Analyzing Lessons and Tracking Fungus

Week 8 is in the books and with it brought a really cool opportunity where I was able to be observed by different teachers in the building and get feedback on the lesson that I did. This came from a group called BPG, or Best Practices Group, which is a professional learning community that focuses on professional development and there are about 7 teachers that make up this group. They meet a few times a month and will go over assessment techniques, lesson plans, classroom management techniques, and everything in-between. 

I met with this group last Thursday and presented my lesson. I talked about the objectives for it, and went through a brief overview of what the lesson will consist of. The group asked me questions, and we talked about the background of this lesson and the context of how it fits in with the rest of the unit. The teachers that make up this BPG group would then rotate through the classroom every 10 minutes or so and watch little snippets of what I was doing. We then got back together this past Thursday and debriefed the lesson. 

I did my lesson on an invasive species in bats called white-nose syndrome, and the activity wrapped up a conversation on invasive species in general. The lesson took the students through the first four years of white-nose syndrome in PA and analyzed the progression of the disease, how it got to PA, and how its been damaging bat populations. The students were divided into three caves, each cave representing a population of bats. Every student received 10 popsicle sticks, too, each representing 1,000 bats and at the end of each year and scenario, they would count their popsicle sticks and record the total cave population. Throughout the lesson the students would "interact" with bats from other caves by forming groups and answering various questions about bats. What I didn't tell them, however, is that on each of the pieces of paper that have their cave picture on it was glow powder, which looks white initially, but under a black light will grow bright blue. At the end of each year, different caves would be tested for white-nose syndrome and to mimic this, the students would put their hands under a black light that I had at the front of the room. If they had white-nose syndrome, their hands would glow and they would lose popsicle sticks to represent the caves bat populations dying off because of this fungus. 

 The lesson itself was so much fun, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. It also was a cool and dynamic way to demonstrate this disease and how it spreads. The glow powder was a hit and I thought it was especially entertaining to watch the students realize what the glow powder was and how I was testing them. The lesson also allowed us to look at the different agencies and what they are doing about this disease. Throughout the lesson we looked at how PA Game Commission was addressing white-nose syndrome and the different ways they were collecting data on bats and ways to test for white-nose syndrome. At the end of the lesson we tied it into the broader idea of how invasive species impact an ecosystem, which then brought the white-nose syndrome activity back around to our conversation on invasive species.

Having others observing me was also really beneficial. I have the advantage of doing this lesson twice because of the hybrid schedule, so after getting feedback from the group on Tuesday, I was then able to tweak some things in the lesson on Wednesday in order to help the lesson flow better. It was also great to get perspective from other teachers who don't specialize in ag ed, and I got great feedback on my teaching and classroom management techniques. In our debrief Thursday we went more in depth with what they saw and noticed. I got some great ideas from all this on how to not only improve my lesson, but how to improved my teaching and classroom management.

All in all, it was a fantastic lesson that I know I will be fixing a lot of things on until I am happy with where it is at. I also loved having multiple perspectives on my teaching and how I can do better and grow more.