Claire Bowman

Heat and Matter Unit Reflection

Student Teaching

Heat and Matter Unit Reflection

Unit Overview

This unit was a three week science unit on heat and matter according to South Carolina

State Standards for third grade. Overall, I feel that the unit was a success because each one of my

students showed growth from the pre to the post test, however I would have liked to have seen a

higher rate of growth for the class as a whole. My greatest struggle with this unit was the time

constraint; Science and Social Studies alternate by unit and are only given about 80 minutes of

instructional time a week. This presented a challenge for me, as I struggled to find the balance of

enough hands on experience and enough time spent generating notes and classwork that could be

graded, and used to study for the final test. I tried to integrate the content into ELA by using

articles about heat and matter for comprehension work, however this is an area of improvement

for me as an educator. If I were to teach this unit again, I would place more emphasis on the

hands on activities rather than note taking, however I am thankful that I had students record

notes in the Heat and Matter books that I created. While this was a great resource for them to

study for the test, third graders are not the most independent when it comes to truly studying and

they learn best from experiences and hands on activities and I feel that I would have seen more

growth if I had been able to integrate more hands on activities.

 Planning

Planning the Heat and Matter Unit was a great experience for me, as it allowed me to see

the full scope of the unit from beginning to end. I began planning by laying out the standards and

finding questions to go with each part in order to create a pre test that was aligned with the state

standards. I then planned my unit according to the break down of the standards and made sure

that I was covering all of the content that was assessed in the pre test. The instruction began with

the administration of the pre test and the analysis of the data. Starting my instruction this way

was helpful because it gave me a better understanding of what my students did and did not

already know about the content. The results of the pretest were what I had expected, so I found

that no adjustments were needed before I started the actual instruction.

Throughout the Unit, I had students record information and observations in individual fill

in the blank heat and matter books that I created to be aligned to the content and the pre and post

assessments. Each day, I took these notebooks up, which allowed me to observe the work that

the students produced each day and make adjustments as needed. These adjustments included

reviewing the previous days notes before continuing on to the next day, helping students who

were behind due to absences catch up, and clearing up misconceptions for activities that were not

fill in the blank, such as a matching activity that required them to identify different changes in

matter based on real life experiences. I also included an extra ticket out the door assessment that

allowed me to see whether or not the students could identify a solid, liquid or gas object around

the room, and draw the atom diagram that corresponded to the object they chose. These were

collected and analyzed and based on my findings I found that the majority of the class

understood the atom diagrams and could identify a solid, liquid or gas correctly. Class discussion
was also a way for me to assess student understanding, especially when doing hands on

activities.

The majority of the changes made to my plans were due to time constraints, and the unit

ended up taking about a week longer than I had expected. At the end of the unit, we reviewed the

content by going through and highlighting important information that would be on the test and

then playing a review kahoot game. While going through the kahoot game, I tried to clarify any

misunderstandings that I noticed among students as the game was played. The last day of the unit

was test day during which the students took an adjusted version of the pre-test. The post test was

slightly different because I omitted a question that I felt I had not covered effectively during the

unit.

The Role of Demographics

The two demographic areas that guided the planning of this unit were exceptionalities

and learning styles. Within my classroom, I have an ESOL student and a student with an IEP that

allows for test to be read out loud. In order to give the ESOL student an equal opportunity, I

created a personalized heat and matter book with english on one side, and spanish on the other,

as well as translated articles and a translated pre and post test. I also used a translating app in

order to answer questions that the student has as best as I could. When planning the unit, I also

tried to include a variety of activities and assessments in order to cater to the different learning

styles in my classroom. For visual learners, I included hands on visual activities and

experiments, such as pouring water from one shaped container to another in order to see how

water took the shape of each and measurement stations that allowed students to experiment with

different methods of measurement. For kinesthetic learners, I created a simple dance for
condensation and evaporation, as those two are commonly mixed up. For auditory learners, I

made sure to talk through the notes, allow discussion time and used flocabulary videos, which

use educational content to create catchy songs that the students love, with fun videos to go along

with them. For students who learn best through reading, I included fill in the blank notes,

matching activities that referred to real life experiences and articles that were aligned with the

content. I also included illustration activities in the unit in order to help students who could

illustrate what they understood better than they could write it. For students who thrived in

writing, I included a fun writing activity that was aligned to the current ELA unit on perspective.

This activity required them to write a narrative from the perspective of an object changing from

one state of matter to another. Overall, I feel that this particular unit was well rounded and

catered to the different learning styles in my classroom. Keeping these styles in mind, as well as

other demographic information, was helpful for me when planning this unit. Demographics play

an important role in effective education, as each student is different and needs specific support

and intervention.