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Teacher Candidate for Science Endorsement:

School:

Amy Dillon

MCAA

Grade: Third
Unit Topic: Rocks
Unit Reflections: Mini Unit on Rocks

I felt that the students were engaged throughout the unit. They experienced learning in
different modalities. They listened and responded to a book, self-selected rocks to
explore, engaged in hands on labs, used technology, collaborated in small and whole
group discussion, used texts-text features to locate information and used their writing
skills to create informative and narrative texts.
The children were interested in the rocks and liked using the hand lens to observe the
rocks. They came up with descriptions that we used to define the word attributes.

I found that a few students tended to get off track with some of the independent work relying on
other group members to pull the load.
Changes that I would make for next time:

Not use the same probe or use at the end of a longer exploration on rocks. This mini unit
didnt provide enough information to clarify the probe items. The question Does a rock
change? was more directly tied to the unit. The students needed further experience to
determine what makes a rock a rock.
Use a digital portfolio for the students rather than their Science Journals or in addition
to them. I had the students draw in their journals to share. This would be more effective
on the SeeSaw platform. I would have the students take a picture of their rock and using
the drawing or text tools write to describe it. It could be projected on the SmartBoard,
shared with small groups, whole class, etc.
I would have the students bring in rocks from home next time as the playground rocks
were not very diverse. I supplemented with rocks from the lab and my collection from
MSP.
I would use a whole class board such as Padlet to create a class chart for all students to
access and post their observations and learnings.
Use parent volunteers! Next time I will make sure to have parent helpers so that there
isnt down time between the stations. I was glad that I followed this with the journey on
the rock cycle because I think that they understood the difference between the different
types of rocks, but came out of the lab viewing it as a circular rock cycle.
Use additional evaluations modified and added a constructed response. I felt that
the PaperSlide gave me the basic information, but I wanted to see how
the children

synthesized all of their learning so I added a constructed response


question. The students were able to use their journals from the mini
unit to cite their evidence.
As another extension, I would have the children participate in a rock
swap with a class of third graders from New York. We would exchange
rocks, soils from our areas and use the clues to determine where the
other class is located.

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