Final Reflection

Health Education Lesson Plan Final Reflection

Nutrition: Food Groups/Essential Nutrients

Cari McKee

Schools have pushed technology with our students and our teachers.  However, I have always been intimidated to bring it into my classroom. As I stated in my first reflection, most of my worries stemmed from my lack of knowledge with technology.  Developing a unit plan was going to be a challenge for me but also is one that needed to be done.  After the discussion we had during our face to face class, I started to ask myself.  Did these students learn more using technology or was it just another device I was using in my classroom.  And so my journey began. The implementation of technology in my five lessons went very quickly.  

As I stated in my previous reflection, day one started off a little slower than normal.  Socrative was a little difficult to complete with our schools server.  But once the quiz started, the students seemed to be engaged and tried to challenge their classmates.  Another thing I noticed with Socrative I had the ability and time to produce and implement a pre and posttest.  In my previous experience, it was difficult to give my students time for a hand writing assignment. I believe, socrative is a useful pre and post assessment tool.  With instant results, both my students and I can see how they are doing and the lesson can be modified instantly rather than waiting until the next day. That night I also gave the students a video to watch.   Unfortunately, there were students that did not watch the video.  Frustrated, I set the students up with their devices and they watched the video.  Looking back on my experience now I was happy I tried the flipped classroom.  Although some students did not watch the video, by having it I was able to continue with my lesson rather than retract to the previous lesson.  Normally, with a paper assignment we would go over it in class and answer any questions the students had.  With this tool I did not have to stop and "catch the students up".  The video helped do that for me.  Although it was not ideal, it was a place to start. 

Popplet is an activity I will be using in my classroom for lessons to come.  It is a fun, easy and creative way to organize thoughts and visually display relationships.  As stated in my previous reflection, my students stated, “It was easy to use but organized my thoughts.  I could also include pictures!”  On day 3 and day 4 the students were instructed to use www.myfitnesspal.com to evaluate their food intake and compare to their output.  My fitness pal was a little easier to use.  In future lessons, I will still give both programs as an option but I will convey to pick the website easier for them.  Both programs did not have all the food choices in the system; however, it was easy to build the recipe and develop our meals. 

Day 5 and 6 was a bit of a challenge.  I knew our class would be faced with some hiccups, but did not realize how resilient my students would be to trying new things.  I addressed this concern before it was taught during our face to face discussion.  During our discussion group, one of the areas my colleagues told me was to exclude the option for a paper.  I have found many of my students seem to take the common essay format and use it more than take a risk.  By eliminating the option for a paper, my students would have to exercise their creative juices.  Unfortunately, some of my students still felt more comfortable with writing a paper and therefore was given that option. Although it is irrelevant, I wanted to stress taking risks and use technology to my students without putting them in a situation they were uncomfortable with.  Therefore, I awarded WOW points.   This idea actually came from by one of my former students.  I expressed to her my discouragement of the lack of creativity in my classroom.  She suggested to give the students WOW points.  The WOW point system works if a group thinks outside of the box in regards to technology to convey their message.  WOW points are similar to extra credit points in hopes of encouraging the students to challenge themselves.  With her idea in mind, I decided to try it on my next unit’s project.  It was amazing to see the amount of students tried different things.

Similar to how I feel, I believe many of my students are concerned if they cannot convey their points if it is not in a hand written format. In my opinion, school has always taught us this is true.  Now we are trying to push to be more creative and utilize the equipment at hand.  I am guilty of writing papers for classes rather than convey my message in a creative alternative format.  Much of my reserve comes from a fear my message would not be interpreted like I would like it to. I believe my students are stuck in the same frame of mind.

In conclusion, I feel my students enjoyed trying something new in the classroom.  Although there were some hiccups I do believe the technology used throughout this unit helped prepare my students for their test.  In previous years, I have had many students struggle in the nutrition unit especially with distinguishing essential nutrients and the food groups.  My test scores for this unit was the best I have seen since I have been teaching it.  I believe this to be true because the students seemed to enjoy their learning.  Not only could they relate the information back to themselves but they were also able to visually display the information in a way they could understand.  I think another addition I would use when I teach this unit again is provide students with a WOW factor grade.  Both my students and I enjoyed using the technological programs.  I have continued to use them in my future lessons.  On Tuesday, I am trying my first assessment using flubaroo.  I hope my knowledge for the programs continue to grow and I can continue to use them in the future to enhance my students learning.