Week 4

As the end of the first week of state testing begins, a break is in high demand for my students. In order to relax the minds and make an ordinary writing lesson more exciting, I decided to spice up my lesson by integrating science materials into writing.

This past week, I started the opinion writing unit for my class. In order to prepare my students for writing opinion pieces, I had to teach students had to use an opinion organizer. Instead of using the suggested article for students, I decided to pick an article that connected to a topic the class showed interest in, space.

I began by introducing a pro/con organizer to my class. I modeled how to use the organizer by using last weeks article on Beluga Whales. I used this article in order to have students be familiar with the content rather than throwing something new at them after they worked all week on their state assessments.

After modeling how to use the organizer, I had my students pair up and reread the article and search for pros/cons. After searching with a partner, I had students share pros/cons they found in the Beluga Whale article.

The next day, in order to see if they understood how to use a pro/con organizer, I had students work independently to fill in the organizer. This time, I gave students a new article. The article the students read is titled "End of an Era" (http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/05/end-of-an-era/). The article gives a history of the great and not so great things about the space shuttle program. This provided students with an opportunity to read about a topic of interest. It also gave a wealth of information about a topic they may have not experienced first hand like my generation and older generations did. The article itself provided a good amount of pros/cons for students to use in their organizers.

As I walked around to see student progress, I noticed that a lot of students were very engaged in the article. Usually when I give students a assigned reading, they tend to get distracted or simply "stare off into space". The articles usually do not seem to hold the interest of the students. I usually end up having the use focusing tactics to keep students on track with their work. However, as I walked around, 21 out of 23 students were continuously engaged and kept focus on their assignment. It is a great thing to see this not only as a teacher, but a student intern. When that many students are focused and actively showing that they are enjoying an assigned reading, it tells you that you are indeed doing something right.

I collected the students organizers to check for understanding and completion. Every student, which is hard to say most of the time, understood how to use a pro/con organizer and were able to provide detailed pros/cons to support their opinion statement. This is great because from here on out, students will be able to continue with the writing process and start drafting an introductory paragraph for their opinion pieces.

At the end of this lesson, I had students complete an exit survey. Every once in a while, I plan to do this in order to gather student feedback to support my theory of STEM materials. After reading the surveys, what I observed about student engagement seems to be consisted in the opinions of the students. Below are a few examples of student responses.

Q: "Did you like reading an article about science and space rather than an article that was not about science. Why?"

A:
"I think science articles are better because I like science a lot. I think it is fascinating."

"Yes because I learned a lot more than I would and I thought it was really exciting."

"Yes, I am interested in space and wanted to know why they stopped launching space shuttles."

"I liked it because I feel like having a variety is a good thing than sticking with 1 subject."