Hoelzel

Grace Hoelzel
Professor Suk
EDUC 230-01V Education Field Experience
Spring Semester 2021
Rationale Statement Standard #8

Standard Eight: Instructional Strategies

The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage

learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to

build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways (NJ Professional Teaching

Standards, 2014, p.10).

Artifact: Lesson Plan 1- sink or float

Date of Completion: Spring 2020

Course Completed in: EDUC 212 Foundations of Education

This artifact is a science lesson plan activity on sink or float for preschoolers. The
learning objective is for students to be able to learn that objects rather sink or float
and to be able to observe, compare and predict the objects given for the assignment.
This artifact specifically relates back to Standard 8.i.9 as it states, “The teacher asks
questions to stimulate discussion that serves different purposes (e.g., probing for
learner understanding, helping learners articulate their ideas and thinking processes,
stimulating curiosity, and helping learners to question)”. (NJ Professional Teaching
 Hoelzel
2

Standards, 2014, p.11). This explains how asking questions during an assignment/
classwork can be beneficial in various ways for the students. For a class lesson of
sink or float for preschoolers, asking questions throughout the process, such as,
‘why do you think the red apple will float?’ will make them observe more with what
objects are sinking and which ones are floating, and they will think more about the
lesson overall. Also by asking students questions on the appearance of an object for
them think deeper as to why that object sank or floated. In my lesson plan, I
specifically ask questions such as, “was the object light or heavy” to ensure they
understand the object.

When creating this lesson plan during my EDUC 212 class, this was my first
lesson plan. One of the things that I can pinpoint having to be able to learn is how to
keep students engaged in learning what they are learning. I came to this conclusion by
taking into account how I would personally want a class lesson to be, which would be
wanting one that is interesting and has my attention. It especially is important for the
younger students to be able to learn in a way where it grabs their attention enough
where you can get them to be engaged. A way of doing that is choosing the kind of
objects you want to use for the lesson, things that will intrigue the students in wanting to
know if that object will sink or float. Also like I stated above, being able to keep them
interested in the activity by asking questions to spark curiosity and get them thinking
more about what is happening.
In the future, this lesson plan is one that I plan to do in my classroom because I think
it is a fun, educational experiment to introduce the younger students to the idea of
density and how that works. It is a kind of experiment that can interest the younger
groups and really gets them to pretend they are little scientists and explore the reason
behind sink or float!

Reference

New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers Alignment with InTASC. (2014, August 4).
Retrieved from New Jersey State Department of Education:
https://www.state.nj.us/education/profdev/profstand/ProfStandardsforTeachersAlignment
withInTASC.pdf