Prospective Biology Teacher
Jordan Woodman
Teaching Experiences
This section outlines observations and opportunities to teach lessons that I have experienced throughout my educational career.
Ghent School
Spring 2023
I completed three observations and presented one three-day lesson in a 7th-grade Life Science class. This lesson focused on the roles of organisms in a food chain. In groups, students created a reasonable food web for a country of their choosing, assigned correct energy flow arrows and organism labels, and explained the impact humans were having on that country's ecosystem. This project showed me how engaged students can be inif they are given elements of choice. This lesson was started with a convsersation about travel, asking the students where they had been and listening to their stories. This project gave students an opportunity to connect content to thier travel experience or hope of travelling to somewhere someday. I could see the motivation to learn naturally integrated into the lesson through this project. I hope to use student connection to make my lesson engaging in this way in my future teaching experinces.
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Maury High School
Fall 2022
I completed three observations, presented one one-day lesson, and presented one two-day lesson in a mixed-grade Honors Biology class. Both lessons were created and presented with two co-teachers. For the one-day lesson, the students explored the properties of the cell membrane through a cornstarch-iodine diffusion lab and by modeling the cell membrane with their bodies. This lesson showed me how planning activities that are outside of the normal flow of the class can help students remember the concepts of a lesson better than in a traditional classroom environment.
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Blair Middle School
Spring 2022
I completed two observations in and presented two lessons to a 7th-grade Advanced Life Science/Physical Science class. Both lessons were created and presented with two co-teachers. The first lesson covered the Kinetic Molecular Theory and prompted the students to create a Pokémon-like character representing a phase of matter. An example poster of student work is shown. This lesson gave me experience managing group projects and implementing foresight for project scale and instruction.
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The second lesson I taught at Blair Middle School was about the electromagnetic spectrum. For this lesson, the students explored the properties of wavelength and frequency using a slinky and filled out a diagram illustrating the electromagnetic spectrum. This lesson taught me the importance of understanding the content of a lesson in a multitude of ways so that instruction can be diversified to suit students' needs as they arise.
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For the two-day lesson, the students drew diagrams for different levels of detail in the photosynthetic process. They then used their notes to create a poster project overviewing photosynthesis in groups of 3-5 and presented their projects to the class. This lesson showed me the importance of pacing in a lesson and how rearranging the flow of a lesson can be worth the cost of simplicity.
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Tabb High School
Spring 2020
I completed 30 hours of shadowing in high school General Biology, AP Biology, and Career Mentorship classes. I was also permitted to assist in teaching and grading when my shadowing teacher allowed it. This first observation experience is what cemented my desire to teach biology as talking with the teachers and being immersed in the school environment gave me a realistic look at teaching as a future career.
