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.