Reflection STEM Strategies Lesson Plan (Week 2 Assignment 2)

 Hello everyone thanks for checking out my first blog post! Today I'll be reflecting on a lesson plan I recently created to introduce the concept of waste to Grade 4 students.

While writing my lesson plan, I took into consideration the 5 Es of Science (shown below): Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. I found this strategy useful in explicitly recognizing the critical components of a fluid science lesson (plan). While a good science lesson very likely covers all or most of the Es already, being aware and actively conscious of them is a valuable tool in effective lesson planning.

For example, I will engage the students by holding up the classroom garbage can and stating that every single day of the year each Canadian produces enough trash on average to fill up this garbage can. This gets the students thinking about the trash they produce and is probably shocking. We'll then go on to explore what waste means in a scientific sense and then explain that it is more than just what goes in the garbage can. We will elaborate by applying this new knowledge and brainstorming what type of waste we might find in our classroom/school/home. We will evaluate our learning by filling out a relevant exit ticket that will serve as a formative assessment and be used for effective data-driven lesson planning.

This process wasn't entirely different than the way I typically plan my lessons, but of course used more specific, revelant, and therefore useful academic language in the 5 Es. I do not suspect they are simply educational pedagogy buzzwords, as they aren't specifically buzzing amongst the academic circles I'm involved in. 

If I were to implement this lesson, and I do absolutely plan to, of course a logistical issue I may run into is the weather not allowing us to go outside and treasure hunt for examples of plant and animal waste around campus. This could easily be fixed by delaying the treasure hunt to a better suited day. A more challenging issue to overcome may be the students' insistence on considering waste equivalent to trash. This will without a doubt be something we as a class need to overcome and through exploration such as the treasure hunt finding examples of animal and plant waste that we likely don't consider garbage, i.e. fallen leaves, animal fur, and sticks, I am confident students will be able to more easily comprehend the idea of waste in a scientific sense.

Thanks for reading!

-Science Schuylar