Our lesson was based on the separation of water and oil. It was important for us to assess the class knowledge at the start of the lesson in order to structure the lesson to suit each group’s needs.
Each group brought new ideas, different levels of knowledge and importantly different questions. Children’s questions are central to science and enquiry. It is important to encourage children to ask questions which they can find solutions to. Providing a context which excites children and engages them is central to learning. One problem we faced was being surrounded by experiments which involved acid and alkali reactions. The excitement surrounding these experiments somewhat took away from the engagement with ours. In hindsight, as a group I believe it would’ve been beneficial to communicate with our peers and gain a better insight as to what other groups were doing. This perhaps would’ve helped us assess how to best put our ideas into practice.
Having prepared questions is also key to good assessment and learning. In hindsight this is something as a group we should have considered more closely. In our plenary we introduced the word emulsion which left children slightly confused. It would have been beneficial to introduce the word at the start of the lesson as a plenary should sum up learning. Assessing group work can be difficult, and what works for one group may necessarily not work for the next. In a situation where you are unfamiliar with the children and their preferred learning styles it may be of benefit to have more than one prepared method of assessment. Assessment should not only tell a teacher what a pupil has learned, partly learned, and not learned at all. It should also identify areas of teacher improvement. By assessing our own performance we have the ability to adapt and improve our lesson for the next group, meaning that by the time the last group arrive our lesson should be well polished and clear.
Central to the constructivist theory of teaching and learning is social interaction. Children should be encouraged to share their thinking and ideas with their peers through talk. It was hard to engage all children in talk as they were unfamiliar with us as a group of teachers. Finding other ways to engage pupils in talk, breaking the ice or perhaps asking them to share ideas with a partner instead of the whole group would have possibly worked better. However, without knowing the children it was hard to plan for these uncertainties.
Identifying areas of weakness, as well as areas of strength, will help my future practice. The issues raised from today’s lesson should help inform my planning for the next group lesson. This lesson has also contributed to building my confidence as a science teacher as it was a good experience having other contributors to the lesson to learn from and create a wider knowledge base.
