Artifact #2: Exploring Biology Unit Lesson Plan
The Exploring Biology course was designed to guide freshmen through the field of biology in a way that encourages them to think critically and make decisions as informed citizens of the world. I was excited about applying this approach because I find that many college students struggle to see the relatedness of topics across disciplines due to focusing on memorizing facts. The earlier this intervention is, the better students will fair in their following scientific courses. This was the principle idea that I focused on when developing my unit. I wanted to incorporate the learning goals of the course (seen in the syllabus) to encourage students to critically think about relevant topics in the scientific world while collaborating with others. I specifically chose genetic modifications because of its major presence in science and technology today and wanted to provide students with appropriate resources to develop their own opinions. Students explored topics such as CRISPR, GMO labeling, genetically modified animals and its ethics while applying a flipped classroom and active learning strategies. The unit culminated with group "debates" or discussions as a way to examine the various points of view that stakeholders within society have about the topics we discussed during the unit. I continually emphasized throughout the unit that most of the time there was never a "right" or "wrong" answer to many of these questions, because there are valid opinions on all sides. By continuously asking students "why", this would help students understand people's motivations for their opinions and evaluate the validity of their arguments.
Below, I also included reflections that I wrote after each of the three days I taught, with what I thought worked well or what I thought I could improve on. If interested, you can see other reflections I wrote while teaching the course under Artifact #10: Exploring Biology Reflections.
Below, I also included reflections that I wrote after each of the three days I taught, with what I thought worked well or what I thought I could improve on. If interested, you can see other reflections I wrote while teaching the course under Artifact #10: Exploring Biology Reflections.
Reflections During Teaching
Reflection: After Day #1 of Teaching
I feel that my first day of teaching went well. Even though we got off to a slightly rocky start with some Box issues, we were able to stay on time and complete everything. I do think students enjoyed my activities, and I definitely found students engaged.
For my first activity, we did the concept map on genetics. While I think some students struggled at first, I think by suggesting them to use google and other resources really helped some students flourish. While some students were a little concerned about getting everything done, I think they enjoyed that they were able to combine their concept maps into 1 for the group. I really liked though when people got to see other maps around the classroom. Some made good effort to get around the classroom, and when they saw all the variety, they got some good ideas of how they can maybe make theirs better, or how to incorporate all the different core concepts. Overall, I would deem this activity a success.
For my second activity, I had them work on the Hunger Games Science lecture. What worked well in this activity was each group having to come up with their own ideas—I think a lot of students enjoyed looking up and research topics in science and forming opinions on them. Students also seemed to really enjoy getting to vote on that opinion. What I don’t think worked as well was the second set of prompts because students didn’t get enough time to work on it. If we had more time, I would have given students a little more time to answer questions. While the idea was to get them thinking about such questions, I think some students got a little hung up on the specifics of questions. I believe this is a start though to get them critically thinking about topics in science.
What I would do differently in the future is to try to assign more points in class and ask for a little less outside of class. While I think the activity I am having them do is fun, I think students don’t like how points are not assigned to class assignments. I will revisit that with all my other classes. Cara also suggested I use the term “everyone” or “you all”, instead of "you guys" to be more inclusive. I have learned that saying "you guys" is quite a bad habit I have, so this might be harder to change than I think. I also want to challenge myself to ask more about the core concepts. While I do think the students are enjoying not having each of the core concepts forced down their throat all the time, it is what makes up the points on the final. Therefore, I want to work on emphasizing core concepts while still encouraging students to come up with examples themselves. I think there are some good ways of doing this (ie. The guide RNA’s specific nucleotide sequence and how that structure informs a function). While adjusting the lesson plan with my feedback I want to really to challenge myself to see how to incorporate it in new ways.
Reflection after 2nd day of teaching:
My second day of teaching was a little rockier than my first. I attribute that to the difficulty of the lesson plan, and the way we set the lesson up to interact with others. However, I think I learned a lot from my experiences today.
I think there were many good things about the CRISPR activity I employed, and many things I would do differently. I felt it was challenging to the students, and many of the students who get bored when not engaged really were involved and asking great questions. However, this meant some of our students who struggle normally ended up struggling. This would be ok if we had more time to spend on the activity, but we needed to try to move on with the lesson. Thankfully, the second half of class was developed to be able to go at different speeds depending on the time left, so it ended up working out perfectly. I did feel like this was a great example of real life application that translates to classes beyond this one.
If I were to teach it again in the same settings, I would make sure to make some more background information clear (ie. Differences between RNA and DNA like single vs double stranded, Us vs Ts). I would also try to make the worksheet a little clearer for what I want in each example—some students try to highlight ALL the different guideRNA options, and some got really specific with the base pairs on the second question. As for the second activity, I would try to make the language clearer about what I meant by the different categories of cards, but a fair amount seemed to get it. I just would have made it clearer to the other teaching staff because in a classroom of 100 I am not able to answer everyone's questions on my own.
In an effort to improve my teaching, I tried to assign all my points to in class assignments to encourage the quality of their work. Unfortunately, since we were crunched on time this didn’t necessarily work well and some had to complete a little outside of class but I feel it did help with the quality of work.
Reflection after 3rd day of teaching:
Overall, I think my third day of teaching went fairly well. I feel it went well because much of the lesson was up to the students. There was little to no lecturing, and almost solely group activities led by me. The three activities we did were a think-pair-share, a consequence web and a “debate”. The first activity was the think-pair-share on two different articles about GMO organisms (mosquitos and salmon) and encouraging students to teach each other what was in the two articles. They summarized the articles on the board and highlighted the core concepts. The second activity was the consequence web on “designer babies”, or genetically modified humans. They watched a Ted Talk with Paul Knoefler talking about the ethics of doing this, and I had the students create a concept map on their white boards highlighting just the effects (good and bad) of utilizing this technology in humans. Finally, the last in class activity was a “debate” where tables “drew” at random topics we discussed in class (GMO labeling, GMO mosquitoes and GMO salmon), and divided the table in half (pro/con) to “research” the articles given some example resources and eventually share their arguments with the table. Each group got the chance to make their rebuttal arguments after presenting their original points. Overall, these activities went really smoothly and students were very engaged. I saw a lot more passion for some of these assignments (especially the debate!) then I originally expected. Multiple students also came up to me and shared they enjoyed the lesson/activities.
If I were to do anything different, I would make sure to emphasize the core concepts more since students still seem to struggle to fit core concepts into specific categories. I think pushing them to use the subprinciples really helps, but they still seem to struggle on the quizzes, especially when it can be “both”. I also would have tried to be more respectful of students who can’t handle a loud classroom. This is something I had never considered before, and would like to be more thoughtful of noise levels in the future.
In an effort to improve my teaching, I tried consciously to say “you all” or “everyone” (even though you guys definitely slipped into conversation). I was correct when I thought it would be hard to completely remove it from my vocabulary! I also wanted to guide the students well through the activities and encourage more creative thinking. By helping students know the goals and what you want them to focus on seemed to improve the quality of the work. Finally, I tried to make sure we reflected on each activity and emphasized why we were doing things. I did this with the “Create your own” GMO activity and I thought it went really well. I think students liked seeing all the creativity and sharing core concept examples.
In the end, I am proud of how my unit went. I think that it was a great learning experience, even though sometimes it could be stressful. It taught me a lot about creating active learning in the classroom and how students respond to different interactive assignments. I learned where I under/overestimated my students and reflected on how to better run my lesson plans in the future. I also learned to adapt on the spot when things weren’t going exactly as planned. I’m excited to get my feedback and see things from the student prospective. That will also allow me to grow more as an instructor as well.
I feel that my first day of teaching went well. Even though we got off to a slightly rocky start with some Box issues, we were able to stay on time and complete everything. I do think students enjoyed my activities, and I definitely found students engaged.
For my first activity, we did the concept map on genetics. While I think some students struggled at first, I think by suggesting them to use google and other resources really helped some students flourish. While some students were a little concerned about getting everything done, I think they enjoyed that they were able to combine their concept maps into 1 for the group. I really liked though when people got to see other maps around the classroom. Some made good effort to get around the classroom, and when they saw all the variety, they got some good ideas of how they can maybe make theirs better, or how to incorporate all the different core concepts. Overall, I would deem this activity a success.
For my second activity, I had them work on the Hunger Games Science lecture. What worked well in this activity was each group having to come up with their own ideas—I think a lot of students enjoyed looking up and research topics in science and forming opinions on them. Students also seemed to really enjoy getting to vote on that opinion. What I don’t think worked as well was the second set of prompts because students didn’t get enough time to work on it. If we had more time, I would have given students a little more time to answer questions. While the idea was to get them thinking about such questions, I think some students got a little hung up on the specifics of questions. I believe this is a start though to get them critically thinking about topics in science.
What I would do differently in the future is to try to assign more points in class and ask for a little less outside of class. While I think the activity I am having them do is fun, I think students don’t like how points are not assigned to class assignments. I will revisit that with all my other classes. Cara also suggested I use the term “everyone” or “you all”, instead of "you guys" to be more inclusive. I have learned that saying "you guys" is quite a bad habit I have, so this might be harder to change than I think. I also want to challenge myself to ask more about the core concepts. While I do think the students are enjoying not having each of the core concepts forced down their throat all the time, it is what makes up the points on the final. Therefore, I want to work on emphasizing core concepts while still encouraging students to come up with examples themselves. I think there are some good ways of doing this (ie. The guide RNA’s specific nucleotide sequence and how that structure informs a function). While adjusting the lesson plan with my feedback I want to really to challenge myself to see how to incorporate it in new ways.
Reflection after 2nd day of teaching:
My second day of teaching was a little rockier than my first. I attribute that to the difficulty of the lesson plan, and the way we set the lesson up to interact with others. However, I think I learned a lot from my experiences today.
I think there were many good things about the CRISPR activity I employed, and many things I would do differently. I felt it was challenging to the students, and many of the students who get bored when not engaged really were involved and asking great questions. However, this meant some of our students who struggle normally ended up struggling. This would be ok if we had more time to spend on the activity, but we needed to try to move on with the lesson. Thankfully, the second half of class was developed to be able to go at different speeds depending on the time left, so it ended up working out perfectly. I did feel like this was a great example of real life application that translates to classes beyond this one.
If I were to teach it again in the same settings, I would make sure to make some more background information clear (ie. Differences between RNA and DNA like single vs double stranded, Us vs Ts). I would also try to make the worksheet a little clearer for what I want in each example—some students try to highlight ALL the different guideRNA options, and some got really specific with the base pairs on the second question. As for the second activity, I would try to make the language clearer about what I meant by the different categories of cards, but a fair amount seemed to get it. I just would have made it clearer to the other teaching staff because in a classroom of 100 I am not able to answer everyone's questions on my own.
In an effort to improve my teaching, I tried to assign all my points to in class assignments to encourage the quality of their work. Unfortunately, since we were crunched on time this didn’t necessarily work well and some had to complete a little outside of class but I feel it did help with the quality of work.
Reflection after 3rd day of teaching:
Overall, I think my third day of teaching went fairly well. I feel it went well because much of the lesson was up to the students. There was little to no lecturing, and almost solely group activities led by me. The three activities we did were a think-pair-share, a consequence web and a “debate”. The first activity was the think-pair-share on two different articles about GMO organisms (mosquitos and salmon) and encouraging students to teach each other what was in the two articles. They summarized the articles on the board and highlighted the core concepts. The second activity was the consequence web on “designer babies”, or genetically modified humans. They watched a Ted Talk with Paul Knoefler talking about the ethics of doing this, and I had the students create a concept map on their white boards highlighting just the effects (good and bad) of utilizing this technology in humans. Finally, the last in class activity was a “debate” where tables “drew” at random topics we discussed in class (GMO labeling, GMO mosquitoes and GMO salmon), and divided the table in half (pro/con) to “research” the articles given some example resources and eventually share their arguments with the table. Each group got the chance to make their rebuttal arguments after presenting their original points. Overall, these activities went really smoothly and students were very engaged. I saw a lot more passion for some of these assignments (especially the debate!) then I originally expected. Multiple students also came up to me and shared they enjoyed the lesson/activities.
If I were to do anything different, I would make sure to emphasize the core concepts more since students still seem to struggle to fit core concepts into specific categories. I think pushing them to use the subprinciples really helps, but they still seem to struggle on the quizzes, especially when it can be “both”. I also would have tried to be more respectful of students who can’t handle a loud classroom. This is something I had never considered before, and would like to be more thoughtful of noise levels in the future.
In an effort to improve my teaching, I tried consciously to say “you all” or “everyone” (even though you guys definitely slipped into conversation). I was correct when I thought it would be hard to completely remove it from my vocabulary! I also wanted to guide the students well through the activities and encourage more creative thinking. By helping students know the goals and what you want them to focus on seemed to improve the quality of the work. Finally, I tried to make sure we reflected on each activity and emphasized why we were doing things. I did this with the “Create your own” GMO activity and I thought it went really well. I think students liked seeing all the creativity and sharing core concept examples.
In the end, I am proud of how my unit went. I think that it was a great learning experience, even though sometimes it could be stressful. It taught me a lot about creating active learning in the classroom and how students respond to different interactive assignments. I learned where I under/overestimated my students and reflected on how to better run my lesson plans in the future. I also learned to adapt on the spot when things weren’t going exactly as planned. I’m excited to get my feedback and see things from the student prospective. That will also allow me to grow more as an instructor as well.