Well, I made it. I was recently hired as an occasional teacher for a growing board in Ontario (backflips, applause, happy dances, etc.). I have worked a few days already (cartwheels) and been volunteering steadily for some pretty inspiring teachers in a variety of grades JK-8.
I have decided that my first post as an employed teacher (back hand springs) would focus on two particularly wicked lessons which have hooked the kids (and then some!) and sparked their curiosities so much so that everyone was working hard (re: on task, smiling, concentrating and not asking to go to the bathroom or to get a drink), the classroom was abuzz with learning and the classrooms were transformed into laboratories and learning hubs for the entire community.
Fabulous Lesson 1: You Can't Catch Me, I'm The Gingerbread Man (Primary, in this case JK/SK split)
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| Photo via Flickr 6S Marketing |
This is a unit of study all about THE GINGERBREAD MAN. A lot of preparation and forethought went into this unit. It all starts with the kindies making a giant "class" gingerbread man (smelling, touching, working together, learning about baking safety). When they went to get him from the oven, all that was left was crumbs on the parchment paper. The students were immediately hooked. Where did he go? That guy! Always running away! At one point the school principal was holding kindie's hands and walking around the school looking for "Gingy". As the weeks wore on, students participated in plethora of activities from this springboard activity. A dozen or so renditions of the famous story were read and compared for similarities and differences. The class made wanted posters to describe and hopefullly find their missing cookie. A fieldtrip to a farm where they made and decorated their own gingerbread men (who didn't run away!) was taken. Students posed in a life-size cut out of a gingerbread man, their tiny faces replacing his cookie mug. A science experiment was conducted, if a cookie man tries to cross a river of milk, what will happen? Will he make it safely to the other side? These are just some of the activities that inspired students to learn right on up to winter break! What a festive, yummy and inclusive unit of study! Community connections: parents and other community members helped out by actually mailing postcards from their travels (and enlisting others to do so) to the classroom from "the gingerbread man".
Amazing Lesson 2: Toy Design and Prototype (Junior/Intermediate)
This was a week long project-based assignment for a grade 3 class where students created a blueprint and toy design and then researched the construction, gathered the materials and worked together to construct a prototype. Students were then to brand and market their toy item with an advertisement or full fledged campaign (print, audio, video - you name it!) This was a particularly engaging assignment as students were able to activate their prior (vast) knowledge on the subject and marry it with their growing knowledge base around strong and stable structures, forces of movement, simple machines, etc. to create an interactive (and basically "tech free") toy.
