Grade 6 Trees and Forests was my absolute favorite unit to plan this semester! After our first day of reviewing the syllabus, I ran home, grabbed the dog, and went out collecting leaves to build an activity for this lesson. I laminated the leaves to preserve specimens for the final presentation.
Ecology, botany, and fauna are some of my favorite science subjects. I grew up in northern Alberta and it wasn't uncommon for me to spend plenty of nights camping with the bare essentials both in the summer and in the winter. I have even slept in a snow quinzee at -35 degrees Celsius. Today, I spend time hunting, snowshoeing, fishing, kayaking, and swimming every chance I can. Researching and building the lesson plans was easy, as I was fully engaged with the process. The relevance of the oxygen-carbon cycle, or the fact that forestry is the third largest, renewable industry in Alberta fascinates me. I hope that the lesson plans that I created encourages educators to teach students to learn and enjoy the vast forests that we have to enjoy in Alberta. Presenting at the district school office was good. I had hoped to add a bit more drama into the presentation, but I think that there was a worry that this may not look as professional as it should. The activities helped to enhance the pedagogical elements of the presentation. There is so much to learn about trees and forests. I hope I inspired others to teach this unit with enthusiasm or even just look more closely next time they go for a walk.
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![]() Assessment is the focus of enhancing your student's learning. To do this effectively, you need to use a variety of strategies to offer a balance of learning approaches to your students. We all know that each student learns in a variety of ways, so logically we should be using a variety of assessment strategies to meet the needs of our learners. What does assessment accomplish in the classroom? First, assessment provides the students and the teacher with the progress information of the student's learning. Assessment also indicates to the teacher, whether or not the student is benefiting from the teacher's instructional strategies. Assessment also provides concrete evidence for future lesson plans. For example, assessment verifies whether or not the student need additional support and how the teacher needs to teach the next lessons. When we are assessing, we not only assess the knowledge of the outcomes, but we need to assess the skills and attitudes that compliment the knowledge prescribed in the outcomes. Knowledge taught needs to be taught with skills and attitudes so that the student can apply the knowledge and concepts. Assessment practices are subjective; therefore, it is critical to build both formative and summative assessment into the lessons. Making the assessment authentic takes practice and planning. Criterion referenced assessment is an excellent example of fair and authentic assessment, as it aligns with the curriculum requirements and it engages students to complete more complex learning tasks. The most important assessment comes before the teaching. This assessment gives teachers a benchmark of where their students are and where they need to start with the curriculum. Formative feedback also creates meaningful dialogues between the students and the teacher. Students learning become more meaningful for the students when they have a connection to their teacher. Formative feedback can come in various forms, such as questioning, daily classroom talk, conferencing, idea maps, drawings, diagrams and journals. These types of feedback are more personal, and allow for a deeper level of learning with less parameters than teacher generated paper and pencil tests. Reference: Gustafson, B.J. & MacDonald, D.A.G. (2013). A Conceptual Approach to Teaching Children About Science, Technology, and Society (2nd Ed.). Ripon Publishing. Print. Activity 4.2 - Answer at least 3 questions. (page 111)
Think about how you would answer the following questions commonly asked by pre-service teachers.
Reference: Gustafson, B.J. & MacDonald, D.A.G. (2013). A Conceptual Approach to Teaching Children About Science, Technology, and Society (2nd Ed.). Ripon Publishing. Print. ![]() I would define teaching science as an activity with the intention of learning. Teaching only makes sense to me if I teach a subject based on logic and reasoning; with the student formulating their own conclusions. I believe in building lessons that are challenging enough that students are completely engaged in their learning and classroom management is not an issue. The management of ideas is a critical skill of content knowledge, curriculum teaching, and knowing your learners. I know that I can set up my students for success by considering the physical classroom seating, grouping of students, routines, and resources. For successful teaching of science, there are several key teaching strategies. First, I need to consider if inductive or deductive teaching is suitable for teaching a specific principle. Next, I know that teaching scientific inquiry is a recommended instructional strategy for teaching science and the nature of science. Don't forget your questioning to prompt your students to engage in higher thinking. Last, but not least, I need to challenge my students with technology problem-solving. To stay competitive in the job market, students must be able to troubleshoot, develop a plan and implement a solution. With technology comes STS decision making. STS decision making can be controversial, but this is a great strategy for teaching science-technology-society issues. Wednesday, October 18th, 2017: Today, for EDES 365, we had an opportunity to teach a discrepant event at Central Middle School, Red Deer, Alberta... My team teaching partner and I created a lesson based on Structures and Forces for grade 7. The opportunity to teach two science classes back to back was the bonus! Both classes went well, but having an opportunity to teach the same lesson twice, gave us time to reflect and to make adjustments in our lesson plans for the second time around. During the first class, our students were really excited to build structures with the blocks. In fact, they were SO excited that they wanted to move out of their groups and build a collaborative tower with the entire class. This was a great idea in concept; however, the mechanics of this wasn't working. The problem was that not all the students could participate within one circle. The class got a little noisy, so I just redirected students to the next activity. In reflection, I have no problems changing the lesson plan if the students are really engaged and learning. However, in this situation, the students had already accomplished the task. If this was my classroom, I would have compromised with the students by offering them time at the end of the week after our work was done to further 'experiment' with the blocks. With my instructional strategies, I noted two things: my timing and my explanation of tasks. With the timing of the lessons, we were finished a couple of minutes early in the first class and we just completed our lessons in the second class. The first class comprised of English learners and the second class comprised of French immersion and ESL learners. This is a classic example of how important it is to know your learners. The first science class worked through the lessons quicker than we anticipated. The second group needed more time to work through the tasks and complete the inquiry questions at the end of the class. These are all valid reasons why we need to know our learners. The second instructional strategy that I noted was my explanation of tasks. The students understood what we were asking of them in the first class, as I was sure to model the experiment. In the second class, I noted that the ESL learners were struggling with the concepts. My teaching partner took a few minutes to explain the process again to the students that were having a hard time comprehending the tasks. Once this happened, the students could verbally relay to me what happened during their experiment. Our classroom teacher commented on the following positive parts of our lessons. First, he said that the lesson material was well thought out and the students were really engaged. Our classroom teacher also commented that the way we linked the lesson to the students prior knowledge was well done. Also, the vocabulary and new concepts that we introduced fit well with other subjects that the grade 7 students were currently learning. He also liked how we integrated the flash cards into the discrepant event. If I was teaching these students, I would have them continue making flash cards for each unit so they would have a set of study cards at the end of the school year. I am thankful for Gord & Nat for driving us over and back on the school bus. Very kind! I am also thankful to the the Central Middle School teachers for giving up two classes today so that we could "get our feet wet"! ![]() Why would teachers spend SO much time planning? Planning is a critical practice of effective teaching. Effective teaching includes reflective decision-making, meeting provincial standards, recording of your work, supports your professional growth, and most importantly, teaching your students knowledge. The knowledge that you are building with you students needs to include: procedural, conceptual, and strategic knowledge. One of the most effective ways to begin planning for scientific inquiry is to ask an open ended question that scaffolds student's prior learning to the concepts in the question. Planning is multilayered. It includes a conceptual framework for year plans, unit plans, lesson plans, and daily plans. Before creating a conceptual framework, we need to consider the following;
I find my planning easier to start with the year plans and work down to the unit plans. Once I have constructed a conceptual framework for my unit plans, creating daily plans fall into a logical sequence of instruction with related activities. To keep my lesson planning focused, I reflect on the following questions:
Citation: Gustafson, B. J., M., & Gustafson, B. J. (2013). A Conceptual Approach to Teaching Children About Science, Technology, and Society (2nd Ed.) Edmonton: Ripon Publishing. Pg 115-137. We talked about a very important aspect of teaching science today... literacy and science! Literacy development is not just an ELA outcome. Literacy skills are critical for all subject areas. (Literacy skills are also mandated by the 21st Century Learning Competencies by AB Education.) Last class, our instructor challenged us to find an article that would compliment our grade level and topic. Why an article? An article of student interest would be a perfect way to encourage students to further read about a current class topic. We are currently building a unit plan for grade 6 science - Trees & Forests. I wanted to investigate this further..., so I took a trip over to the Dawe Public Library in Red Deer. I chose this library because they have a vast amount of children's literary resources. Some of the magazines that they carry are: National Geographic Kids, Owl, Wild, and Kayak: Canada's History Magazine for Kids. All of these magazines are within the reading level of grade 6. In Wild (Feb/March 2017), the magazine had a great article on the at risk species of the Western Chorus Frog. This frog species is only found in parts of Ontario and Quebec. In the past 10 years, this frog population has dropped 30 - 37%. Populations have dropped because "habitats have been drained, or they have been replaced with new housing developments" (Wild, 2017). This frog has a very unique sound and it is a critical part of the marsh food web. Literary skills are very important, but how could I assess this activity? One assessment strategy could be creating comprehensive questions from the article. For example, students could create the questions and submit their questions with the article for other classmates to answer. For the Western Chorus Frog article, we could look at the following questions;
6-10 Describe characteristics of trees and the interaction of trees with other living things in the local environment. 1. Identify reasons why trees and forests are valued. Students meeting this expectation should be aware that forests serve as habitat for a variety of living things are are important to human needs for recreation, for raw materials and for life-supporting environment. Below, check out this frog! Citation: Wild. (2017, February/March). Western Chorus Frog, Volume 20, Number 6, pp. 20. Kanata, Ontario. Discrepant events are a scientific invitation to pique the curiosity of student's interest through presentations. These presentations or events usually defy our understanding of the world by offering us with completely unexpected outcomes. Discrepant events grab the attention of your student and engage learners to be challenged to formulate a hypothesis about actions and/or reactions of simple, everyday objects.
Using a discrepant event as the anticipatory set in a lesson plan engages the students by encouraging natural curiosity and tieing a memorable event to a learner outcome. Engaged learning provokes a balance in the POS knowledge, skills, and attitudes. If the lesson plan is balanced with the K-S-A requirements, a student ability to remember and recall the lesson increases dramatically. One of the best parts about discrepant events is that they usually use everyday objects. This allows students (and teachers on a budget) to investigate science without a lab. In turn, this enables students to further investigate discrepant events at home. There are tons of possibilities for creating partner/group projects with discrepant events. I would much rather assign a discrepant project as homework, instead of assigning a textbook reading and a complimentary worksheet...
Google Search (2017-09-12). Defining Scientifically literate. https://www.google.ca/search?q=scientifically+literate&oq=scientifically+literat&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.6151j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 |
Lorie PennerA scientist can be anyone, as long as you as you are curious enough to want to know why! Archives
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