For the second semester of the school year, in addition to supporting in the SST classroom, I was also working in the grade 9 science classroom with Mr. Ammanuel Yohannes. When I was at the school on the Wednesdays, I observed and assisted his class. His lessons are very hands on. Every lesson centred on activities and demonstrations, and he uses it to promote students' scientific inquiry skills. The students were almost always engaged. Ammanuel was quite good at connecting with students. He conversed with them to build rapport and to get to know them better.
During the second block of my first year practicum, Ammanuel gave me the opportunity to plan and deliver the Electricity unit. I split the unit into three parts:
Part A: Static Electricity,
Part B: Current Electricity (Circuits), and
Part C: Relating Electricity to the Real World.
Summative Task (Assessment of Learning)
The summative task incorporates Part A and Part B of the Electricity unit. Students will design and construct an electrical device with the use of a Micro:bit. A Micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that has LED lights, buttons, speaker, motion and touch sensor, and radio. Students need to create programming codes so that what’s input into the Micro:bit will have the desired output. For this task, the electrical device needs to be composed of complete electrical circuits, which are all connected to the Micro:bit. They may use various materials to construct the structure of their device. Keeping in mind what they have learned about the conductivity of different materials, they will need to choose the materials carefully if they want their device and circuits to work.
Since this is a large project, I split it into sections and let the students complete them throughout the unit, rather than doing everything at once at the end so it won't seem like a daunting task. Part C of the unit is assessed using observations and exit cards. The exit cards also acts as an assessment as learning by asking students to reflect on their consumption of electricity and how it affects the environment.
Lessons
The teaching approach I used for the lessons is similar to Ammanuel's, which is activity-based learning. I did want students to have a some context before they start on an activity during the lessons, so I began each lesson with Powerpoint slides to introduce new concepts. Students would fill in a handout at the same time. They would go into small groups to work on the activities for the rest of the lesson, which includes hands-on experiments, coding, building circuits, and playing with virtual simulations. These activities were planned to help students visualize abstract scientific concepts, such as the movement of electrons. Accommodations, such as allowing students to use speech-to-text software, were also given to students with IEPs. Throughout the unit, I used worksheets, observations, and conversations with students as an assessment for learning.
Incorporating Technology in the Classroom
The summative task required the use of Micro:bit. It is a new technological device for most of the students, so I need to be careful with regards to how I introduce it to them. The summative was introduced to the students in the introductory lesson of the unit. They learned about what the Micro:bit is, what it can do, the MakeCode website for coding and the coding blocks that are needed for the Micro:bit to function. I also showed a few sample projects that can be created using the Micro:bit. Afterwards, the students are free to play around with the Micro:bit and try out its various functions. The MakeCode website also has tutorials they can try. Learning new technology can be overwhelming to some students, so I let them play around at the level they are comfortable with. Throughout the unit, small coding practice activities were incorporated into learning the concepts of the day, so that students can gradually be familiar with using the Micro:bit. I also allotted time in each lesson for students to design and build their devices.
Overall, this was a fun summative and most students were engaged in the engineering process. Students had a choice to pick a device that already had some guidance on the MakeCode website, or they can challenge themselves to design an original device. One student in my class wanted to try and build a remote control motor. I also enjoyed planning out this assessment and learning about the potentials of Micro:bit and technology in a classroom.
Details of my unit plan can be found here.
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