Teaching All About Ecosystems

Today my group taught our direct instruction lesson about ecosystems. My group and I met up 2 hours before we taught in the library to practice our slides. We were all really nervous but after practicing we felt confident. Unfortunately when we got to the classroom at the school the students were taking a test, which delayed the start of our lesson. We started at almost 1 instead of 12:45. We started off my reviewing our class rules, then we explained our teacher vs class game. The students really enjoyed that game and throughout the whole lesson they were very quiet and kept telling each other to quiet down or the teachers would get a point. Cierra talked about ecosystems and played a game with the students where they had to hold popsicle sticks with the correct picture of the ecosystem. Next Marie talked about what a habitat was and how that affects the world around it. While Cierra and Marie were teaching I was walking around the classroom making sure the students were filling our their note sheets correctly. I was helping one student in the back who kept getting up from their seat and walking around. They were very distracted the whole lesson so I was near them to keep them on track and writing the correct words down for each slide. Next were my slides about predator, prey and the food chain and food web. The students were really into these slides because it was something they were all familiar with. When I asked them if they have ever heard of the word predator or prey before many of them had. I asked them to explain what they knew and many of them said what I had already planned to say which was great! Students were familiar with the food chain and food web as well which made my teaching easier because they students were able to correctly answer all the questions I was asking. For my check for understanding slide the students got a little bit too nosey. I put a picture of either a predator or prey on the board and I wanted them to discuss with their group which they thought it was.
Now when I made this slide I tried to find pictures that they could easily decide if it was a predator or prey but unfortunately that did not work. Many students started calling out that the picture could be either a predator or a prey which they were right but in my mind it was clearly a prey. But thats ok I told the students they were right it can be both but for todays lesson we are going to say it was a prey. Once my slides were done, Ganny took over and talked about pollination and fertilization. This is when we started to get low on time. Because of the students taking a test at the beginning of the lesson, we were unable to start on time and had to skip our guided practice. I was disappointed because we had a really fun activity planned but it was something we could not control. Marie then explained the independent practice and made sure the students worked INDEPENDENTLY and without their note sheet. The students did excellent with this and they were extremely quiet. After this we told them that they had won our teacher vs class game and that their teacher will give them their prize later since we ran out of time. Overall I think this lesson went really well besides the time problem. I’m very excited to teach our inquiry lesson on Thursday!!!