Rhiannon Dancaster

TED 503
DUE: 4/7/2022

Language Development Teaching Assignment #2: Science

Overview of lesson: This lesson was a science/engineering lesson that had the
students designing their own “apple trappers” and testing their effectiveness to see what
modifications they could make to have them perform better. Before they got to design
their apple trapper, however, I showed them a few videos that detailed the purpose of
the lesson and how they would go about it (using the school’s science curriculum
Mystery Science). After seeing the videos giving them ideas for what kind of trappers to
make, the students got to use pieces of paper and tape to create their apple trappers.
They had time to design, then they got to test (using crumpled up pieces of red paper to
represent apples) their trappers and see how successful they were at grabbing apples
and moving them from one place to another. After testing, we met up at the carpet to
discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what changes they planned on making to
improve their trappers. Then, the students got to go back and make changes to their
trappers before testing them again. Finally, to close the lesson, we discussed how
successful their changes were, and how they were able to make adjustments after
experimenting with their design. We also discussed what commonalities there were
between the trappers that were successful. The focus of the lesson was to expose the
students to the idea of testing and making changes based on their observations from
testing. They were all very innovative with their designs and the changes they made
were mostly successful and made sense with what was required to pick up the apples.
Details of strategies from reading: My lesson included a lot of visuals and
discussions that helped the students develop their apple trappers better. The visuals
from the Mystery Science lesson were especially helpful because they provided great
insight into what was expected for the apple trapper without giving too much away. This
was a great help for our English learner student to see examples of what was being
verbally described for the trappers. Another strategy that was very helpful for all of the
students was the discussions we had in between the testing and designing. Instead of
just having the students test, then redesign, then test again, the students tested, then
came to the carpet for a discussion on how their tests went so that they could take a
moment to consider what they needed to do to improve their trappers. These
discussions included me asking what some of their trappers looked like, what worked
for them, what didn’t work, and what changes they planned on making. By hearing their
classmates ideas, the students were able to hopefully get some ideas of their own, and
it showed that these mid-lesson discussions can be very useful, especially when
testing/experimenting with things.
Reflections after teaching: This lesson went very, very well. The students were very
engaged and they thrived during the designing portions. As previously mentioned, their
designs were very creative and innovative, showing that they had a true knack for
 Rhiannon Dancaster
TED 503
DUE: 4/7/2022

engineering. My supervisor said that the lesson went well, too, so I was happy that she
also enjoyed it. Something I could have done differently for this lesson would have been
to provide more challenges to the apple trapping section, and possibly even having the
students adjust their apple trapper based on those difficulties. For example, “if the
apples were actually in this location, how would you have to change your apple trapper
to grab them?” This might even be implemented into a follow up lesson instead, that
makes the experimenting more challenging for the students. A follow up lesson could
also include working in groups to create something together to pick up apples. This
would encourage the students to collaborate in these situations, as a lot of these kinds
of engineering projects in everyday life are typically done in collaborative teams. It
would also show students that they can have their own ideas, put them together with
others, and create something possibly even better due to the many different minds
coming together. Given how well the students did with this lesson, I have great
confidence that they would thrive with other similar extension lessons.