riana Foster
January Unit: The Water Cycle & Weather
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
March 28, 2013
LAP 10: Poster Project
Content: Describe what it is you will teach. What is the content?
In this lesson students will begin their final assessment. Students will work
in their science groups to develop a poster about El Niño. Students will create
poster answering the following questions: What is El Niño?, How is the water
cycle affected by El Niño?, and How is El Niño a climatic phenomenon?
Additionally, students will be asked to highlight a given chapter they found the
most interesting from the text. Although those are the requirements, students are
not limited to including only that information on their posters, and will be
encouraged to include any other information, diagrams, etc. which they found
interesting. Students will receive guidelines for the poster project which explain
the assignment and requirements.
Learning Goal(s): Describe what specifically students will know and be able
to do after the experience of this class.

Students will be able to explain what El Niño is

Students will be able to describe how El Niño affects the water cycle

Students will be able to describe the impact of El Niño on living things

Students will be able to describe how El Niño is a climatic phenomenon
Rationale: Explain how the content and learning goal(s) relate to your
Curriculum Unit Plan learning goals.
In this final assessment, students will utilize their knowledge and
understanding of the water cycle, weather and climate to create a poster about El
Niño. This assessment will put into practice much of what they have learned
throughout the unit in a way that allows them to be creative and apply their
understanding. Students will act as climatologists through researching information
(reading “El Niño”), compiling information (poster project) and presenting their
posters to the class.
Assessment: Describe how you and your students will know they have
reached your learning goals.

Poster Projects

Observations of group work
Personalization: Describe how you will provide for individual student
strengths and needs. How will you and your lesson consider the needs of each
student and scaffold learning?
I feel that this activity will be an effective form of assessment for this unit
as it will allow students to represent their understanding using words as well as
illustrations. Students will be working in their science groups (heterogeneous
groupings) in which they will be able to assume different roles and support one
another. This activity also allows for a lot of creativity and student choice.
Additionally, I will work with my student who has difficulty working in
groups to create his own mini-poster using the same guidelines. I will scribe for
him, but he will choose what information to highlight.
Activity description Agenda: Describe the activities that will help your
students understand the content of your class lesson by creating an agenda
riana Foster
January Unit: The Water Cycle & Weather
March 28, 2013
LAP 10: Poster Project
with time frames for your class. Be prepared to explain why you think each
activity will help students on the path toward understanding.
Teacher will…
Students will…
Teacher will split students into
- Students will listen to
groups, and review poster
directions and ask
project guidelines with
questions if necessary
students using ELMO
Teacher will pass out
- Students will work
materials and circulate as
with groups to plan
students get started.
and create poster
Teacher will assist students
- Students will ask
when necessary.
questions when
necessary
Time
5-7 minutes
60-120 minutes
VII.
List the Massachusetts Learning Standards this lesson addresses.
 6. Explain how air temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and
precipitation make up the weather in a particular place and time.
 7. Distinguish among the various forms of precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, and
hail), making connections to the weather in a particular place and time.
 8. Describe how global patterns such as the jet stream and water currents
influence local weather in measurable terms such as temperature, wind
direction and speed, and precipitation.
 9. Differentiate between weather and climate.
 10. Describe how water on earth cycles in different forms and in different
locations, including underground and in the atmosphere.
 11. Give examples of how the cycling of water, both in and out of the
atmosphere, has an effect on climate.
VIII.
Reflection
a. In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose
and learning goals, in what ways was the activity(ies) successful? How do you
know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned
differently another time?
This has been a long unit, and we have covered a lot of material, so I was
initially unsure of how to tie it all together. This poster project served as a good way
for students to apply their knowledge and represent their understanding, in a way that
also allowed them to be creative, and have some choice in what they present. I feel
that the rubric for the poster project was particularly helpful in allowing the students
to see what the goals of the poster project were. It was also helpful for students to
keep track of what they had already represented on their poster, and what they still
needed to do.
I did notice, however, that some groups were copying down information
word for word from their books, and had to clarify to the class that the information
represented needed to be in their own words to show their collective understanding,
rather than just satisfy what was on the rubric. That being said, once I clarified this,
most groups took the poster project very seriously, and often talked to me about it
outside of class.
riana Foster
January Unit: The Water Cycle & Weather
March 28, 2013
LAP 10: Poster Project
Additionally, I have a student who needs a lot of extra support, and has a lot
of difficulty writing. This student generally requires a scribe, and does not like
working in groups. For the final project I provided him with his own, smaller, poster
and he and I went through the rubric together and created his poster. He felt very
good about how we were able to complete the poster, and demonstrated his
understanding through his dictation of what I was to write on the poster. This was
effective for him, as he was still relaying his own understanding, and able to
complete a poster like his peers.
We haven’t done any whole class presentations in a while, and I did notice
that many students seemed to have difficulty once they began presenting their
projects to the class. A couple students read directly off of the posters, even though
many of them were able to tell me, in their own words, about what was on their
posters while they were working on them. This leads me to believe that the difficulty
in their presentations stemmed more from anxiety during the presentation itself,
rather than a lack of understanding of the concepts.
b. What did you learn from the experience of this lesson that will inform your next
LAP?