Danielle Espinosa
Dr. La Voy, S. Obenhaus, M. DeGraff
C & T 366: Tuesday/Thursday 8:00 a.m.
05 May 2011
Analysis of Lesson Two
The class that my teaching partner and I are assigned to is a high school freshmen and
sophomore introductory Biology class.
Our second lesson was a two day lesson over natural selection and evolution. The
objectives for the lesson were that the students would be able to understand and explain the
process of evolution according to Darwin’s four postulates of natural selection, correctly define
evolution of what it is and recognize what it is not, and demonstrate their understanding that
mutations occur randomly.
We were able to receive really useful feedback from the student’s comments, class
discussions, and the quizzes they took. The feedback gave us information about what the
students learned, which parts of the lesson were useful for the students, what we needed to
change about our lesson, and how they were able to connect their knowledge of genetics to the
theory of evolution.
Overall, our students understood our lesson really well. The mistakes that students made
on the quiz were kind of all over the place. Some mixed up vocabulary definitions, some could
not remember all of Darwin’s postulates of natural selection, and some could not fully connect
their knowledge of genetics to evolution. The lowest score was nine out of fifteen points (Fig. 1).
This student made mistakes on all areas of the quiz. If I could work with this student further I
definitely would because I feel like she would do a lot better if she would just apply herself and
if the information was reinforced. Another student scored ten out of fifteen points (Fig. 2). This
student made mistakes with Darwin’s postulates and on one question that he needed to connect
his knowledge of genetics. On the quiz we had the students’ list one true statement about
evolution. I found this student’s quiz very intriguing. On the true statement question he wrote
that evolution is not true and that it is fake. This reminded me and reinforced a discussion we had
in my History of Modern Science class. We discussed that no matter how much evidence you
present and explain that evolution is backed by lots of evidence and that it is not a belief people
will believe what they want for whatever reason. In this situation I would just continue with the
lessons and let him believe what he wanted because it is up to him to change his own opinion.
Luckily, he was the only student out of twenty one that there was an issue with. Another student
scored eleven out of fifteen points (Fig. 3). This student made one mistake with Darwin’s
postulates and had problems connecting evolution and genetics. Five students scored twelve out
of fifteen points (Figs. 4-5). The example students made different mistakes. One mixed up the
vocabulary and the other made one mistake with Darwin’s postulates and connecting evolution
and genetics. Two students scored thirteen. Three students scored fourteen. Eight students got a
perfect score (Fig. 6).
Although I had previous knowledge of how to construct a 5E lesson plan, the
Constructivism and the Five E’s and Analogies and the 5E Model articles helped me refine those
skills and improve the plan even better. Another idea from the literature we used in our lesson
was cooperative learning. The article Cooperative Learning in the Science Classroom and the
presentation by Carol Williamson helped us fully understand cooperative learning and how to
incorporate it into our classroom. We used cooperative learning in the natural selection
simulation lab. The students had designated tasks and had to work together, in order to simulate
natural selection with craft beads and felt. Throughout the lesson the students were constructing
their own ideas and my teaching partner and I were checking to verify that they were
constructing the correct ideas to prevent misconceptions. I was really impressed with one student
specifically. As I walked by his group he realized that one specific color of bead was supposed to
blend in with the felt to show that animals that blend in with their environments have a better
chance of surviving predators. I wanted to jump for joy but I just told him good work.
Even though our lesson went well there were some changes we needed to make. On day
one the procedure for the simulation lab could have been explained better. We were also pushed
for time this day so that activity was pretty rushed. In order to make sure the students understood
the point of the lab we did a computer simulation with them the next class that involved different
colored rabbits in different environments. On day two we had problems with the video we were
going to use for the extend/elaborate portion of the lesson. The students only ended up seeing
about half the video. We gave them the web address so they could finish watching it on their
own time if they wanted. In order to avoid this problem we probably could have put the video on
a flash drive and then taken it to the school. Since the video did not work we explained to the
students what the rest of the video was about and then we discussed definitions of genetic drift
and co-evolution and examples of each. Luckily, we had over planned so we had a spare activity
we could use. The activity was making paper birds to show that mutations are random. We did
the activity as a class and it turned out to be very fun for them. Also, we needed to add a question
to the quiz about how mutations are random to make that specific objective measurable.
Elements of our lesson that went well were basically that we were able to adapt if
something in our lesson did not work. In addition to the aforementioned activities the rest of the
activities turned out just fine and the students had fun and did well at participating in the
discussions. We were able to measure their previous knowledge, relate the information to things
that they are familiar with, and asses any misconceptions they had with the true false statements.
They really liked the Simpsons evolution video. It was also good for the students when we wrote
on the whiteboard. I feel that the notes worksheet we gave them to follow along with the lecture
really helped them. The best part was that overall the students did really well on their quizzes
and for the most part they were able to relate their knowledge of genetics to evolution.
I feel that overall our lesson went really well. I had a lot of fun teaching these students
and working with them and our mentor teacher. However, I am sad that this experience is over
because it was such a joy. But I am looking forward to future field experience and having my
own classes of students very soon.