When planning lessons for my classroom, I do not write out a lesson plan that is as extensive as the lesson plan format we filled out this week. When coming up with lesson ideas it is so important to keep all the components of the lesson in mind including the objectives, the outcome, what standards you are meeting, and what the lesson is going to look and sound like when you teach it to your class. It is not practical to sit down and write a lesson plan like this one for every lesson that is taught every day. This lesson took me about two hours to write from start to finish. Multiply that by the seven lessons I teach everyday and I am looking at 14 hours of lesson plan writing for one day of teaching. It is important to remember the different pieces of a lesson plan, but it is not feasible to write one for every lesson done in class.
For my STEM lesson this week I had my student’s complete the egg drop. A practical issue that came up when I did this lesson earlier in the school year is I did not give my students the materials needed, but instead allowed them to bring what they wanted from home. In some communities this would have been ok, but since the level of poverty is high and parental support lacks I should have provided the materials needed to keep it fair for each student. Even though I did not follow my initial instinct, everyone’s project turned out great and only two eggs were lost.
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I agreee that it is not practical to write such an extensive lesson plan for each lesson. I think it is possible to incorporate the 5E's into a lesson without writing such a detailed plan. As you pointed out, it would take an unreasonable amount of time to write lessons for each subject area! However, I like the 5E's and would like to try this method in my current lesson planning for work.
ReplyDeleteI love the egg drop activity. I did it a few years ago when teaching physical science. I too have learned the hard way to provide materials for my low income students. I rarely do any projects outside of school and spend much of my money on art supplies.
ReplyDeleteYesterday was cool because I was able to participate in program offered by the food bank to poverty level schools. I went downtown and was given 30 minutes to "shop" for company donated items to be used in my class. There were limits on the number of each item I could take but could take some of anything available. I got: spiral notebooks,composition books, pens, pencils, paper, markers, china markers (Yeah! for beakers), scissors, staples, file folders, legal pads, sticky notes, index cards, tape, and rubber bands. We have to watch out for our sweet babies whose parents are struggling to keep food on the table.
Look into donorschoose.com This is a great site that allows teachers to propose projects that can then be funded by donors. I have used them successfully to acquire a few things for my class, like a set of headphones to use in the computer lab. Now I don't have to use the ones that get destroyed by the other 1500 students at the school.