For my capstone lessons I will be introducing the new unit on evolution. The lessons will be the first lessons of the unit and focus on orienting students while allowing them to start thinking with the mindset of this new unit. The objective I would like to focus on for my first capstone lesson is "There is overwhelming evidence for the evolution of life on earth." I chose to focus one this objective because I think it will help me to identify and anticipate the struggles students may have towards the start of the lesson and plan ahead for those in order to avoid or help alleviate them. Another reason I chose to focus on this objective is because, again, this will be the first lesson in the unit it will include crucial stepping stones for scaffolding in the following units. After considering the formative assessment question I posed previously, I decided that it might be more meaningful to have some sort of knowledge check after the first lesson or 2 because of how the ideas posed in those lessons will be covered and built on continually as the unit progresses. These either could be in the form of an exit ticket to gauge understanding of how well the lessons were received in each class or maybe in the form of an end of the week formative assessment quiz that touches on the entire week's content.
One big idea I have been attempting to focus on more in my internship class is how to incorporate more student engagement and collaboration with each other. This would be an excellent opportunity to incorporate a task in which students need to turn and talk to a partner or share their ideas with different partners while in lines facing each other. These both have been my go to activities to increase more collaboration and I intend to include them within this lesson. A good spot for students to go through an activity such as this could be the very first day where they could brainstorm the different ideas they have about evolution and share with a partner or group their own background knowledge on the topic. I think this would really help my students because they are excellent at communicating but they struggle articulating their complex thoughts. Including more collaboration will not only will help to continue the community building we have in the class but also help them organize their understandings and background knowledge so that they are ready to build on them with these lessons.
I try my best to accommodate language demands in my classes to help all students by offering multiple access points with visuals and whole class discussions that allow them to offer their contributions in different ways. I think another way I could accommodate these demands could be to include more manipulatives to add another layer to the multiple access points and forms of representation.
Some of the different resources I have been pulling from in pervious lessons are Bioninja, Inthinking, Blooket, and of course my CT's repertoire of past resources and activities she has used.