Name: Ashley Streitman

Class: ELED 3221-002

Date: April 16, 2018

Indirect Instruction Lesson Plan Template

Factors of Ecosystems

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Central Focus/Big Idea: Ecosystems

Subject of this lesson: Science

Grade Level: 4th Grade

NC Essential Standard(s): 4.L.1 Understand the effects of environmental changes, adaptations,

and behaviors that enable animals (including humans) to survive in changing habitats.

21st Century Skills:

- Flexibility/Adaptability: Students are to be flexible because a student teacher is teaching their
class period.
- Productivity/Accountability: Students are expected to remain focus and engaged in the lesson in
order to complete the quiz that will be given to them afterwards.

Academic Language Demand

 Language Function: I chose analyze because students are analyzing different ecosystems
and habitats. They are analyzing the effects of environmental changes, animal behaviors,
and adaptations of that ecosystem.

Analyze Argue Categorize Compare/contrast Describe Explain

Interpret Predict Question Retell Summarize

 Scientific Vocabulary: Ecosystems, organism, biotic factors, nonliving things, abiotic

factors, community, population, decomposer, producer, consumer, niche.
Instructional Objective:
Performance: Students will learn different traits of ecosystems, and how changes can affect the
ecosystems in positive and negative ways.
Conditions: Students will complete a “breakout” activity where they have to use their knowledge
about ecosystems to solve a series of questions and challenges. Students will work in groups of
4, and will have 1 hour to “breakout” of all of their locks. As I am coming around the room,
students are expected to answer questions regarding the content they are reviewing. Students will
complete an assessment at the end of the lesson consisting of questions from both the break out
activity, and from the lesson.
Criteria: The assessment will be graded out of 10 points. There are a total of 10 questions, and
each question is worth 1 point. Students are expected to earn at least 7 out of 10 points to show
mastery of the content.

Prior Knowledge (student): Students need to know what an ecosystem is, and how different
factors affect those ecosystems.

Content Knowledge (teacher): The teacher needs to know what an ecosystem is, the roles of
different parts of ecosystems, and ways an ecosystem changes over time. The teacher will also
need to be familiar with Google Slides to provide assistance to the students when they are
creating their presentations. The teacher will need to be familiar with the “breakout” activity to
be able to assist students as they complete it.

Accommodations for special needs (individual and/or small group): ELL students can be put in
groups with students who are bilingual to help them complete the activity. ADHD students can
be given one problem at a time during breakout to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed.

Materials and Technology requirements: Smart board, lock boxes, questions and clues,
worksheets, Google Slides.

Total Estimated Time: 2 hours

Source of lesson: Ms. Jordan Ostwalt

Safety considerations: To make sure students are safe, I will ask them to work in desks or in a
circle on the floor to avoid students running around and possibly injuring themselves.
 Content and Strategies (Procedure)

In your procedure, be sure to include all of the following 5 E’s. Your procedure should be
detailed enough for a colleague to follow. If you will be relying on technology (e.g., a YouTube
video), describe your back up plan thoroughly. Imagine your most novice colleague needing to
teach from your plan. Don’t just answer the questions. Additionally, I expect you to include
possible questions you could ask for each section. This needs to include higher-order questions.

Engage: I will introduce the lesson with a Google Slides presentation about ecosystems. I will
teach them what an ecosystem is, what different factors of ecosystems are, and different types of
life forms that live in ecosystems. Throughout the presentation, I will ask the students questions
to spark their interest in the subject.
- What is an ecosystem?
- What are some examples of different ecosystems that you know about?
- What have you previously learned about ecosystems?

Explore: Students will complete a “breakout” about ecosystems. They will be divided in to
groups of 4, and will have 1 hour to unlock all of the locks. Students will be given a packet of
clues, and several locked boxes. Using the clues, students will have to find the combinations for
the boxes. Each of the problems they have to solve involve ecosystems, and will be used to test
their knowledge in the content. Students are allowed to ask for 2 hints during the duration of the
activity. Once students have unlocked all of the boxes, they have complete the “breakout”
activity. During this activity, I will go around the room and ask students questions.
- How many locks have you broken out of?
- What areas of this activity are difficult?

Explanation: After the breakout activity is completed, we will have a discussion as a class
about the completion of the activity. We will go over any questions they specifically struggled to
find the answer to during the lesson, and I will allow for time for students to share about their
personal experiences completing the activity.
- What parts of this activity did you find to be difficult?
- What parts of this activity did you find to be easy?
- How does this activity connect to the lesson earlier?
- Give an example of a challenge you and your group members faced? How did you overcome that
challenge?

Elaborate: Students will work in pairs to complete an ecosystems crossword puzzle. The puzzle
has different definitions listed, and it is up to the pair to find the term to match the definition,
then place it in the correct spot on the crossword puzzle. While students are completing the
crossword puzzle, I will walk around the room and ask questions to check for student
understanding.
- What terms have you found and placed?
- How does this activity connect with the lesson and the breakout activity?

Evaluate:
Formative: The formative assessment is the questions I will ask the students while they are
completing their breakout activity, and the questions I ask during the lesson. As I come around
the room to check their progress, I expect them to be able to answer questions about what they
are doing. All of the questions listed above, and the conversations that come out of me asking
those questions, it what I will use as my formative assessment for this lesson.
Summative: This will be the exit ticket quiz I will hand out at the end of the lesson. Students will
complete a quiz that consists of fill in the blank, multiple choice, matching, and true and false
questions. The points they will receive are listed in the instructional objective. I will use their
grade from the quiz to show how much they learned from the lesson and the activity.

To be completed after the lesson is taught as appropriate

Assessment Results of all objectives/skills: Every group was successfully able to complete the
breakout activity in the time given which shows mastery in the content. The average score for the
quiz that was given at the end of the lesson was 6 out of 10. I do not think the assessment that
was given was a good measure of student knowledge.

Reflection on lesson: I think the engage and the explore parts of my lesson went well. Students
were engaged and actively participating in the lesson whenever the instruction allowed them to
be. I told students before the lesson that all of the information from the Google Slides
presentation would be included in the breakout activity, so it was important for them to pay
attention to what was being taught. The students also were engaged with the breakout activity,
and every group was successfully able to break out of all of the locks and boxes which shows the
students understood the content that was taught to them.

I think a strength I had for this lesson was getting students involved with the material. My
clinical teacher and I wanted to create a lesson where students had an activity to reinforce what
was being taught to them. We came up with the idea of a breakout, which would test student
understanding, while also giving students an activity to complete. I think classroom management
was also a strength of this lesson during the teaching portion because I explained the
expectations to the students before I began teaching, so they knew to pay attention and to focus
on what was being taught to them.

A weakness of this lesson is definitely the assessment and the crossword puzzle. Some of the
questions on the assessment were confusing to students, and many of them missed the same
questions which shows me that it was an issue with how the questions were worded. I think the
crossword puzzle was also unnecessary because it felt like an activity to pass time, and not
something that was beneficial to the students. The students already had proven to me that they
understood the content buy the completion of the breakout activity, so the crossword puzzle was
not a necessary addition to the lesson.

CT signature/confirmation: _________________________________ Date: ________________