JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY

LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

Name: Kaitlin Morrissey

Cooperating/Mentor Teacher and School: Laura Rapsawich, Central Middle School

Date lesson is to be presented: November 1, 2017

Date of submission: October 30, 2017

LESSON TITLE & UNIT TITLE

Unit title: Global Climate Patterns

Lesson Title: Ocean Currents Jigsaw Stations

CONTEXT OF THE CLASSROOM

For the lesson to be observed, the seventh-grade class has twenty-five students, thirteen females and
twelve males. The group is comprised of students who have varying interests and personalities. As a
whole, the group generally gets along well and works well in small groups, which will be important for
the Ocean Currents Jigsaw Stations. With this group of students, it may have to be reiterated a few times
that they must stay on task so it will be important. There are occasions when instructions need to be
understood fully, so the delivery of the class overview instructions must be heard by all and fully
comprehended the first time.

CONTEXT OF THE LESSON

This lesson will allow students to apply their new knowledge of ocean currents to actual ocean currents
around the world. They will discover more about the impact of ocean currents and have the ability to
locate the ocean currents they learn about on a world map. The students already have had some notes and
activities on the ocean and the currents but they have only learned, with any detail, about the Gulf Stream
current. By learning about other currents, they will be able to better understand the differences and
significance of ocean currents on the surrounding environment.

The students have not done any other ‘Jigsaw’ activity for this unit and they have not worked in
stations for a unit and a half. The structure of this lesson is to ensure that students will be able to practice
their interpersonal skills, group work, and give them responsibility over some part of the content. They
will be taught information about a current and then must go back and relay that information to a new
group composed of other ‘experts’ on different currents. In this way, students will be able to learn more in
depth about one current and then review other currents through the teaching of their peers. I have seen
students work better when they are given a purpose and a specific task they are in charge of, so this
activity will help students to see that they are the leader of their current for the group.

EDUCATION STANDARDS

 ESS.1.2: Thermal-energy transfers in the ocean and the atmosphere contribute to the formation of
currents, which influence global climate patterns.

OBJECTIVES
1. Students will be able to identify their ocean current and explain and report the information about
their current to peers.
2. Students will be able to conclude the impact of the current on the surrounding environment.
3. Students will be able to record the information for their current as well as their ‘Jigsaw’ groups’
information on the other ocean currents in the form of the graphic organizer.

Misconception:

1. Students may have misunderstanding about the differences and impacts of ocean currents and
how they affect the surrounding environment.

From this lesson, students will be able to recall and explain information about the four ocean currents
addressed in the lesson including the East Australian Current, the California Current, the Norwegian
Current, and the Canary Current.

ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

The specific, lesson-related vocabulary terms students will learn and be able to use fluently will include
the following: ocean current, environmental influences, and equator/poles. These words will be addressed
directly but students should have gone over these and should be familiar with them. They have notes that
they can reference if needed. However, the vocabulary in their articles should support their knowledge on
currents and expand what they know about the specific currents they learn about. They will discover new
things about real life currents so will apply their knowledge of ocean current vocabulary to the real-life
context of the ocean.

The key verbs that represent the specific tasks students to perform include the following: compare,
collaborate, evaluate, and report.

ASSESSING LEARNING

To assess students’ understanding of the activity, students will complete a variety of tasks that will assess
informally and formally. The first portion of the lesson will begin with a Plickers that will simply assess
their ability to comprehend how the application works. I will include questions like “Where do you go to
school?” to make sure all students know how to hold up the Plickers the correct way. I will also use some
of the questions to get to know the students better, like “What is your favorite color?” to have more
information about them going into my time student teaching in the classroom.
The next activity is the ocean currents groups completing their graphic organizer as a unit, each
student reading the article they were given silently and recording the answers for their current on the
graphic organizer. The group will then have time to teach each other about the current they became
‘experts’ on and give their group time to get the information for each of the four currents. Then they will
be asked to complete the organizer as a mixed unit, each member having learned about one of the four
ocean currents. In this group, they will be assessed based on what they end up writing as well as
monitored through their conversations by the teachers. If some students are making the group suffer by
not contributing, it will be obvious because no students in that group will have the information for that
ocean current.
The final means of assessment will be through the ending Plickers quiz. That quiz will ask
students to answer multiple choice questions that pertain to both the information that they should have
received on the ocean currents during the lesson as well as a review of information from their ocean
currents notes done in a previous lesson early in the unit. All students will hold up their Plickers cards
that will be assigned to them and the Plickers system will record their answers. The teacher will then be
able to use that data to compile differentiated groups for projects or writing assignments for the end of the
unit.

INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES, MATERIALS, & TECHNOLOGY

For this lesson, the following materials are required for each of the six potential groups:

 Pen or pencil
  Individual Plickers cards (to be handed out)
 Graphic organizer (shown in Appendix)
 Articles for ocean currents: each student gets one, either the California Current, the East
Australian Current, the Norwegian Current, or the Canary Current. Every group of four will have
one person with each of the articles.

The lesson will also require the smart board and the teacher’s cell phone to display and capture the results
(anonymously) from the students. The Plickers card will be distributed to each student as per the assigned
card that Plickers gives for them.

INSTRUCTION

1. Preparation of the learning environment (if required): The tables should be in their typical
formation. The students will have the Plickers cards sitting at their place at the tables so that the
lesson can begin right away. The board will display the Live Plickers so that students will come
in and immediately want to discover what the app is all about.
2. Introduction to the lesson: Students will be introduced to the lesson first with an explanation of
how Plickers works. Due to the fact that not being familiar with the application or the process
may skew the data (as I have seen previously), I will have an ‘easy’ Plickers quiz to begin. This
will be used to ensure all students know how to hold their cards and they will answer questions
beginning with “Where do you go to school?” (all students should be able to hold up the correct
and same answer—Central) and be followed by Get to Know you Questions like “Out of these
options, which is your favorite subject?” These will just be for me to know more about them as I
look to taking over at the beginning of next semester. Most students have a fascination with
Plickers so the goal is for it to hook students in and get them excited about the quiz at the end of
the lesson. While anonymous, the board will display the percentage of students who got the
question right, so students tend to want to do better on the quiz. Students will also be made aware
that the teacher and myself will have access to their individual answers and will therefore be able
to use this as a grade. This warm up, ‘easy’ quiz composed of five questions will last
approximately 5 minutes.
3. Body of the lesson: After the first warm up quiz, students will break into their first groupings. In
these groups, students will be given articles based on one of the four ocean currents: East
Australian Current, California Current, Norwegian Current, and the Canary Current. Students are
able to work individually or with their groups depending on their own desire. Students will use
the article they were given to record in their graphic organizers the answers to the categories
“Temperature,” “Where does it originate?,” How does the current impact the surrounding
environment?,” and “Fun fact about the current”. They are to have filled out each category with
the answer pertaining to their ocean current that corresponds to their article. The worksheet also
has a map on the back side and they are to include their ocean current (with the appropriate
 color—red for warm current, blue for cold current) in its correct location on the world map. This
should take approximately 13 minutes because students will then move into their second
grouping.
The second grouping will then use the ‘Jigsaw’ method for learning. The students who
went over each of the ocean currents will then be grouped with students who read about and got
the answers for the other ocean currents. They will then be the ‘experts’ of their ocean current and
be responsible for reporting the information to their new groupmates. This form of activity will
then show the teacher and myself if the students are engaged in the lesson because students who
do not complete the entire graphic organizer will then be known for their disengagement. This
portion of reporting to their group will take 13 minutes and students will have the graphic
organizer and map complete with information and location of each of the four ocean currents.
4. Feedback: During the group work time, I will be monitoring groups for active engagement by
every student. They will be aware that they will be responsible for the information in their second
group so that they must have the portion of the organize completed. Students will also complete
fully the front and back of the worksheet with graphic organizer and map both included. Students
will be familiar with Plickers after the initial quiz that will serve to ensure that all students know
how to use the Plickers cards as well as serve as a way for me to get to know them better. At the
completion of their worksheet, students will then take their follow-up Plickers quiz which will be
more comprehensive and potentially be used as a grade for the class.
5. Closure: When there is approximately 14 minutes remaining in class (just over ten minutes
because ten will not completely suffice), students will be asked to turn in their graphic organizers
and take out their Plickers cards again. I will then display their quiz for comprehension in the
same way that I did for the preview quiz. Students will be asked questions based on their graphic
organizer worksheet as well as a few review questions from their notes from the unit. Students’
answers will be displayed anonymously but the teacher and myself will have access to each
individual students’ answers.

Follow up:
After orchestrating the lesson the first time, I realized that the movement in between the groupings would
not benefit students enough to justify the length of time it took to get them resituated. That being said, my
cooperative teacher and I decided to modify the structure of the lesson slightly from then on. We had
students sit in their four person differentiated groups that would receive the structured difficulty articles
from the beginning. Then, as they were grouped in that manner, students spent about 8 minutes reading
their articles silently and finding the information from the articles. I wrote the articles myself so I knew
that the information for each category and question would be able to be found in each article. After
working silently, I announced which current expert would report for the next 3 minutes. For example, the
first current that I had teach their group was the East Australian Current. Thus, I would say “Alright, now
the East Australian Current expert will teach your group about the information in the graphic organizer.”
They would have 3 minutes to teach their group and then we would move onto the next current and that
expert would teach for the next 3 minutes. We continued this until all of the groups had shared out and the
entire group completed the graphic organizer. Due to the time it took students to complete the task, they
were not able to complete the entire follow-up quiz but I did present the classes with a couple of questions
each. My cooperative teacher also said that she would ask them the questions and they would discuss
them as a review beginning the following day to start her lesson. This allowed the lesson to be done in its
entirety, albeit it taking two days to fully complete. These types of lessons and the complex nature of
group work, incorporating technology in a meaningful way, and students spending time working
independently on reading for comprehension will all be done more easily when I have time to be more
flexible and allow classes, based on their progress, to continue to finish the following day. The time
constraints of being there one day a week and wanting to fit all of this rich content and activity into one
day was the biggest challenge when completing this lesson. However, many students were able to fully
complete their graphic organizers and the teams worked well as a group to teach and learn about all four
of the ocean currents.

DIFFERENTIATION

As a whole, the class has students with different needs and who work at different paces. Because some
students do not work as well with other students, the groups will be based off of team compatibility as
well as team comprehension level. The articles are written at slightly staggered levels so students with
better comprehension of the material will read the article on that ocean current, the Norwegian Current.
Then students who may be having a harder time with the material will read a less complex article, the
East Australian Current. Given the article differentiation, students will not know that they are given
different levels of complexity and all students will still end up with the same information because they
will all share the answers as a group. This will allow even struggling students, like Alexa* (name
changed), to completely comprehend and record the information that she reads as well as to obtain the
information from a more complex article that Robert* (name changed) read and relayed back to Alexa. In
this way, students may be grouped in their first grouping by complexity of text and level of
comprehension but then be grouped in the second group in a mixed setting, allowing all students to get
the information and understand each ocean current.

RATIONALE/THEORETICAL REASONING/RESEARCH

As Marzano discusses in The Art and Science of Teaching, “Learning proceeds more efficiently if
students receive information in small chunks that are processed immediately.” (2007) ‘Jigsaw’ is one of
the original cooperative learning techniques that allows students to learn in this way—they are only
responsible for learning one of the topics, or ocean currents, through the article. From there, students are
able to relay the information and teach the information for the categories of the other currents using the
information from their peers. These ‘small chunks’ allow students to fully understand their topic, or ocean
current, while still becoming familiar with the other three ocean currents. They will then understand
currents more fully through their current while still exploring and learning new things about the other
currents.

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

Technology will play a role in both the introduction and conclusion of the lesson. By using Plickers,
students are able to see the results of the class without knowing what results belong to who. The teacher is
able to see what each individual student answered after the lesson but is also able to discuss questions that
a majority of the class got wrong right after the question has been answered. Thus, if more than 80% of
the class answered a question wrong and there is time during the lesson, I might go over the answer to
that question to clear up the confusion at that time. This would be after the assessment has been
completed and the answers have been recorded but will ensure that students are then aware of the correct
information and that all students are on the same page. Plickers can be something to get used to for
students and they should have an idea of how it works before being assessed using it, thus, the preview
‘fun’ or ‘easy’ quiz will allow for familiarity to the application.

INTEGRATION OF PRIOR MENTOR FEEDBACK

My last lesson included a large sum of information on permeability and used it somewhat in the context
of real events but did not dive into the relation to real life. For this lesson, I wanted to make sure that I
truly incorporated the content to real life so students would broaden their horizons to real life context.
Moreover, I wanted to use more differentiated work to show how students could advance their knowledge
based on their beginning skills or comprehension but also to challenge them in constructive ways. Thus,
the differentiated articles gives students the opportunity to learn and use the text to complete their
worksheets while also giving all students the ability to get the information. My overall goals from
previous feedback centered on improving my skills of making it relatable and relevant to real-life context
as well as strengthening my delivery of instructions and information, which I will do during the lesson as
I present to students.

REFERENCES
Marzano, R. J. (2010). The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective
Instruction. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
APPENDIX

Graphic Organizer:

(back side of

graphic

organizer)

Articles:
The East Australia Current

The East Australia Current is an ocean current in the Pacific Ocean that originates with
water at the equator in between Mexico and Australia. The water then moves west across the
Coral Sea and reaches the east coast of Australia. Then, the current moves toward the south end
of Australia, going in between Australia and New Zealand. As the current moves along the East
Coast of Australia, it brings a large amount of warm tropical water from the equator southward.
This process is part of what allows the Great Barrier Reef to survive. The warm water keeps the
Reef and the coast of Australia around 70°F. The Great Barrier Reef has a large amount of
marine life and has over 3,000 individual reef systems. Without the warm water brought from the
equator by the East Australian Current, the Great Barrier Reef would not be able to exist. You
may have heard about the East Australian Current in the movie Finding Nemo, when Marlin and
Dory join a group of sea turtles using the Current to help them travel to Sydney Harbor, on the
south end of the continent.
The California Current

The California Current is a current located in the Pacific Ocean alongside the western
coast of the United States, near California. The movement of the current from Alaskan and
northern waters down toward the west coast results in much cooler ocean temperature than at the
same latitude of the eastern coast. This means the cooler ocean current along the west coast also
makes summer temperature cooler on the west coast compared to the east coast. This results in
ocean surf temperatures along the California coast south to San Diego to rarely be above 66°F
during the summer, while they are often above 80°F on the east coast from North Carolina
southward. The California Current was also featured in Finding Dory, where the California
Current is portrayed as a superhighway that fish and sea turtles use to travel to California.
The Norwegian Current

The Norwegian Current flows northeasterly along the Atlantic coast of Norway into the
Barents Sea. Most of its water originates from the Baltic Sea, a warmer body of water for the
area. The Baltic Sea is warmer because most of the water that is in the Baltic Sea travelled there
from the Gulf Stream Current, which is made of warm water from the equator. That means that
the Baltic Sea, the source of water for the Norwegian Current, is also influenced by the Gulf
Stream Current. In the winter, the water in the Norwegian Current does get cooler because it is
very close to the poles and reaches about 40°F. But even then, the water is much warmer than the
water around it, which can often turn to ice. The water has a strong effect on the surrounding
environment, especially for the coast of Norway. The Atlantic Ocean and the nearby coastal
waters have a moderating effect on the extremes of temperature in Norway, making the areas
near the water warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
The Canary Current

The Canary Current is located in the Atlantic Ocean and is on the west coast of Africa.
The Canary Current travels south from Morocco to Guinea. Most of the cool water comes from
the North Atlantic Current after the North Atlantic Current has travelled through cold water. The
cold water that the North Atlantic Current goes through is cold because of upwelling. Upwelling
is a process in which cold, nutrient dense water from the deep ocean rises to the surface and
replaces warm surface water. This process of upwelling is very significant to the Canary Current
because it is what causes the water from the North Atlantic Current, the source of water for the
Canary Current, to become cold. The biggest impact of the Canary Current is the nutrient-rich
waters that allow for jobs in fishing. The cooler waters also allow the coast to not experience the
extreme heat of the African deserts.
Intro Quiz (to test for understanding of how to use Plickers—intentionally done to be easy and check
for comprehension of how to hold Plickers cards):
Follow up Plickers questions to check for understanding of the lesson (10 questions):
ANALYSIS OF TEACHING EPISODE

 Consider the variety of learners in this class and discuss how any of the following elements
affected your planning: prior academic learning, personal, cultural and developmental assets.

o In planning for the lesson, I decided to vary the difficultly of the articles I created for the
lesson. This would allow students with different levels of comprehension to be
challenged in their own unique ways. For example, I had one student who is
exceptionally capable in science to have the most challenging article on Norwegian
Current. With this current, he was able to be challenged in a more demanding way than
his groupmate who read the East Australian Current article, which I intentionally created
to be slightly more straight forward and easy to answer. Some of the articles stated the
information in less direct ways, such as “water carried from the equator” instead of
“warm water” to denote the temperature of the current. This more complex reading
inferencing was asked more so of the students who complete these tasks with more ease.
Nonetheless, all of the students were required to use the text and use their background
knowledge of their reading skills and their ability to recognize the information when told
in a more roundabout manner. However, because of the variation, the students’ potential
struggles or successes within these literary skills were taken into account for the
groupings of students and the assignment of article to student. Finally, the articles did not
require students to have any personal background knowledge of the currents because I
wrote it in an accessible way that was consistent and did not call upon students to have
been to the ocean or have any non-academic encounters with the topic.

 Provide evidence of demonstrating mutual respect for, rapport with, and responsiveness to young
adolescents with diverse needs.

o When giving out the articles, I did not specify why certain students should read certain
articles because I did not want them to feel as though they were not as capable as their
peers. The anonymity of the article given to each student from the student’s perspective
allowed them to feel on equal footing and feel as though there were no levels considered.
Moreover, I often spent some time listening to each of the groups and discussing what
they wrote and hearing their reasoning and explanation for such answers. This time gave
me a better opportunity to get to know their thinking strategies and the way that they
dissect and maneuver around a text. During the video, while reviewing the main ideas of
ocean currents that they had learned already, a student (off camera view) who typically
does not participate in answering questions was trying to answer the question, “Why is
the Gulf Stream Current warm?” While typically in the class, students are allowed to
participate openly and run as more of a group discussion rather than silently raising hands
 to be called on, I wanted that student to have the sole ability to answer the question.
When he was able to answer without the other students yelling out, he answered
correctly. These moments are important in a classroom because in that instance, I felt I
had to ability to boost his confidence in class participation and feel more valued in the
classroom. I later went over to him and thanked him for his participation and gave him a
high-five for being my ocean current assistant that day.

 Explain how your instruction engaged young adolescents in their learning.

o By grouping students in sets of four, with each individual reading their own unique
article and becoming an ‘expert’ on their current, they were given responsibility over the
content. In this way, the students were in charge of their own learning and were held
accountable by their peers for having the information. Not only did their ability to engage
and participate in filling out the graphic organizer affect their own responses, but the
responses of the other three people in the group. Even if students struggled initially to
complete the worksheets, their teammates would assist in order to get all necessary
details. Moreover, the Plickers quiz activity allowed students to be held accountable for
their answers while also remaining anonymous to the class as a whole. Overall, the
students were engaged as a group and worked diligently given the time restraints of the
class period.
During the video, the first table of students is working on completing the graphic
organizer together but one student (the female on the left) is not working with the group.
She is a student that particularly struggles with reading and independent work. On a
typical day, I spend extra time with her and try to give her more independent time.
However, with it being the first time that the class had worked on an activity using the
‘Jigsaw’ method, the students had a lot of questions and every group required more time
than they typically would. When making the groups, though, I specifically grouped her
with a young man (on the right) who thoroughly enjoys science and who excels at most
lessons we do. In this way, I hoped that by having him in the group, they would be able to
work together to properly complete the information and learn about each current.
Throughout the video, it can be seen that the rest of the group finishes and then they start
to also look at her article to try to find the information about the East Australian Current
that she was not able to obtain on her own.

 Explain how you elicited and built upon student responses to promote thinking and learning of
content in this lesson.
o For the most part, this lesson drew on the responses that students wrote rather than spoke.
The students had a good understanding of ocean currents in terms of the notes and
content that they had gone over but struggled with the concept of these ocean currents
 being real and all around the world. By creating articles that highlighted where the ocean
currents were, the temperature, the impact that they had on the surrounding environment,
and a fun fact about the currents. In this way, the lesson was planned and built around the
responses students had given previously and the areas of confusion that they had on the
ocean currents. I included maps and hints as to where they could locate the current on the
articles’ maps as well as gave them a world map on the back of their graphic organizer.
Then the students worked as a group in a collaborative thinking setting in order to make
more sense of how these ocean currents actually fit onto the Earth and the impact that
they had for the areas around them. Students also read about the fact that many of them
may recognize and already know about the East Australian Current because it was
featured in Finding Nemo. Many students were able to connect that information back to
their memories of the film and the portion of the movie that depicted and described what
the experience of being in the current was like for the sea turtles on their journey.
Moreover, while walking around to each group, there were times when I saw that
students may have put the wrong information simply because they were not reading the
article in a critical thinking way. For example, some students put that the Norwegian
Current was a cold current because it is located closer in proximity to the North Pole than
any of the other currents. However, I would push those students to find evidence in the
text of their reasoning, and, after reading the sentence again, would recognize that it was
actually influenced by water from the equator making it a warm current.

 What changes would you make to your instruction—for the whole class and/or for students who
need greater support of challenge—to better support young adolescent learning in regards to the
central focus.
o Given the time restraints of student teaching one day a week, I recognize now how I
might have been able to change things if I was in the classroom every day. If I had more
flexibility in scheduling, I might make the pre-lesson Plickers quiz (that was intended to
make sure students knew how to use the application and Plickers cards) the end of a
previous, shorter lesson. This would allow me to know that they were fully able to jump
right into the follow up quiz after completing the graphic organizer. During the lesson
itself, I would have liked to have spent more time with certain students as they worked
independently on their articles. There were students who had trouble finding some of the
information that I did not anticipate to have any issues easily locating where it was in the
article. With that, I spent more time with more students than expected, leaving less time
for the students who more regularly need that support. To assist the class as a whole, I
might have modeled the reading of a fifth current that we would complete as a class,
filling in the information and showing them how to find the answers within the text. This
reading and comprehension strategy was something I assumed all students were very
familiar with but they did not seem confident in their abilities to fully complete the
 reading and locating of information. The other major hiccup of the lesson was the fact
that many students needed more time to complete the articles and graphic organizers as a
group than I had allotted time for. This meant that we only were able to answer a few of
the follow up questions for the more comprehensive quiz at the end of class. The
information on the quiz was important to the unit as a whole and I discussed some of the
questions with my cooperative teacher as questions she considered putting on the unit
test. I would have liked to have gotten to all of the information in that time but thought
that giving them more time to fully complete the graphic organizer and get the
information for each current was more of a priority. I might have considered also pushing
back the Plickers post-graphic organizer quiz to the beginning of the next lesson (as my
cooperative teacher did) to allow for more time for quality sharing and less time for
rushed copying.

 Why do you think these changes would improve student learning? Support your explanation with
evidence of young adolescent learning AND principles from theory and/or research, including
young adolescent development.
o If students had more time to think about their answers on both Plickers quizzes, it would
have allowed for more quality learning of the content. Because I was rushed for time,
there were some answers that I simply stated afterwards and did not get into the
explanation of the reasoning, which is an important component to assessment. During the
video, it shows a student raising his hand after the question, “Which one of the currents
we learned about today had cold water caused by upwelling?” He believed that the
answer was the California current because that was the article he had read and he said
that it is also a cold water current. I then replied that it was cold, but not cold primarily
caused by the process of upwelling. This question to the reasoning behind the answer
would have been a great discussion point to alleviate some confusion around the
question, but because class had only a couple of minutes left, I quickly moved on to the
next question. I wish I would have been able to have the time to slow it down and truly
dive into the answers and the reasoning behind their correctness.
The other major portion of the lesson that I believe would have been
strengthened would have been spending more time with the students who have a harder
time with reading and reading comprehension. As a whole, the class seemed to have
problems with finding the answers in the text so the practice of modeling would have
supported their ability to see how the process should work. Moreover, as seen primarily
with younger students, when students are able to see the full process play out, they have
more confidence in their ability and the methods they are using. Without realizing it, I
sent the students into the activity somewhat blind because I am not convinced that they
had much practice with that form of reading for understanding. I typically would not
 want to spend too great of length of time on such modeling practices, but I believe there
would have been some benefits for the class. Beyond just the reading comprehension
process, the students who benefit from the one-on-one experience were not able to get as
much out of the lesson as they might had they had more assistance. If the modeling had
been done, it might have lessened the questions during the activity, which would have
opened up more time for me to work more closely with students who might have just
copied the answers without any comprehension of the material. For example, in the
video, the female student on the left did not complete her portion of the article
information. Looking back on the video, I realized that she completed only a small
percentage of her graphic organizer. What she had written had been correct, but she
might have been able to better complete the activity if she had someone to support her
and encourage her to continue with her group.

 Provide a graphic or narrative that summarizes student learning for your whole class in terms of
the stated objectives in the lesson plan. Based on this data, to what extent were your objectives
met for the whole group and individual students?
o As a whole, many of the students fully completed their graphic organizers with the
correct information. In terms of the objectives of the lesson, this shows that, for the most
part, they were able to complete the objectives, which were: “identify their ocean current
and explain and report the information about their current to peers”, “conclude the impact
of the current on the surrounding environment,” and “record the information for their
current as well as their ‘Jigsaw’ groups’ information on the other ocean currents in the
form of the graphic organizer.” However, I do not know the full extent of the level of
comprehension they had on the currents that they shared with peers because I was not
able to ask each question that related to each of the currents. Thus, on the surface it
would appear that the students were able to complete the objectives that we set out to
complete at the beginning of the lesson. There were certainly students who did not
complete the graphic organizer, like the female student shown on the left side of the
video, but she did read over the article and seemed to have an idea of the information
when I talked to her about it after class. This might show that the objective of
comprehension may have occurred while the goal of writing and explaining it to others
did not. In conclusion, I was pleased with the way students were discussing the articles
and the facts that they learned about the currents. Many of the conversations that I heard
also spent a good deal of time on the impact of the current on the surrounding
environment, which was a key factor that I wanted them to take away from the lesson. I
was satisfied with their success on the objectives but, as with most lessons, I see that
there was room for improvement, primarily with select students who had a more
challenging time with the reading and writing of the information.
 In considering your feedback to students during the lesson, focus on one student in your video
clip. Explain how the feedback that you provided addressed the student’s strengths or weaknesses
relative to the learning objective measured.
o In the video, there is a student who I address twice that shows significant strengths from
this lesson. This student is the one which I spoke about previously, who was off camera
but who answered the question correctly about the Gulf Stream Current water coming
from the equator, making it warm. This student is not particularly active in the classroom
and is considered a weak participate in most cases. However, he displayed a lot of skill
with this lesson and showed enthusiasm for the material. This is shown most clearly
when he asks about the question “Which one of the currents we learned about today had
cold water caused by upwelling?” As I mentioned previously, he believed it was
California because the California Current is also cold. When I told him that the California
is cold, the Canary Current is cold specifically because of the process of upwelling. He
then audibly says “Ohh!” This interaction was something that he can work on because his
logic was correct, but his evidence and reasoning for believing his answer was not fully
supported by the text. However, he was quick to recognize why he had made that error
and then understood how the text and further working with his groupmates might have
helped him to come to the correct conclusion.

 Based on your analysis of young adolescent learning in this lesson, describe the next steps for
instruction for the whole group and/or individual student to impact young adolescent learning.
o After the conclusion of this lesson, my cooperative teacher continued to finalize the
lesson the following day. She went over all of the quiz questions and then took the time
to review how and why the answers were what they were. This supported the learning
because the students were better able to solidify what we had gone over and correctly
process the information. Beyond the quiz, my cooperative teacher then went into a
research mini-project on another ocean current. Students were assigned to an ocean
current, like the Brazilian Ocean Current, and had to research information about the
current. This process allowed students to further develop the kind of information that is
most important when thinking about currents, like the temperature, location, and impact.
That project used this lesson as a springboard for showing students what they might want
to consider starting their search with. From there, students worked on either a writing
prompt about ocean currents or had a small-group lesson that further broke down ocean
currents and reviewed the information from my lesson as well as the mini-project. This
split day was intended to support the students who needed to have more time to fully
comprehend ocean currents while also giving the other students a longer and more
challenging writing prompt that allowed them to compile of the ideas they had learned
about ocean currents. The students who worked with the teacher later completed a
shorter, more review-based writing prompt that ensured that they were still able to get the
writing and critical thinking practice that all students need.