Megan McCall October 31, 2012 Teaching Reflection In the instruction seen in the clips, I used several strategies

to ensure the students were able to build their vocabulary and in turn comprehend and compose text. The first is that when introducing the lesson, I gave students the vocabulary knowledge to fully understand the content of the lesson. The use of this scientific vocabulary allows students access to academic content because they are familiar with the terminology that they may not have previously been aware of. We also built upon the definition and understanding of the previous days lesson on physical changes to allow students to make connections between the two topics. Next, I related this to their own lives by using real world examples in conjunction with the new vocabulary. An example of this is showing oxidation along with a rusty car and describing that oxidation is when materials react with the oxygen in the air to make something new, much like on an old car that has sat outside for a long period of time. This connection to real life material makes the content reachable and more realistic. In all subjects, but particularly science, students are lacking the prior knowledge of a multitude of vocabulary. This is especially true in science because of the cultural context in which the students live, as well as the lack of pre-exposure to content specific vocabulary outside of school. A majority of the students in the classroom are reading well below grade level according to their NWEA scores. This is also apparent in the conversations we have in the classroom. Students can build their reading abilities by also expanding their vocabularies. Connecting the vocabulary to students life experiences allows them to interact with the content and helps them find purpose in studying science when they may not have many lived experiences with science outside of the classroom. The examples of language supports seen in the clips allow students to understand the content and participate in literacy discourse central to the lesson because it makes the scientific vocabulary accessible. If students were taught the same material without learning the content vocabulary, that would be hindering their ability to function with the grade level reading material about the content because they would have a lack of familiarity with the vocabulary. A large portion of building literacy in science is teaching students to be able to access and understand informational texts. In turn, this looks like giving them the appropriate vocabulary knowledge to be able to read these texts.

In the lesson, students were asked to identify using a card with a p for physical change on one side and a c for chemical change on the other whether or not specific real world examples were a physical or chemical change. This allowed me to see whether or not they were able to process the new material and differentiate between physical and chemical changes. While this does not elicit their thinking in a discussion with questioning, it does reinforce the content and force the students to analyze each situation for what was really happening and whether or not what was occurring was permanent or not. During the lesson, which was not captured in the clips, I had students analyze one of the processes by doing a Think-Pair-Share. In the image, it was showing the electrolysis of water being broken down into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. It also showed students that the hydrogen gas balloon was larger than the oxygen gas. I pushed students to think about why the hydrogen gas was more plentiful than the oxygen gas; building upon the lessons we had done previously in the unit. I was then able to push back on students ideas with questioning about why they thought one was bigger than the other. In the future, I would scaffold this more into the lesson so that students can begin to use more critical thinking abilities instead of simply identifying if it was physical or chemical change. I could do this by having students explain why they chose their answers to the entire class. a. Reflect on students learning of concepts and academic language as featured in the video clip(s). Identify both successes and missed opportunities for monitoring all students learning and for building their own understanding of skills and strategies for comprehending and/or composing text. I think that in this lesson, one thing I did well was give the students guided notes where they knew what to record because they aligned with the PowerPoint that I was using. This gave students an activity to do during the I Do portion of the lesson. It also helped cement the knowledge of the vocabulary words by writing them and hearing them. In the future, I might have students use a graphic organizer to use the words in a sentence, draw a picture, and give their own example to further understand the vocabulary. Another thing that I believe I did well was to use scientific terminology throughout the lesson so students continued to hear the vocabulary used throughout the lesson. If I were to do this again, I think I would have the students do more of the talking so that they could begin to practice using the language learned in the lesson. As previously stated, I could have them come up with examples of each type of chemical change to share out with the class or give reasoning behind why the examples given were examples of a physical or a chemical change. Next, during the You do portion of the lesson students were given a worksheet with a variety of examples of situations from the real world and science and had to

distinguish between whether the examples were of a physical or a chemical change. Some of the vocabulary on this worksheet was not familiar to the students. Next time, I would scaffold this better by having students read through the worksheet and ask them to identify any words or concepts they were unfamiliar with before releasing them to work independently. This would help with their ability to better analyze the situations for whether or not they were a physical or a chemical change. It would also expose them to more vocabulary, which could help them in the future in reading. Finally, if I were to do this lesson over, I think I would further differentiate the independent work. For the students in the class who are non-readers, I would give them a page with pictures and have them identify whether or not those were physical or chemical changes. For the lower academically functioning readers and scientists, I would have a simpler worksheet for them to work on. For the more academically advanced students, I would have a more challenging worksheet for them to work on that may extend this concept to the next level. This would ensure that all students are being met at their own level but are still working on the same content.