LESSON PLAN INFORMATION
Subject/Course: Anthropology, Psychology and Name: Sabrina Otello
Sociology
Grade: 11 Date: Thursday, October 9th, 2019
Topic: Bipedalism Time: 10:50-11:30
EXPECTATIONS: Identify overall or specific expectations from MOE documents.
B1.3: Explain significant issues in areas of anthropology (e.g. linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology,
cultural anthropology, forensic anthropology, primatology)
B2.1: Explain, from an anthropological perspective, how various factors (e.g. physical environment,
globalization, pandemics) influence and shape human behavior and culture (e.g. technology, language, social
structure, law, politics, religion and ritual, art)
LEARNING GOALS: Describe what the students are expected to learn. Share goals with students.
The students are expected to use an anthropological perspective to explain how diverse factors such as
bipedalism influence and shape human behavior and culture.
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to differentiate between chimpanzee and human anatomy. They
will understand why they are different and the function of bipedalism in establishing their differences.
SUCCESS CRITERIA: Describe from a student’s perspective what attainment of a learning goal looks like.
From a student perspective, they will be able to understand from an anthropological perspective about
how bipedalism has affected our present society. They will be able to question how life would be
different if humans did not become bipedal.
They will also be able to explain significant issues in physical and cultural anthropology. The physical
anthropology of a human becoming bipedal and the impact of becoming bipedal on our culture.
PRE-ASSESSMENT: Describe links to prior knowledge.
To prepare the students for the lecture, I created a mentimeter asking the students to think of words
that come to mind when they think of the term bipedalism.
This allowed them to do word association, with pervious knowledge they had about bipedalism and why
it relates to anthropology.
I would give the students five minutes to submit all the words that come to mind. We will then debrief
and understand why the words that were submitted are associated with bipedalism.
Lesson Template #1 1 Revised 2011
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: Describe the setting including groupings & management strategies.
Environment-
The class has 27 students. It is an environment where the desks are set up into three rows and 3
columns. Desks are side by side. There is not much room for movement and activity around the room
because of the large class size and the class set-up.
When I am putting the students in groups because of the classroom environment I decided to group
them according to the people sitting near them.
Management Considerations: -
They may be sitting beside their friends so this may cause them to take the group assignment not as
seriously. To keep their attention and focus, I decided to provide them with a prize incentive to keep
them engaged.
INSTRUCTION
Time Introduction (motivational steps, activation of prior knowledge
To begin the lesson, I introduced the mentimeter. This was a new tool for students.
11:00am- This tool is very useful in the classroom because each student used their personal
11:05am electronic device to connect to the tool.
The students are going to be given five minutes to think of words they associate with
bipedalism. These words will be put into the mentimeter and then formed a word
cloud. The larger the words are in the word cloud represents that more than one
student submitted that word.
After the word cloud is formed I will ask students why they chose those specific
words to associate with bipedalism by addressing their relevance and significance to
the topic.
Instructional Sequence (content, teaching learning strategies)
After we went through the introduction to bipedalism by forming a word cloud with
several different words that the students associate with bipedalism. We will
transition into the PowerPoint presentation.
The PowerPoint aims are to attain the two expectations of the lesson (B1.3 and b2.1)
11:05am-
11:25am The PowerPoint is eight slides long.
To keep the student’s attention, I will ask the students questions as they are copying
down the notes. This will help the students engage in what they are copying down
and understand it further.
Some questions to ask:
Lesson Template #1 2 Revised 2011
1. How is a human striding gate different from when animals walk on their two feet? I.e. when
a dog gets excited and jumps on his/her Hine legs?
2. When you are taking a step what part of your foot do you put the most pressure on?
3. What are the similarities and differences between the Laetoli footprint and the modern
footprint?
4. How would our lives be different if humans were not bipedal?
11:25am- Lesson conclusion:
11:40am
I conclude the lesson with a final activity.
Students will get into groups of 5-6. I will assign the groups based on the students sitting
near each other. As a team, the students will be required to reconstruct the human anatomy
and chimpanzee anatomy.
The first group to finish the reconstruction the fastest and accurately will win a prize.
Once the task is completed and you reconstructed the anatomical features of both the
human and the chimpanzee. I will ask students to reflect and not down the several
anatomical features and how each contributes to the locomotion posture of modern apes
and modern humans.
After the students noted down the features we will have a short five-minute class discussion
on the differences they noted. I.e. Chimpanzee’s having smaller feet.
ASSESSMENT (data collection) / EVALUATION (interpretation of data)
When assessing the lesson, I noted that students were engaged.
The introduction of the mentimeter allowed the students to become engaged with the
materials. They submitted several words. Some students even submitted emoji’s that they felt
related to the term bipedalism.
When I was conducting the PowerPoint, I did have a cold. When my mentor teacher de-briefed
me after presenting my lesson, she said the one thing I could have done better projected my
voice. However, she did take into account that I had a cold. This may have been hard for
students to hear me.
When I was lecturing, and asking questions the students were engaged, however, some of
them used that time to speak with one another. It was hard to bring the group back to focus. I
asked them twice for them to settle down and then they listened.
When they were working on the follow-up activity in their groups they worked very well
together. The prize encouraged their engagement in the activity. Students made mistakes
constructing and I went around correcting their mistakes and this allowed them to learn through
play. Their mistakes made them do better.
After the activity, they noted down the similarities and differences and we had a group
discussion. In the group discussion, the students were engaged and brought up interesting
similarities and differences.
I feel that the students achieved both the learning goals.
Lesson Template #1 3 Revised 2011
REFLECTION
1) Evidence of Student Learning Related to the Lesson Expectations
They explained significant issues in Anthropology by noting the differences between
chimpanzee and human anatomy. They looked at the physical anthropology and how
bipedalism affected human beings.
They demonstrated the evidence by physically constructing the anatomy and putting the pieces
together based on the lecture I presented.
When we did the short discussion after it was evident that the students understood why
bipedalism is important to Anthropology and our present-day society and culture.
2) Next steps for Student Learning Related to the Lesson Expectations
Students will continue to examine issues within Anthropology and how they affected our
culture today.
3) Strengths of the Lesson
The introduction of a new tool (mentimeter) to get the class engaged.
Group work at the end, students worked well together and engaged with the materials they
learned.
The discussion went extremely well and the students provided excellent examples of
similarities and differences between the chimpanzee anatomy and human anatomy.
4) Next steps to Improve Teacher Candidate Effectiveness
I will learn how to project my voice better.
I must have a better classroom management technique to bring the students back to the
material and continue copying down the notes instead of talking to the person beside them.
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