The specific learning outcome for this lesson was for the Year 13 students to be able to describe and give advantages of taxes, including any adaptive advantages and environmental cues involved.

This lesson is near the beginning of the topic "Plant and Animal Responses to the Environment" - the first exam we learn for. Students have only just started to encounter new vocabulary for this topic. In previous lessons they have about kinesis and the overarching themes of survival and reproduction in the living world.

Full Plan Here

My Reflection

My reflection after this lesson: I was impressed with everyone's recall from the lesson on kineses; we came up with memory triggers (klino = dinosaurs spinning in tutus = turning) but as you can hear in the video, not all students used that pathway to recall the definitions!

Chalk and talk with this class is more "chalk and discuss," with students interrupting and shouting questions. I quite like it. I think they learn more if they just stop me as we go, or articulate what they understand and get me to respond to it.

The kinetic activity outside was enjoyed by all, and it seemed to help them quickly learn what positive and negative meant. There was the chance that students were just following one another, but after a few rounds confidence seemed to grow. We had a few elimination rounds too. Swapping the signs provided the opportunity to talk about how chemicals can come from food and be sensed by organisms.

Going inside to consolidate learning on the first document was useful, but I felt the energy drop. Often I would play music in this situation but didn't because of the filming, as these students prefer it and find it motivating - perhaps it's harder to slip off task and chat to others! You may notice Tevita is working with earphones in anyway. We marked mostly as we went, with students always asking each other what they had written, and spotting a mistake I made in one of the questions. This class works well with short timeframes and the "egg timer" displayed on the board, and sometimes are rewarded with a short break in between. Not today though, they were concentrating well! There was no on-line collaboration today.

The second document with less scaffolding in the question and imaginary species names provided confusion for a while - my instructions were not clear enough. Taking a different approach revealed a few unclear points for some students; environmental stimuli/cues were still not being recognised as the actual thing in the environment affecting the animal (e.g. light, water, gravity). This also showed in their docs when I marked them after class, but I was able to leave comments and the students responded and changed their answers.

The creative animals were an enjoyable way to finish, and you can view them on the students' blogs. They would enjoy your feedback. I had to correct a few posts or ask for clarification, as two of the students didn't have taxes included in their post, just descriptions of an action the animal takes. Having their learning visible on their blog allows for confusion to be easily picked up.

After watching the video I have also realised that students do help each other out with their understandings, but there is still quite a lot of dependence on me to check or provide answers as we go. I will try to 'hand over the reigns' more in the future, by directing them to each other, past notes, or asking more questions rather than jumping in with a solution.