Connected Lessons

Pre-assessment

I sat down informally with my focus group to better understand what they remembered about
energy. The unfortunate situation with science is that it often gets placed on the back burner
and neglected for long periods of time. During my inquiry process, the students had learned a
bit about energy, especially electrical energy in the home and solar energy. These were
lessons that my CT taught back in late September. When I conducted my pre-assessment on
November 18th I had a feeling they would not remember much. I tried to conduct it through
anecdotal notes of the conversation I started with them. I asked them broad questions such
as, What do you remember about energy? and What is energy? then more specific ones
such as, What happens when youre in a small, crowded room? and What happens when
you leave a hot drink out? No one was able to tell me why the drink gets cold, which led
perfectly into my first lesson about heat energy. The next slide contains notes written during
the conversation.

Pre-assessment Continued
Student

Notes

Remembered the house picture from my CTs lesson that they had to color for
electrical energy (see next slide). Remained pretty quiet.

Was the one to answer that when a hot drink is left out, it gets cold. Remained pretty
quiet.

Said he has seen a solar-powered speedometer but wasnt too sure what that meant.
Answered the question I asked R about what a solar panel on a house does. Said that
it makes electricity. Spoke up a lot but did not answer much correctly.

Said he has seen solar panels on a house but wasnt sure what that meant. Spoke up a
lot but did not answer much correctly.

Answered what energy is and said that it is something powered by the sun
(misconception that this is the only type of energy). Said he has seen big fans in the
country. I asked what they are for and he said that heat can power them, which is not
quite correct.

Lesson 1

This lesson was all about heat energy and how it is transferred. The first video I showed was he
song I mentioned, which didnt seem to be too exciting to them (it was a little bit juvenile) so I
know to not use another song like that again. They did not do the best job with following
instructions with the graphic organizer (though this is something my CT and I have discussed
and our class seems to have a hard time with this regardless of content or learning mode. They
took notes in their science journals on a video about heat, which didnt quite go according to
plan as they took much longer to write than I anticipated, but I was pleasantly surprised to see
that my focus group all stayed on-task for this even though it was lengthy. Next they performed
an experiment, which turned out to be great for them. This was just the kind of activity needed
to aid in my inquiry. Again, I was pleased to see that my focus group all loved he activity, had
fun, and answered the questions on the activity sheet. I used that sheet to gauge
understanding and plan lesson two accordingly. The next slides display my focus groups
activity sheets.

Js Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

Hs Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

Rs Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

Fs Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

As Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

Lesson 2

Much to my chagrin, I had to scrap lesson two completely in order to go back over heat energy. I
realized that what my students really needed first was going to be a review of the material and a
discussion session so I did just that. They independently completed an EQ Review from lesson one,
then went over it together to make sure everyone understand the correct answers. After, we all
completed a quiz together. I guided them, but wanted for them to be able to come up with the
answers on their own. It ended up requiring them to look back at their notes because they were
unable to recall the information on their own. Though this did not go as smoothly as possible, I do
feel that they better understood the content after this review session. I had hoped that they would
understand more, but have hope that, with work, they will. The actual lesson intended is still in the
works and I have high hopes for it in the future to further their understanding.

Observed Behavior
Stude
nt
J
H
R
F
A

Lesson 1 off
task

Lesson 2 off
task

Lesson 1 spoke up Lesson 2 spoke up