Author Archives: christopher phillips

Inquiry Journal – January 19

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This weeks Inquiry class allowed me to get my head back into my inquiry project. I ended off on Christmas break with a vague idea of how to approach my topic, and meeting in groups with partners really tightened the gap to send me in the proper direction. We have like-minded questions, which made it easier to put ourselves in one-another’s shoes  and see what steps are best to take next, or what could be refined in our questions to make them manageable.

My original inquiry, ‘How does outdoor education benefit students learning and behaviors’, is pretty clear to me and I have gathered an abundance of resources on the benefits of outdoor education. I’m now going to expand on my question to include, ‘Is it possible to include outdoor education into the new BC curriculum for grades 4-7, and to what extent’. I’m hopeful that my findings will provide some useful tips and resources for myself and fellow teachers.

This week, during math I asked my students (who are data collecting and graphing at the moment), how they would like me to plan their lessons. I gave them a scale of 1-5, 1 being completely inside and 5 being completely outside. We collected the numbers and graphed them to find a strong interest for the outdoors. I hope my inquiry can provide the students with lessons they’ll look forward to!

Chris

 

Some Thoughts Before the Break

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Some Thoughts Before the Break

With winter break coming up and practicum finishing, I find myself and the rest of the IB cohort are working hard to make the most out of these last few weeks. We’ve been away from practicum12074513_10154231435261416_9171167752512340082_n for a while, and spend most of our time on university campus, strategizing different games and concepts to bring into our lesson plans. There’s also been discussion of our actions and demeanour towards students in our classrooms, and I’d like to share a couple of memorable ideas that I’ve tried to embody. Firstly, it’s imperative that a teacher use proper language, and secondly, that they use best judgement when considering what material to teach.

As teachers, it’s our job to provide our students with proper vocabulary skills, and there is no better way than to mimic them ourselves. Using words like “class” instead of “guys” when addressing students can make a big difference, and sets a precedent that encourages equal opportunity for everyone.

Judgement is a chief component in building lesson plans; it should be used to help determine what to teach, and when things need to be changed. Having just finished a unit on Canadian government in my practicum, I felt propelled by judgement to bring up some current issues affecting other governments around the world. These issues weren’t part of our government, but they were associated with the Unit of Inquiry – How we organize ourselves, therefore my judgement deemed it necessary to accompany these events into the lesson.

I will continue to use my best judgement to determine whether lessons need changing, and I’m trying to be more conscious of my choice in words; I hope you can too!

Thanks for reading,
Chris

First Week Into Practicum

This past week has given me the opportunity to feel totally immersed and involved in a classroom setting.  I was able to step out of the observation role and engage with students as their teacher on multiple occasions. I felt the first occasion; a reflection I facilitated on their unit of inquiry was most rewarding. I approached the lesson as if they were the ones with all the knowledge because I hadn’t been at the school for very long, and I asked them what they could share. The students provided me with very responsive feedback, enough for me to see that their unit was effective in its teaching and left them with some interesting facts and experiences. As I walked around the room overseeing them write in their journals, I noticed unknownsome of them had a couple IB learner profile traits within their reflections. It was neat to see all the theory we’ve been doing at UBC put into practice, and the kids understanding and incorporating the learner profile into their working memory.

I’m pretty excited to move forward into the next unit of inquiry, simple machines, because I’m going to ask them to be risk takers and thinkers by figuring out how to lift each other using pulleys. Not only will they be thinking critically and exploring new ideas, but they’ll have the opportunity to be outside and moving! It should be a great week, I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading,
Chris