Overall I feel that my lesson was a success. Students were able to engage with the material and make discoveries about the flexibility and limitations of working with metal. They were also able to approach the project with their own decisions, and it resulted in a variety of fun results across the room.
The project took longer than I thought it would, with what I thought would be a three day lesson stretching out to five class periods in total. Much of this was due to how much more time it would take to review instructions at the beginning of class and how much time it would take to ramp down worktime and facilitate clean-up time. With classes only lasting a half an hour, that doesn’t leave much time for work! To make things more challenging, student absences are always an issue during a global pandemic, and so additional time has to be spent in introducing students to the project, or at least providing them with a structured activity to provide them with a meaningful experience for the day.
I was pleased with the feedback students left on their guided self-assessments, and came away from the project with a good understanding of what students learned and what I could have done a better job at explaining. After observing students for the semester, I think in the future I will provide some more opportunity to explore design options with technology, as the students all showed a great proficiency with navigating a Chromebook at 5th grade.
Lesson Plan:
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