Reflection on Teaching of Integrated Unit

Wanda Heath, my colleague, and I decided to begin our integrated unit the first week of school. There was a mix up with the shipping of the living organisms from Kansas. The larvae came two weeks earlier and the weather was colder than expected. Most of the larvae did not complete their life cycles. The Journey North Website provided visual images of monarch caterpillars/butterflies that our living organisms could not. The website also provided a globe and map of the migration route to and from Mexico. This component of the website assisted the students with a better understanding of the route, then I could provide for them using a 2-D map. During our science instructional time, we swapped students to teach two different aspects of the unit. Wanda worked with the students on how to successfully complete a journal entry using a rubric that I created. After viewing the two class rubrics, we decided to reinforce the students understanding of the rubric by modeling each component of the rubric. According to the data collected, the male students in my class were not as successful as the female students. The behavior that is demonstrated in my classroom by the male students could explain this result. Wanda did state she had to separate some of the male students due to their behavior in her room. While Wanda was teaching language arts, I was teaching the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. I used the Journey North Website with the Smart Board in order for students to interact with the website. I placed the Pro-scope software on my computer for the students in both classes to use. Since I had prior knowledge of the pro-scope, I taught the students how to use it to assist in making observations of our living organisms. I created a summative assessment to use for the classifying insects and non –insects. This was created on Kid-Pix then I downloaded the template on to Wanda’s computer for her to use as an assessment with her students. We taught our students how to analyze facts from nonfiction texts, and to place this information into their own words. Unfortunately, the female students in my class did not enjoy this part of the unit, according to data collected from the perceptual survey. Wanda and I had decided last June to do a cooperative project with our students. However, our schedules did not provide an opportunity to create insects out of recycled materials. My schedule did work out with another first grade teacher. This project met the Aural, Verbal, Social, Visual, Physical, and Logical learning styles. Each learning style was addressed through this unit.
I did find that I needed to shorten the unit due to time constraints. The lesson that followed the standards in science and language arts was the lesson I focused on. The technology component of this unit was difficult because of technological problems with our lab tops. The students’ overall performances in the class slideshow allowed them to demonstrate their understanding of the life cycle of a monarch butterfly.