Third and Fourth Lessons

Since Alison taught these lessons, I do not have too much to say about them. When we were planning them, lesson four, which was about how plants and animals interact, seemed like it would be more fun because we planned a food chain scenario activity for our students to do. We could not think of anything too exciting for our students to do during lesson three that would correlate well to our objectives for the lesson. Lesson three was about how humans affect the environment and we decided they could do a journal prompt writing response for this lesson. I think these two lessons represent a good use of backward design. We could have found a really cool and fun activity for our students to do for lesson three, but it probably would not have been in alignment with out instructional goals and objectives. This is why we chose to do the journal prompt instead. It still gave the students something interesting to do, and it also required them to use critical thinking skills to show that they really understood the lesson.

After talking to Alison about the lessons, they seemed to go well. She said the journal prompt question for lesson three was a little vague and probably could have elicited better responses from our students if it had been more specific. She said that our students definitely seemed to understand the lesson though. Lesson four went really well. Since our students had already learned about food chains, this lesson built on nicely to what they already knew and helped them think about food chains in new ways. She said they did a really good job on the food chain scenario activity, and came up with some interesting and creative ideas with the information they were given.