Teacher Observation: tips and a lesson plan idea!

Being new to my district, I am required to be observed by my principal three times a year.  I actually don’t mind being observed as long as I am prepared and feel excited about my lesson.  I want to share with you the outline for my lesson, as well as some of the activities that the kids did!
The topic of my lesson was the life cycle of the butterfly.  I picked this lesson because we are learning about life cycles, it’s spring, and it’s one of my favorite topics! 😉  Here is an overview of what I did during the lesson!  
Note: I used my Life Cycle of a Butterfly unit for this lesson plan.  

lesson plan for kindergarten
Lesson: The life cycle of a butterfly
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Duration: 35-45 minutes
Big Idea:  Discover the pattern in the life cycle.
Essential Question: What is the correct order of the life cycle?
Common Core Standards:
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear (e.g., what person, place, thing, or idea in the text an illustration depicts).
Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.
Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.
Objective:  The students will be able to independently order the 4 stages of the butterfly life cycle.
Lesson: 
Introduction- (5 minutes) Read aloud the Monarch Butterfly.  Display the pictures and talk about the lifecycle.  
PowerPoint (5 minutes):  Show the life cycle of the butterfly powerpoint.  Read it through one time, the second time ask the students questions and allow for discussion.

photo2B2
Vocabulary (5 minutes):  Display vocabulary pictures and discuss the order of the life cycle.  ELD discussion:  What is your favorite part of the life cycle?  What step comes first?  What step comes last?
photo2B3
Directed drawing (7-10 minutes):  As a class, guide the students through drawing the life cycle: steps 1-4.
photo2B1
Assessment:  (5-10 minutes):  The students will independently cut and paste the life cycle in the correct order on their paper.
Extension Activity (10 minutes):  For the rest of the week, we will write about each life cycle stage in our journal.  Today, we will write two sentences about the egg stage.

That is the end of my lesson with the kids!  It was really short and sweet, the kids were engaged the whole time, AND they were having fun learning.  (The perfect combo!)

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5 responses to “Teacher Observation: tips and a lesson plan idea!”

  1. Miss Kindergarten Avatar
    Miss Kindergarten

    What a great lesson! I'm sure you rocked it!

  2. Lee Ann Rasey Avatar
    Lee Ann Rasey

    Looks good! Did you do this for your science time or as part of your language arts? I don't mind being observed either as long as I'm prepared and know what I'm doing.

  3. lorena Avatar
    lorena

    Great lesson! Buttefly life cycles are always fun and engaging. 🙂

  4. ~Christina Avatar
    ~Christina

    https://youtu.be/mW_C_xISvMA
    So fun!
    I hope this link works. There is a great video of real butterflies and the life cycle on YouTube… My kids loved it!

  5. ~Christina Avatar
    ~Christina

    https://youtu.be/mW_C_xISvMA
    So fun!
    I hope this link works. There is a great video of real butterflies and the life cycle on YouTube… My kids loved it!