This lesson was a bit of a struggle for me. Not because I found the topic difficult, but rather because I teach life science so I had to find a group of my 7th graders who were willing to come in to my room on their lunch and work on this activity. Also, the topic has nothing to do with anything we've been working on this year so it just felt out of place. Luckily I have great students who volunteered to come in and help me out. Overall the lesson itself was good, but it's just not the ideal way to teach a lesson.
I do try to use models on a regular basis in my own lessons & I find that they are especially helpful to my classified students because a hands-on approach is much more engaging to them. They worked on locating the location of an earthquake's epicenter using three seismograph readings. My students struggled a bit at first when trying to use drawing compasses and determine the scale they were supposed to use, but once I helped them with the first step, they were able to progress together and locate the epicenter.
I know we have used this lesson plan template throughout our Walden courses and there have been many complaints from people about the template itself. I feel it is very redundant and would never use something like it my daily teaching & lesson plans.
