S16: Blog 13: StEm Lesson Study and a Butterfly Garden

Over the past several weeks I’ve had the amazing opportunity to participate in creating and teaching a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) lesson having to do with designing a butterfly garden. This StEm (the S and E are capitalized because they were the focus during this lesson) lesson was part of a larger LTI (long term investigation) where our students have been studying the life cycle of a butterfly.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I’ve never felt science was really “my thing” and I am definitely not a fan of creepy, crawly critters. So, I wasn’t particularly sure how I felt about receiving 11 caterpillars to bring into my classroom and have my students observe. However, any uncertainty I felt about this project was swept away by the enthusiasm my students displayed from the moment they first saw the caterpillars. They have been endlessly fascinated since Day 1 and every week since then has brought amazing changes. My students were able to see these caterpillars became chrysalises and wonder at the amazing changes taking place that they couldn’t see. And this Monday, they showed up to school to find butterflies!

As part of the StEm lesson creation process and lesson study, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with another first-year resident, two final- year residents, our PRTs, and our science professor, as well as various people at my elementary school. We worked together to create a StEm lesson plan that follows a template used in Hillsborough County where students are following a design process, from coming up with a problem to evaluating their solution to that problem. This lesson plan template is accompanied by other materials they we created for our and our students’ use. This includes an RFP (request for proposal) that gave the students a “client” for whom they were building the butterfly garden. In our case, it was the principal of our two schools. The RFP also gives students the role of the engineer they are going to play. Our students got to be environmental engineers. Additionally, it provides the students with criteria that their design must meet. In our lesson, for example, our students were told that they would have $60 to spend on plants and soil for the garden and that the plants they chose must be able to support all stages of the butterfly life cycle. We also created Design Challenge handouts for the students, where they were recording their thinking and work during all stages of the process. Also, we had to create a data sheet for the students, giving them information about different kinds of flowers/plants and soil, as well as how much each would cost.

The great part about lesson study is that it means that the lesson is being taught multiple times across classrooms. Our StEm lesson was designed to be a two-day lesson, meaning it was taught 6 days in total. The final-year residents taught their lessons last week, while my fellow first-year and I taught ours on Tuesday/Wednesday and Thursday/Friday of this week. Part of lesson study is meeting to de-brief after each lesson, in order to talk about our observations and make suggestions for improvements for the final lesson plan that will be given to the district. I think for me the highlight of these debriefing meetings was when we were able to talk about the amazing answers our students were able to provide for the questions we asked. I like to think that I don’t underestimate my students but I was truly blown away with how brilliant they’ve been throughout this entire LTI and StEm process.

I also enjoyed having the opportunity to see my student-teacher classmates in action in their own classrooms. Because I am in a self-contained classroom, opportunities for co-teaching with my friends or seeing them teach have not been readily available. I find it so interesting to get to go into someone else’s classroom and see how they do things and see how they choose to go about teaching a lesson. I thought that while each of us followed the same lesson plan, our personalities were able to shine through in the way that taught our lesson and interacted with our students who we know so well. And because I was the last one to teach their lessons, I had the unique opportunity to pull aspects out of everyone’s lessons that I really liked and put them into my own.

My StEm lessons took place yesterday and today. Day 1 was truly an introduction to the whole process for the students. We had discussions about what in the world we were going to do with the butterflies that were hanging out in their butterfly net in our classroom. I introduced my students to their role as an environmental engineer. I was so impressed that when we showed them pictures of real-life environmental engineers in action that they were able to create their own definition for the job. I also introduced the students to the RFP so that they understood that it was going to be up to them to design a butterfly garden for our butterflies! Then, it was time to take fieldtrip outside to show the students the space where the butterfly garden would be. This allowed the students to explore what kind of sunlight their plants would be getting. It also allowed them to notice that the soil in the area was sandy and full of weeds, not particularly ideal for growing plants. This led us to explain how our garden would be built as a raised bed, so that we could choose the type of soil we wanted to use. The final minutes of Day 1 were spent allowing the students to do research about what kinds of plants, or what characteristics of plants, we wanted to have in the butterfly garden. This was meant to allow the students to discover that butterflies love brightly colored flowers and that caterpillars need leaves to eat and to form their chrysalises on.

Day 2 began with a brief review and then had the students examining the plant data sheets we had created so that they could begin to build their blueprint for their gardens. The students had to draw the different kinds of flowers and plants they chose where they wanted them to be placed in their garden. Then, students were given another paper on which they had to total up the amount of money they had spent on their selected plants and soils to see if they were over their $60 budget. This allowed students to practice math skills such as repeated addition and two-digit addition and subtraction. Again, I was so impressed with how articulately my students were able to tell me about the plants they had chosen for their garden and why they were good choices. They were also able to explain to me how they were doing their math using great vocabulary like “regrouping.”

As a surprise and Earth Day celebration for my students, we took them outside to the butterfly garden that to them appeared overnight. In fact, my fellow first-year and I spent two hours placing the edging stones, weeding the area inside the garden, and laying down the good humus soil the previous afternoon. My friend’s students had planted their selected plants and flowers in the garden earlier that day (my students will get to do this next week) so we were going to release our butterflies into the garden before the weekend. My students loved getting to see the butterflies fly free and begin to explore their new home.

Overall, this has been a time-consuming, exhausting, and amazing experience. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had to work with so many wonderful people to give my students this experience. I look forward to many more STEM lessons in the future and can now say that I really do love science!

Addresses FEAPS 1 e and f, 3 a, e, and f and 5 c and e

#EDE4942 #FEAPS1E #FEAPS1F #FEAPS3A #FEAPS3E #FEAPS3F #FEAPS5C #FEAPS5E #stem #lessonstudy #butterflies