The lesson that influenced us the most was our first lesson. Our intention was to review a lesson that the teacher had previously taught, which was permeability, and to introduce to idea of porosity. We were going to start the lesson out by asking students to predict how much water a certain material would hold, and to ask them questions concerning their previous lesson to see how much they had retained from the teacher. We were planning to continue our lesson by handing out data sheets and having the students set up an experiment. To begin the experiment you would place a coffee filter inside of a funnel with the chosen material on top of the coffee filter. They were to then pour water onto the material that is set up and to record how long it took for the water to go through and to also record how much water was able to pass through. We were then going to ask the students to explain what they saw and to ask them questions that would lead them to the correct answer. Next, we were going to show students a picture that shows porosity in a material and to give an explanation for the results that the students provided. Then we were to hand out a foldable to have the students imagine what the porosity looks like in the materials that were provided to them. Lastly we were going to have the students discuss how permeability and porosity affect our everyday lives such flooding or underground water.

 

When we actually taught this lesson it started out really well. Each group was focused on the lesson we were teaching.  We learned that the students didn’t remember the terminology from the previous lesson, but understood the subject when it was put into layman's terms. After clearing up the terminology we proceeded to have the students predict which material would allow the water to flow the fastest. The students then started the experiment with the foldable instead of the data sheet, which was due to lack of communication. Most of the lesson was focused on the experiment, which was due to us losing track of time. When we realized that our time was up we had to rush the students through the questions that were attached to the data sheet.

 

They seemed to have understood what we wanted them to from the questions we gave during the evaluation. The majority of the class was able to correctly identify the similarity between permeability and porosity and all but a few of the students were able to tell us why they were different. This made us realize that we really needed to get past the exploration part of the lesson. The revisions we made were mainly reminders to keep an eye on the time and to help the students remain focused on the task at hand. In hindsight, we realize that the students should have been given more time to think of their own answers to the provided questions and to think critically on the subject to formulate their own questions that would lead to a deeper understanding.

 

To summarize why we made the changes that we did was all based on time management and to help enforce us as an authority figure to keep the students on task as well. We mainly as previously mentioned was to keep an eye on the clock and keep giving the students reminders of the time remaining on their work. This would have allowed the students to have more time for critical thinking and even a more in-depth group discussion during the evaluation. We also should have separated the data sheet from the evaluation questions to have lessened the confusion of the handouts.