Here you will see some of my lessons and the process behind them. This section features my lessons and units I’ve taught in my practicum, a grade 3-5 science lesson I (along with peers) have created, taught, and reflected upon, and an Indigenous Unit that shows my commitment to learning and decolonizing the curriculum.
Practicum Lesson
Barbara Reid is an author an illustrator from Canada. I taught an integrated unit that included English Language Arts (making predictions), Career Ed creating and planning our final project, and utilizing plasticine to make our final project (Visual Arts). I have attached the unit as well as evidence to demonstrate what we did.
TRC Lesson Plans (purchased by TRU)
I created these lessons specifically based on Indigenous content as a challenge for myself to decolonize my teaching, and push myself away from my fear of ‘messing up’. There is always space to try new things and push boundaries, you just need to make the effort.
Peer Taught Lesson
EDSC-Edible-Layers-of-Soil
REFLECTION:
I formerly had a hard time envisioning how science would be taught in my future classroom without it getting messy, expensive, and time consuming for every lesson. But what I’ve come to find out is that the important piece in science is relevance. For students to actively engage in a lesson, a teacher must demonstrate the relevance of the subject in everyday life. To put this into perspective, for our layers of soil activity we outlined the relevance of each layer of soil and why they work together to create soil. We then projected the same image but with the coordinating food items as the soil layers. This creates a clear image of what is expected of students to learn, do, and understand the reasoning behind the lesson and chosen activity.
Overall, this activity really showed me all the options to create a positive and proactive classroom that supports educational and experimental science. Science was always taught to me in a very textbook manner, pulling questions from it and regurgitating multiple choice answers. I am grateful to have this experience to redirect my views and add new opportunities to my classrooms ability to learn science.