporate into the plan itself a clear explanation of the expectations for “reflecting.” I may also even discuss why such an activity is important for their learning, in order to get buy-in.
Similarly, I would be sure to incorporate more structure into the outside portion of the lesson, since this was another new situation for the students and the expectations could have been made clearer. One easy way to build more structure into this portion: rather than have the students stand in their place while the other planetary distances are being measured, cones or some other visible object could have been used as stand-ins. Then the students would be expected to remain as a whole group while all of the distances were measured. Some of the students became restless due to the fact that they were standing in their spot even while some of the other students and I were fifty meters away. This was probably an unreasonable expectation; it is also pedagogically less-than-ideal, since the students were no longer actively engaged in the activity. Using the cones (perhaps with their clay models resting on top) would have allowed the students to walk each measurement, and then step back and see the whole model from the side. Larson (2009) built in a measuring activity into this portion of his model solar system lesson that involved the students recording the number of steps it took for them to reach each planet. This may reinforce the idea of just how far from the Sun and spread apart the outer planets are, especially compared to the inner planets.
I also would have liked to leave more time for discussion. When we returned to the classroom following our time outside, I had already gone past the 45 minutes I had planned for the lesson; fortunately, I had time to extend it another ten minutes. Seeing the questions that were beginning to be raised by the students left me feeling frustrated that I had to rush them into writing into their science journals. This is not necessarily a problematic aspect of this singular lesson. In a more realistic classroom context, I would presumably have had time to revisit the subject the following day and continue to build from the students’ apparent curiosity.
If I did have the opportunity to build from this lesson as part of a continual unit, what would I do? There are follow-up lessons that I know would be important to cover in order to deepen the students’ fundamental understanding of the solar system. For instance, discussing the ways that the planets orbit around the Sun, rather than sit in a straight line, would be an important insight. This could be explored using another model, one in which each planet moves a particular distance on their orbital path for each ‘turn,’ showing how the planets are in different parts of their orbits at different times. I would also like to use the questions that the students generated to guide the progression of the unit. What is most puzzling or interesting to them? Where do their misunderstandings lie? This is, to me, the very definition of formative assessment: using student responses to guide your instruction. Based on some of their journal responses, my students have given me plenty with which to work.