It was that time of year. You know the time I'm talking about, when the administrator comes into your classroom with her trusty clipboard to examine your teaching ability yet again. I don't know about you, but I always get nervous during this time. Well this year I was instructed to put together a science lesson for her to observe. I'd been given the list of elements of a good lesson so I was ready to go. I chose a lesson that included using the Interactive White Board, (to show use of technology in the classroom), my lesson also reviewed the scientific process as we had a science experiment going on in our class at the time, and a science experiment where the students had to complete a t-chart. I thought I had all of my bases covered.
Well, the interactive whiteboard lesson didn't go over as well as I had planned. There were photos of objects that were situated at the top of the page. The students were to look at the pictures and drag the objects to a different part of the screen if they thought the object would float. (This was to be my prediction portion of the lesson.) The problem was if a child came to the board, and they wanted to interact with the board, they had to move the object. Of course, by the time we were done predicting all of the objects were on the bottom of the screen.
This let me know that the next time I create a flip chart that deals with sink or float all of the objects will need to be moved to another part of the screen.
Next was the experiment portion of the lesson. Things were really going great, I had the basins of water set on the tables with little baggies of objects that the students were to gently drop into the water to see if it would sink or float. This took all of 3 seconds. Much less time than I had planned for. Finally, in this lesson, the students were to complete a t-chart showing the object they dropped, whether they predicted if it would sink or float and record the results did it sink or float. The students had such a hard time doing this. I couldn't believe it. I know it wasn't because they were unfamiliar with the chart, but I still haven't figured out what the problem was.
All in all, my evaluation was good, I just felt that I should have done a better job with my lesson.
