Monday, August 6, 2012

A day late and a dollar short... again!!! (Review of backward design.)

I knew there was something missing... and here it is! My blog post about the backward design lesson plan. I had written the plan for a group of young campers, hoping to get permission to work with the local nature camp but it ended up not working out. So I pressed my husband and my daughter, a recent college graduate, into service.

I did my lesson in two parts. The first was a discussion, to establish what the students knew about the scientific definition of life, habitats, ecosystems and so on. My husband was a bit puzzled since he hasn't been in a classroom for many years and he couldn't understand why I kept turning his answers into more questions.

Once we had had our discussion period, it was time to head out into the woods for real-life observation of the local ecosystem. My husband declined to go with us, so I gave my daughter a circle of rope and directed her to toss it into a clearing. She did, spread it out, and then sat down and began to diagram. I reminded her that diagrams must be labeled. I also had her make a T-chart, and note living things on one side, and non living things on the other.

I noticed when she was done that she had misclassified sticks and dead leaves as non-living. This is an error commonly made by third graders, the age group for whom I intended the lesson. It serves as a reminder to emphasize the differences between living, non-living and formerly living, ie, dead.


This is a lesson I would have enjoyed doing with students. It's a shame it didn't work out with the nature camp, and unfortunately, I teach nowhere near any sites that could reasonably be substituted. But the experience of working with backward design was worthwhile and with practice could prove to be a very efficient way to plan lessons.

My experience with Prezi

It ended up being an interesting, if sometimes frustrating, experience working with Prezi to create my presentation on the bog turtle. I had quite a few challenges working with some of the small nuances, and even the "help" section sometimes assumed some things were clear which really weren't, at least to me. 

When I get stuck on a computer problem, I normally get up and walk around a bit. I think I walked at least five miles in the course of this project! But I finally got it done, and I think it went pretty well, overall. 

I would have liked to have been able to put some music in there, but I didn't see that as an option. If anyone knows how it could be done, I'd love to know. 

Here's the link!