Yesterday, I delivered the second of my 5 lessons. The students and I are currently waiting for the pan traps to (hopefully!) collect some insects. Whilst we wait, I will reflect here on how my first two lessons went, the adaptations I have made, and points that I will take with me into my last three lessons.
Lesson 1 Activities
My first lesson introduced students to insects, and I managed to dispel some common misconceptions. Many students thought spiders were insects, and after watching the video I made on ‘What is an insect?’, they realised that actually, since spiders have four pairs of legs, and insects have three pairs of legs, spiders are not insects at all. The ‘Who’s Who’ activity helped students to see a greater variety of insects, showing them that not all insects are “spiky” and “disgusting” – as some students originally had thought! Some students were sometimes a little unsure of how to complete the activities I had set, but when I went round and explained again, or gave little prompts, all students managed to complete the activities. In fact, there were some excellent justifications given for the diamond ranking of threats to insects. A particularly good response was “I put light pollution near the bottom because it doesn’t happen during the day, only at night, so only affects insects at night, but climate change happens all the time”. This kind of ‘out the box’ thinking was exactly what I had wanted to encourage, and I was pleased that the activity prompted students to do this.
Timings
Unfortunately, at the end of the first lesson, I ran out of time, and there was not enough time for students to fill in the background information section of their poster. I think I was not sufficiently aware of my timings, and I let myself be led off on tangents by students, with questions such as whether praying mantises and Komodo dragons were insects, and if we’d still be able to have crisps without insects pollinating potatoes! I didn’t want to not answer students’ questions as I felt it was important to engage them from the start, but I had not built a contingency into my lesson timings for this. In the second lesson, I made sure to keep better track of time and build some leeway into the lesson for students’ questions. I was more aware of when students were leading me off topic, and I managed to get through everything I had planned for the lesson. Also, before teaching the next session, I managed to adapt the second lesson, and allocate time for students to fill in the background information section of their poster, which we had not had time to do in the previous lesson. I was pleased that this had been possible and worked well, as it put my planning back on track, and made the objectives attainable once again.
Hypothesis construction
In the second lesson, all students managed to place their trap in their designated habitat, and record plant diversity, thus achieving the learning objectives of the lesson. The students did seem to struggle with formulating their own hypotheses. However, with prompts from both me and their teacher, and the support I had prepared on my PowerPoint to cover this eventuality, all students accomplished this, and some even managed to come up with hypotheses of their own, which was very pleasing. One student suggested that the rough grassland habitat would have more insects than the scotch broom habitat because there are more colours in the grassland, so more insects would be attracted to it. This was an idea I had not considered, and I was very impressed by the student’s creativity.
An unforeseen challenge, and new adaptations
A challenge that I had not foreseen, was students who had been absent from the previous lesson(s). There were a few students who were present in the second lesson, who were not present in the first which presented me with the challenge of how to include them and support them in the lesson. I overcame this by briefing these students as a group and individually, giving them an overview of what we had done in the previous lesson. I also got the students in their group to tell them what they had learnt. This not only helped the student who had been absent, but also seemed to consolidate the other students’ learning, and I was pleased with how well it worked as a strategy. This was borne out by the fact that all students were able to complete the background information section of their poster, regardless of absence from the previous lesson.
One thing that I have decided to change following delivery of my second lesson is not to ask students to re-write the diversity value that they recorded on their practical instruction sheet, on a class data sheet. I realised that this took up unnecessary time for little gain, as I could just collect in the practical instruction sheets, upon which students had already recorded their data.
Actions for future lessons
In my final three lessons, I will continue to identify adaptations that I can make to improve my lessons, and I will make sure to continue to be more aware of timings. I will also continue the practice of circulating around the classroom, and helping individuals at their desks. They seem to find this helpful as maybe I am more approachable. Giving further prompts and examples to what is on my PowerPoint presentations clearly supported students in completing the activities I set, and I think this approach will work for other activities in future lessons.
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