Social Studies Lesson Reflection

Hello! Last week I implemented my Social Studies lesson in my clinical classroom. I did a geography lesson on landforms for 2nd grade. The students were going to be "geologists" and research a landform. We briefly went over the definitions of each landform, and then I explained to them what they would be doing. They were going to be placed into groups of three and each person would have a specific job. The higher level children were the researchers, or the ones who read the material to the other group members. The middle level readers were the recorders, or the ones who were in charge of writing the information on the poster. The lowest level readers were the artists, and they were in charge of drawing the pictures on the poster. Each group would get one landform to research. Then, they were going to make a poster about that landform. It had to have a title, a picture of their landform, the definition of the landform, where they might find their landform, and one interesting fact about it. Overall, I think the lesson went great :-)

Here's my full reflection with more detail about how it went!

Social Studies Lesson Reflection

Overall, I felt that my lesson was very strong and went very well with the children! The activity was very engaging for the students and covered necessary content for their learning. It flowed nicely with what they had learned in first grade to a deeper understanding of the material when they learned more about it through this lesson, and the learning objective required them to have a deeper understanding of the material in order to achieve that objective. I felt that this lesson allowed the children to achieve this higher level thinking learning objective in a fun and appropriate way, and they were all able to do it. A part of the reason I believe they were able to do it was because of my differentiation technique. Each student was able to achieve the learning objective in different ways.
The hook of my lesson grabbed their attention right away, and the rest of the power point and pictures kept their attention. They were all very excited about the different landforms and most of them were willing to answer questions, even ones that I normally do not see raising their hands. They were also all very excited to engage in the actual activity; there were initially a few arguments over who would have what job, which is why I was extremely happy that I had pre-picked the groups and the jobs to avoid this conflict.
I felt that my formative assessments throughout the lesson were very strong; I was walking around to each group as well as constantly checked in with the students as a whole group while they worked and had them do turn and talks throughout the lesson. In the future, I would probably implement even more because it is an easy tool for me to see that I am teaching in a way that they understand. The overall summative assessment was strong as well; I was able to tell which children understood what they were doing, and which children did not. I used a rubric format and assessed their posters after they were completed. I also wrote comments down while they were speaking to help me remember their presentation so I know what I need to explain more thoroughly in the future.
My formative assessments were extremely helpful when it came to adjusting my instruction. I could listen in on their turn and talk about whose job it is to read the landform packet and see if they actually know the answer. If they did not, which they did not, I explained it to them again in a different way and reassessed to make sure they understood. However, I should have explained and modeled in some other way, because the children still did not fully understand their roles in the group once they actually got into their groups. I was able to see this through other formative assessments. I asked them to give me thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, or thumbs down for how they feel their project was going and I could see which groups were having problems and fix them.
My formative “checks” throughout the lesson were definitely a plus because they allowed me to catch problems and fix them before they got out of hand. However, some of these problems could have been avoided had they had further instruction and example of exactly what they were supposed to do. This group of children is not used to working in small groups, but I think I made it work and I think if there had been more guidelines and explicit instruction, there may have been fewer issues to solve. For example, one of the issues my CT and I both noticed was that as soon as they got their posters, they rushed off to color a picture of their landform instead of following directions and reading about their landform first. In order to avoid this in the future, I would keep the posters until after they had finished reading and highlighting the important information in their landform packet. This way, they are getting the important content from this lesson. I felt that doing this type of activity with this content in groups was great because they could each focus on a specific landform and learn about it in detail and then teach their classmates about it, which will also help the students retain the new material.
The way the students were grouped with one high level reader, one middle range reader, and one low level reader was a great form of differentiation, and it worked very well in this classroom. The jobs were then assigned based on their reading level. The higher level children were the researchers, or the ones who read the material to the other group members. The middle level readers were the recorders, or the ones who were in charge of writing the information on the poster. The lowest level readers were the artists, and they were in charge of drawing the pictures on the poster. Many of the children did not fully understand their job or they did not follow the directions and I had to re explain the jobs a few times to a few different children. This could have been avoided had I done a better formative check to see if they understood because even though they said they did, they did not or they did not remember what they were supposed to do. It also would have been helpful if this was posted somewhere for them to see.
There were a few arguments between the classmates, but I think that that is a big part of learning your students and learning who can work together and who cannot. It also would have been a great opportunity to implement some problem solving techniques, such as the bugs and wishes, the peace table, or the choice wheel. Having those previously in the classroom and using them as a way to solve their own problems would have been a great way for them to practice problem solving and would have allowed me to focus on helping each group with the content, so that is something I will definitely consider for the future.

Have a great week :-)
Jessa