Last Lesson!

Ladybugs! - Hennessy Elementary School

   
    This was our last lesson at Hennessy Elementary School! The students had an assembly this day, so we had to work around that schedule. We started off the lesson with a quick question asking the students if they could be any bug, what would you pick and why? We had planned for them to afterwards do a little act out of the bug they chose, but due to their assembly we were asked not to do movement or brain break activities as we had limited time, and the assembly would be their time to wind down. Afterwards, we jumped right into doing our vocabulary for the day. We had slides and visual cards for they to follow along with. We had them clap out the syllables to each word per usual. The students were very riled up today, so we had a hard time getting them to fully focus. We told them that if we want to have time to do our craft towards the end, we need to get through all of our important activities first. This incentive helped them to focus more. 





Vocabulary Words:
Insect
Aphids
Hatching
Larvae
Molting
Pupa

    Afterwards, we had just enough time to read our story and do an example paragraph shrink before they left for their assembly. As we read, we asked them questions throughout the reading to promote dialogic reading. The students were pretty interested in the book and were asking me questions based off the ladybug's life cycle.  

Questions Asked During Reading: 
  • Have you seen a ladybug before?
  • Can someone remind me again what an Aphid is? 
  • Does someone know what the bird would be to the ladybug?
  • What are the larvae doing? Think of your vocabulary!
  • Do you think this bug is starting to look like a ladybug? 
  • Did anyone notice what this story was showing us about ladybugs? 



    We had an interactive anchor chart set up where we had a paragraph about a girl who volunteers at an animal shelter. We first read the whole paragraph and then brainstormed together to think of how we could shrink this into 1-3 sentences that cover our main ideas. The students were having a hard time not adding too many details, so we had to support them through repeated guiding to help them to understand that in a shrink, we do not want any details that are unnecessary.


    After they went to their assembly for a half hour. When they returned, one of our students had won an award and was very excited to show us. We celebrated her award for a minute before moving onto the next portion of our lesson. We had them now apply their paragraph shrinking knowledge to two paragraphs that were in our book. The students seemed to struggle with this activity more, so my co-teacher and I went slowly and continued to do them together until the kids felt comfortable. They greatly benefitted from this support. I noticed the kids referring back to their vocabulary cards often, which I loved to see! 


 
We then moved onto working on Cinquain Poems! We had an anchor chart that showed the rules involved within a Cinquain, and two examples of a Cinquain at the bottom. They noticed that the formatting of this poem was very similar to one we had done previously, which was a Diamante. After going over the chart, we went over each line/rule with the students as they filled out their own. They were asked to create this poem based off what we learned from ladybugs! The kids were definitely more engaged and had more fun during this lesson. After we were done, we brought in materials for them to make a small ladybug craft that they could glue in their journals to go along with their poems. The students loved being able to do this craft, and it did not take long at all. We let the students customize their ladybugs for a moment before moving onto our last lesson task. 

    To wrap up everything we learned, we did a fill in the blank activity with them. They were asked 5 questions regarding the life cycle of a ladybug and had to fill in the missing words. The students were provided a word bank and were allowed to use their vocabulary cards if needed. We read each line together and let the students take turns answering the blanks to ensure they both had an appropriate number of turns. The students were able to do this activity easily, showing they had a strong understanding of what we had learned today. We wrapped up the lesson by doing a Bug Stretch activity, where the students did different stretches that can relate to different bugs. At the very end, the students had cards and a gift to give to us and requested that we read/open them with the students so they could see our reactions. They made us two cards and cookies! This gesture was so kind, and it was so nice to see what the students wrote. They expressed how much they loved working with us, how kind and caring we were, and how much they were going to miss us. We have them a Stellar Student Certification with their names on them as a goodbye gift. We gave each other our final, emotional hugs and high-fives goodbye. One of our students was even crying, which I felt so bad about. As much as I loved working with them, it was really hard to say goodbye. 



These were the SLO's we had for our students: 

Tier 1:
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop a written structured paragraph with differentiated core support by completing the paragraph shrinking activity and ladybug poem independently or with a peer with 95-100% accuracy. 

Tier 2:
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop written structured paragraphs with targeted support by completing a paragraph shrinking activity and ladybug poem with personalized one-on-one support from the teacher with 85-90% accuracy. 

Tier 3:
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop written structured paragraphs with intensive support by completing the paragraph shrinking activity and ladybug poem with a concentrated one-on-one support from the teacher with 80-85% accuracy.

The objectives for this activity were met. This can be seen through their completion of their paragraph shrinking's and poems. 

   From this experience, I learned how important it is for teachers to remain flexible and calm when a lesson needs to change suddenly. Having to adjust our timing and remove certain activities pushed me to focus on what was essential and still maintain student engagement. I also learned how much students rely on strong scaffolds, like vocabulary cards, anchor charts, and modeled examples, especially during writing tasks that require higher-level thinking. Another key learning was recognizing the emotional impact teachers have. The way the students connected with us, asked questions, used our strategies independently, and expressed how much they would miss us confirmed that relationship-building is just as important as academic instruction.

    This lesson will influence my professional identity by reinforcing my goal to be an adaptable and reflective teacher who can adjust plans without losing instructional quality. It taught me that I need to build flexibility into every lesson and intentionally plan for what is “non-negotiable” learning versus what can be modified if time changes. Moving forward, I will include more structured scaffolds, especially for writing-based tasks, because I saw how much the students depended on visuals and modeling to build confidence. This experience will also shape how I assess in the future: I will continue using structured, observable tasks, like paragraph shrinking and patterned poems, to clearly see student understanding and give immediate support. Most importantly, it reminded me that strong relationships and consistent emotional support help students stay motivated and engaged. This will shape how I build community in my future classroom and how I support students both academically and socially.
    





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