This past week I participated in an OEL lesson planning session. OEL stands for Observation of Evidence of Learning. For this activity the science department from our school and science teachers from other schools who choose to participate come together to plan a chosen lesson. After the planning a teacher will deliver the lesson(s) while the other teachers observe the class. The lesson chosen for this OEL was a 7th grade science class looking at lung capacity. Observing and identifying the different kinds of lung capacity we use.
These OEL sessions are a great opportunity for everyone involved. Those teachers teaching the same grade or curriculum get a chance to collaboratively develop a lesson they can not only use but get to observe it being taught . For those who are not using that curriculum the OEL is a great opportunity to collaborate with other science teachers and hear ideas about how they might approach a particular concept. I feel we have a great range of teachers at the school I work at. Some are great a making up work sheets while others are great at using movement in lessons. The lesson we developed was a good mix of teaching strategies. On day one the students were asked to make observations about how they were breathing as they sat there in their seats. the teacher then led them as they did some jumping jacks. The students then made observations about how they were breathing after the jumping jacks. They then compared the similarities and differences as a class. There was then a discussion about what might affect the way your lungs work, activity, lifestyle, disease, etc; followed by the writing of a hypothesis about the lung capacity of a normal seventh grade student. Day one ended with the building of simple lung capacity measuring devices and measuring the different capacities of the class.
Day 2 began with students analyzing the data they had collected the day before. They made comparisons of the data on the graphs and wrote about the findings they saw. Day 2 ended with an activity modeling the residual lung capacity using a sponge and some water.
After the lessons were taught the teachers got together again to talk about how the lessons went and what could be improved. It was good to hear what everyone had to say about the lessons. There were questions about how structured the students writing prompts were, yet most agreed that the prompts helped focus the students thoughts. The 8th grade teachers were in agreement about the need for students to be able to represent and interpret data in different forms of graphs. Another thing we wanted to see was students able to make conclusions using the data they have and not making conclusions that can’t be supported by data.
I enjoy activities such as these in that it is a chance to observe many different teachers and see their thoughts on a particular problem. All teachers have different styles and as a students teacher I try to absorb as many different of those styles as I can and add them to my tool box for future use.
