Microteach

Itzel Carrillo
Microteach Reflection
SED 482
Dr. Lyon

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Lesson Overview and Design:

The original lesson was about the impacts of human activity on the environment. This
lesson plan is a part of the bigger unit on Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy and Dynamics. The
Next Generation Science standard for this lesson plan is, HS-LS2-7: Design, evaluate, and refine
a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
[Clarification Statement: Examples of human activities can include urbanization, building dams,
and dissemination of invasive species. The College and Career Readiness Standard is, write
arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning
and relevant and sufficient evidence. (9-10.W.1) The learning objective for the lesson is students
will be able to design and argue a solution for reducing the impacts of human activity on the
environment. The main focus of this lesson was to get students to start thinking about solutions
and how they could argue their solutions using the proper evidence and form of communication.
Students used prior knowledge from the previous lesson plans to better understand how to
develop a solution. Overall the main focus of this lesson plan was to help students develop a
solution and understand the different ways to argue and convey their solution.
Unit Connection:
The whole unit focuses on the interaction between humans and the environment and how
humans negatively impact the environment. This lesson helps students analyze everything they
learned about the human and environment interactions and use it to propose a way to eliminate
some of the negative human impact. This lesson helps the whole unit plan become valuable to
students lives. The students first learn how they impact the environment and then they learn they
can make a difference. Prior knowledge included detailed PowerPoints and article readings on
different human impacts. Students were asked to analyze the different human impacts and use

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data evidence to identify the main characteristics if each human impact. Students used all the
evidence and prior knowledge to better support their solution and argument. After this lesson,
plan students will have a better understanding of how they impact the environment as individuals
and be able to discuss the importance of these concepts. This lesson plan is towards the end of
the unit, so this lesson plan was going to lead students to having them think about how they can
make a difference as individuals and what would be the best but reasonable way to communicate
their own solution.
Lesson Analysis
We had multiple strengths and weaknesses in our lesson plan. Our main STELLA
practice focus was discourse. During our whole lesson plan we were doing activities and
discussing with the students ways to develop a solution they could argue and how to
communicate it. Our biggest strength for that was allowing students to develop their own ways of
communicating their solution. It helped think about all the different ways to communicate to a
large crowd, such as social media, brochures, skits and many more. We did not tell students how
they had to communicate their solution we gave them the choice and asked them to debate why
their choice of communication was better. Our weakness with as discussed in the class was not
mentioning to students they could have done online research to help them with their arguments.
The articles given to the students were helpful but it limited their argument to just the articles
information. Many classmates said they used their own computer to do research but were not
sure if it was a part of the assignment. So for next time we will provide more information or
allow students to do research using reliable online sources provided by the teacher. We made
sure to include some contextualization in our lesson plan. When discussing about what makes a
good argument for a solution, we started by asking the students what they thought made a good

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argument. We ask them to think about their personal past arguments they had with either friends
or family and to point out key ideas they believe made their argument successful. I feel this was
a strength because it helped students make a connection with their own arguments and it helped
them begin thinking about how they could argue a solution. I feel that we could have provided
more contextualization especially when asking the students to come up with solutions. We could
have asked them to base their solutions on things they have done in the past to help their
environment. We discussed during our class feedback how discussing with the students ways
they have helped the environment would have helped students think of more solutions and made
it relevant to their lives. We also included the STELLA practice, sense-making. Allowing
students to develop their own solutions and ways of communicating their solution with the use of
evidence, promoted scientific and engineering practices. We also discussed every part of the
assignment with the students and did examples as we guided them. I feel that this type of
assignment did not allow too much practice like an actual lab would, especially because we
limited them to an article and not provided the opportunity for more research. We also discussed
some prior information but I felt we did not discuss it enough to help with the assignment.
Scientific sense making is enhanced when teachers make explicit to students what they are to
learn, make connections between the big idea and classroom activity and prior knowledge or
experiences and make students aware of how they will demonstrate mastery of the big idea.
(Tolbert, Stoddart, Lyon, 2014) Another of our biggest strengths was Language and Literacy.
Throughout the whole lesson we made sure to engage the classroom in discussions related to the
big idea. We made sure to define important ideas and words such as solution, arguments and
communication, but we did it as a whole class. We also allowed the students to work in groups
and assigned each person a task. This allowed students to stay organized but also help each other

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when reading and taking notes on the article. Our weakness for this STELLA practice was we
did not review concepts and ideas from previous lessons to help with their assignment. We had a
word wall but we only used it for one lesson we did not use it for both. Also we provided
different articles so we did not assist students with reading and understanding the article we just
left them depending on each other to understand it. Overall we included in some way every
STELLA practice, but our lesson could have been better in each STELLA practice.
Revisions:
During our feedback we received plenty of valuable ways to revise our lesson to make it
a better learning experience for students. Classmates suggested that providing the same article
for every group will help make students think more creatively about different solutions for the
same human impact. It will also make for a better debate about who can communicate their
solution better. As a revision we would provide the same article to every group relating to a
human impact in our local community or in Arizona, which allows students to relate to. It will
also allow students to have personal evidence to support their solution and have a more relevant
debate.
Another important suggestion brought up during our feedback was giving students more
reliable online recourses they could use to do more research to support their argument. Many
classmates said they felt very limited and struggled to think of more solutions and supportive
evidence. A revision for this would be providing each group with a worksheet that includes many
reliable online sources and allowing students to either have their tablets, laptops or maybe having
a day where we go to a computer lab just to do research. This allows students to accumulate
more evidence especially evidence such as graphs and numbers. This also helps them learn how

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to support their arguments with the proper use of numbers and they also learn how to understand
graphs.
Our feedback also consisted of allowing students to use past solutions already done in the
by other people or the students themselves to support their solution. Students felt that they were
just limited to the example provided in the article. We as teachers did not clariy that they were
able to use online example solutions or their own experiences to guide them in their argument.
We hoped that by limiting the examples provided students will try to think of their own solutions
rather than copying a solution already done. We as teachers should have specified that they were
able to use them as examples. We should have also done one as a whole class. We could have
picked a human impact and as a whole class discussed ides for a solution. The discussion would
have set an example of the type of discussions and ideas that should have been brought up in
their individual groups. Overall we learned many ways we could improve our lesson plan and
make it more helpful for our students.

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References

Tolbert, S. Stoddart, T. Lyon E., Using the SSTELLA Framework to Prepare Science Teachers.
STELLA Instructional Practices. Volume 23. Number 1, 2014.