I think since Chelsea and I had taught this lesson to students before and were getting a new group of students we were not nervous at all and had a good idea of how the lesson would go. We knew it would be slightly different, but were fully prepared to accommodate the new students! We introduced ourselves to the students and explained what we would be doing for the lesson, they all seemed very excited! The lesson went awesome and I think because we were more knowledgeable from teaching it once it helped when these students were confused. Another aspect that I thought was super beneficial for us as well as the students was that we made them feel comfortable by speaking Spanish with them. We tried to say every work in Spanish as well as in English. Three of the four students asked if they could write in Spanish and I said that that was fine, but that they had to explain what they wrote as a group in English.
Reflecting back on our lesson we did a great job differentiating the lesson. We included pictures for all of the senses just in case the students had trouble reading the English word we wrote for the 5 senses on their recording sheet. This was helpful because as the lesson went on I noticed the students had a lot of trouble writing in English and when they did, they had no idea how to spell the words. My favorite part of the lesson that it felt the mot rewarding to teach these four knew students was when they all decided they wanted to write in English AND Spanish and we had to help them. Chelsea and I know a lot of Spanish and know the letters of the alphabet. There was some confusion when I was explaining how to spell a word in English so instead, I decided to tell the young girl how to spell it in English by saying the letters in Spanish. This helped me practice my Spanish as well as them see that I too have trouble writing and speaking in the language that isn't my first language. We have learned in our modules and in class that we need to try and differentiate in ways to make the learning for the students as beneficial as possible and I believe that is exactly what Chelsea and I did! The modules and readings for class have been super helpful when implementing our lessons for these students. They are all good guides for teaching.
As Chelsea said in her blog, we connected our lesson to Amy's lesson and didn't even know. We asked the students what other materials or foods could be a liquid as well as a solid. One of the boys responded with "chocolate." I was so surprised that he thought of that and I never would have thought of that as being a solid and a liquid until he said that. We talked to Amy after our lesson and she said she had read a book to them about solids and liquids and that chocolate was one of the examples in the book. I thought it was awesome that he was able to make the connection from her lesson to our lesson! That tells me that he is really comprehending this information we are teaching as well as what Amy is teaching!
One aspect I would change about this lesson is definitely our time. The first time we taught the lesson we got done a lot earlier than we expected, but this time we went a little longer and got done only 5 minutes or so earlier. The hardest part about timing a lesson is that you have no idea what the students know when you first walk in. So, this lesson could take more than 30 minutes time or less than 30 minutes. When we got done early we had the students draw a picture of their experiment they did as an extension activity.
As for my goals this semester when it comes to teaching bilingual students; to get a better understanding on the different ways these students learn and different strategies I can use to help them learn. I think I did a great job during this lesson at achieving this goal. We differentiated by using the pictures as a strategy first. With our last group of students they had no trouble writing in Spanish, but this group did. So, in order to achieve my goal, like I said above I let them write in Spanish and also encourage them to write in English with my help. Helping them spell and saying those letters in Spanish really gave me a better understanding of teaching bilingual students and gave me another strategy to use in the future when working with a student who's native language is Spanish since I know a lot of Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C33WdI64FiY
Above is a link to a youtube video that shares a song about the states of matter for students to learn and remember them!
Exceeds:
-Word count
-Included link to song
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