Taking the Helm - Day 1

I got a text message last night saying that my master teacher had come down with the flu and might not be able to make it to school today.  Then, this morning, it was confirmed.  I would do my first day of student teacher without a master teacher.  

Fortunately, we had done some planning over the break and had a good idea of how the first week of school would go.  I took the lesson plan from my master teacher, added it to the beginning of the science literacy plan I had planned on teaching, and dove right in.

I started off class discussing the historical context of Darwin's theory of evolution and focused on the major players of the day: Hutton, Lyell, Lamarck, and Malthus.  Here, I focused on the Reason based thinking of the day and that it was the back-drop to Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

The students were assigned to do a paragraph on each of the scientific figures; for each paragraph I asked simply for a description of the scientists' work and how this work or idea influenced Charles Darwin.  The students were also given a list of vocabulary words to look up for their own reference and for a discussion between activities.  This took the students about 25 minutes.

Between this activity and the article on evolution we discussed the major ideas of Lyell and how the move from the age of the earth being thousands of years to millions of years was so significant.  Speciation requires lots of time and Lyell's observations gave this time to Darwin.  At the end of this discussion, we reviewed the vocabulary as a class.  Each student had the book definition and we added depth to the definitions by providing examples (artificial selection and dog breeding, for example).

My literacy plan was pretty simple.  The article (chosen by my master teacher) was a three-paragraph introduction to a larger work on evolution.  It began with a short biography of Charles Darwin and a quick overview of the religious thoughts of the day.  The article progressed to the works that influenced Darwin as he developed his theories.  

The students read the article three times, but they didn't know that they did.  I had the students read the article all the way through once to themselves.  Afterwards, I had the students define some of the more difficult words using context clues.  On the second read-through, I had the students underline the major works and ideas that influenced Charles Darwin.  After this we discussed how these ideas affected his thinking and went on a brief tangent about the importance of reading and communication in not only the scientific community but in life in general.  For the last read-through, I had the students look for questions, experiences, and observations that Darwin had himself.  His observations and fascinations coupled with the works of other  thinkers helped Charles Darwin develop and communicate his theory of evolution.  

I wasn't able to get feedback from my master teacher, but after the first period I think I adapted my delivery to a point where the lesson flowed well.  I do look forward to the return of my master teacher, but I am rather glad that the first day of student teaching went as good as it did.