Implementation Reflection

Microsoft Word Version
 

Lesson Plan Reflection: The Immune System

The topic of my lesson plan was the Immune System. The main focus was for students to learn the importance of this system in fighting diseases and how immunity plays a big part in maintaining the stability of your health and body. Another goal was to clear misconceptions by having students understand the difference between specific and non-specific immunities in fighting pathogens. Some pedagogical strategies used during the lesson included; lectures using PowerPoint, recalling prior knowledge by using KWL charts, using rubrics and timelines to guide completion of assignments, and working in groups to enhance collaboration. There were two technologies emphasized during the lesson. One was an Audience Response System, known as “clickers” and the other Weebly, an online webpage creating application. The clickers were used as formative assessment to measure comprehension during lecture and discussion; leading to reinforcement and re-teaching. Weebly was used as a Summative assessment to measure the overall learning of the content.

My Biology classes consist of freshmen and sophomores, with a few upperclassmen who are retaking the class. We have been studying The Human Systems for the last five weeks. Typically we begin with the Nervous System followed by the Immune System. However, after a department meeting, the sequence was changed. They had decided to push the Immune System towards the end, since they felt that Benchmark scores might improve if this part was taught closer to the testing date. For this reason, the implementation of my lesson plan was delayed. More days were lost due to the fact that re-teaching was needed for prior lessons. However, after a few hurdles, the implementation started smoothly. The clickers were a hit. All students seem to be responsive and highly interactive. Much to my surprise, I was able to quickly see how much my students were learning at any given point. It gave me a chance to further assist those who were having a harder time learning the concepts. At this point we are in the process of implementing the Weebly assignment. However, we still have one more system to teach and some students are anticipating that topic for their Weebly website. I have made one drastic change from my original lesson plan. I have decided to use this as their Final Semester Project. Students will be given extra time to complete this assignment. Hopefully with this extra time they will be able to submit some extraordinary projects. Most importantly, it will give me a chance to further teach them how to use Weebly.

The learning goals for this lesson plan included learning the role of the skin as a first line of defense against pathogens, also how antibiotics fight bacterial infections and vaccines prevent infections caused by viruses, and to comprehended how specialized cells fight diseases and build your immunity. An implicit assumption was that students would take prior knowledge and formulate critical thinking questions to further understand how the immune system works. A major affordance was that students would develop and improve critical thinking by using technology. However, the biggest constraint in the lesson was that some students could not continue the work at home because of the lack of technology. There were many aspects of learning. Most students who have not shown motivation to participate were enthralled by the “clickers” and were the first ones to ask if we were using them again in the future. In using a Cognitive Constructivist approach students were able to recall information they already knew and then use this prior knowledge to enhance learning. In modeling how to use Weebly, Behaviorism played a major role. I had to make sure I provided the correct information so that students can accomplish the project successfully. This particular lesson was used to use to enhance the curriculum and improve learning of content. It was also design to allow all kinds of learners to participate and learn. I am still working on the details on how to improve for next year, but an advice for other teachers would be to spend more time in explaining how to use the technologies and their purposes. To assess students, rubrics, guidelines, and timelines were used to maintain accountability. The technology part was crucial to help students grow as 21st century students. Many of them welcome the idea to make their own websites and plan to use it again for other classes. I truly believe that technology provides a positive affect and effect in learning new content and it is rewarding to hear they will continue to use it.