Artifact: Science Unit Plan

Standard 5 is the performance of a classroom teacher in carrying out education as prescribed by ministry prescribed learning outcomes from beginning to end.  It is the responsibility that a teacher has to educate students based on these PLOs, and in carrying out this undertaking, many aspects such as effective classroom management, advance planning, detailed instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting are all required.  I believe that this standard is all about demonstrating competency in the aspects mentioned above so that the ultimate goal of education is achieved.

The artifact that I feel demonstrates all these aspects of teaching is the unit plan for science that I designed and implemented during my school practicum experience.  The focus of this science unit was habitats & communities.  As shown in the unit plan, the components of teaching are all in evidence in advance of my actually implementing these practices in class.  I first identified the PLOs from the ministry of BC Science IRP with relation to the unit habitats & communities.  Then, I summarized and divided the PLOs into two main ideas which resulted in two main themes for the unit: Bees and Habitat Diorama.  With these PLOs I designed lessons which I felt would be interesting as well as educational for the class.  Following this step was actually estimating and calculating the time required for each lesson to take place, which I have noted onto my unit plan.  When the lessons and possible extension activities were all slotted nicely into the time available, this represented the completion of my planning process.

Also included in the unit plan are simplified notations for possible assessment methods ranging from individual observations, written tests, project producing, and oral presentations.  My individual lesson plans exemplified more detail in regards to instruction, assessment, and evaluation methods with information specific to each lesson.  The reason that I employ a wide range of assessment methods is due to addressing a wide range of learners as suggested by Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.  In that theory, different learners are shown to learn through very different modes such as visual, oral, and written forms.  It then follows that because learners learn from different modes of teaching, they will also have to be assessed in different modes such as through projects (visual/physical), presentations (oral), and tests (written).  I believe that a larger majority of different learners are addressed by this varied approach to assessment than a systematic assessment method with a repetitive and singular-mode format.

With this variety in my lesson plans and assessment methods, the ways with which students are expected to complete assignments are varied as well.  Although my instructional method was often simple and direct, I found that the variety incorporated in my lesson activities addressed different learners quite sufficiently.  Therefore, a simple and direct approach to giving guidelines and the framework to completing assignments was suitable.  As a result, my class often had large amounts of in-class time for hands-on learning as displayed in the picture of the class working on their habitat dioramas.

Diorama Making

Throughout these lessons, there were many cases where prompt intervention was required.  It is in these cases of classroom management where a good classroom community is highly valuable.  Often, I noticed positive reinforcement and peer pressure in listening to a teacher’s wishes were very effective tools of classroom management.  In hindsight, after learning about the stages of development from Erik Erikson’s theory on psychosocial development, I now realize why this was such an effective tool.  According to Erikson, children in the age range of my practicum class begin to be more affected by their social relationships while moving away from family and teacher relationships.  Therefore, I believe it was easier to draw upon their wish for social inclusion than if I had given students a direct demand and solely relying on their relationship with the teacher.  I accomplished this through building a good rapport with the class so that individual students who required some form of intervention were pressured by the majority of students who had a good relationship with me as their teacher.

This program in education has taught me many schools of thought and theories in relation to teaching as a profession.  It then provided me with a practicum experience that was an excellent proof of those very same theories in practice.  After having gone through an entire term of teaching students from planning to implementation to reporting, I now realize that teaching is more than the sum of its parts in that the individual stages of teaching connect and link together in order to create what we call education.  Education cannot only be classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting.  It cannot even be a combination of those factors all combined in a classroom setting.  To me, education involves the aspects of teaching and the links between each one that ultimately creates a cohesive learning experience for students.

Diorama Display