Meet Walter the Worm!

We made it to group 4! This past week group 4 conducted their Direct Instruction lesson plan. Their lesson was titled "Live Organisms and Life Cycles." Group 4 consisted of Tara, James, and Olivia. They began their lesson by telling the students that they would be learning about organisms and life cycles. The students seemed so excited to learn about this! After introducing the topic, Olivia introduced teachers vs class. The students were excited about this. They were told if they followed the classroom rules they would win a prize. This was a must in order to have the students pay full attention to the lesson. The teachers went ahead and passed out a personalized folder to each student. Each student was given a folder with the materials they would be using for the day! Inside the folder was thumbs up and thumbs down on a popsicle stick. The teachers explained this would be used during different checks for understanding throughout the lesson. Most importantly there was Walter the Worm hidden in their folder! Walter would be used throughout the lesson. When he was on the powerpoint presentation slide that meant the students had to write on their notepad. 

After introducing the lesson Tara introduced the life cycle. She questioned the students asking "what is a life cycle?" The students shared their thoughts on what a life cycle was. Many students shared about animals having babies. The students learned about the life cycle of a plant, and the life cycle of a worm. This would be important to the students because they are able to relate these two different life cycles to their sensory garden. The students were so excited to learn that this content will be beneficial to their sensory garden.After explaining what a life cycle was James introduced worms. He taught about the different types of worms and why they were beneficial to different types of soil. He explained to the students how we as humans are actually similar to worms. The students enjoyed his humor used while teaching. It kept them engaged and allowed them to be interactive. There were also different videos shown throughout the lesson. This had the students stay engaged. I enjoyed the videos too. I really enjoyed the guided practice activity. It consisted of what worms eat and what worms don't eat. There were different items that worms ate and didn't eat and the students were able to go up to the board and place the items in the correct spot. The students then completed an independent practice activity.

Overall the lesson was well planned out and the teachers seemed so prepared. I enjoyed watching all three of them teach and I think the students did too!