REFLECTION OF SCIENCE LESSON

LESSON 1
5TH MAY 2016

Today I was presented with the opportunity to teach grade 1

students at St Dominics Primary School in Broadmeadows.
I co taught with my peer Zoe, about a science inquiry unit based on
Bioethics.

Our unit was on Climate change, with bioethics being the teaching
approach. The first lesson was centered on introducing the students
to the topic. We prepared this by hoping the students would have
some prior knowledge of the issue about climate change.

Bioethics is quite a broad topic, so we had to simplify it for the grade

1 students. I started the lesson off by reading them Unos Garden by
Graeme Base. This book introduced the ideas of the unit but
presenting the decease of a jungle rich with flora and fauna into a
concrete city with no plants or animals. Soon after, we discovered
that these students had no prior knowledge of climate change. The
next activity introduced the key terms that explained the effects on
climate change we made the main focus about animals, as we knew
the students would take interest. We did this by writing a short list
of about 10 animals and explained the problems each one will face if
the planet gets warmer.
I straightaway saw the difference in the students interaction as they
became much more engaged with the focus being on animals.

We had planned to show a short video the students with visuals of

climate change with explanations to the causes. However, the
interactive white board was broken, and we were unable to show the
students the video. We had not prepared an alternative plan, but will
ensure there will be one for the future.
Zoe and I had prepared a worksheet that was meant to follow after
the video, but this could not be done now. We thought the next best
thing, would be to explain to the students what the work sheet was
about and worked as a class together to get the answers.

We wrapped up the lesson by going over the new information the

students had learnt by asking them probing questions. It was
interesting to see how much the students had taken on, and I look
forward to teaching them next week.