EDCUR 322.3

Teaching Science in Elementary Schools

Assignments

Assignment 1 | Assignment 2 | Assignment 3 || Assignment 4 & 5 (Midterm/Final)

Assignment 1
Integrated Assignment
Outdoor Learning: Brightwater Environmental Camp for EdCur 322.3
Due March 5, Wednesday
25%

Those students who cannot possibly get to Brightwater on any of the teaching days must let me know as soon as possible. There is an alternative assignment prepared.

For the Brightwater Environmental Camp Assignment

You will:

observe a video on Brightwater Environmental Camp to introduce to this unique program, which operates within the Saskatoon Public School Division.
read papers in your reading package on Outdoor / Environmental Education Programs.
select a day for teaching at Brightwater; either January 24 (Friday, grade 7, 37 students), February 5 (Wednesday, grade 6, 44 students), Feb 7 (Friday, grade 7, 29 students), or Feb 14 (Friday, grade 7, 45 students)
familiarize yourself with the set of lessons to be taught that day.
visit Brightwater Environmental Camp (Friday, January 17, p.m.) so you can get a sense of the site, the programs, and how to teach your lessons.
meet Marcia Klein, who is the project leader for Brightwater, who will give you a brief overview of the workings of the camp.
tour the Brightwater facilities, asking questions as you need.

The elementary students who attend Brightwater are from the Saskatoon Public School Division, grades 6 8. This is an older group than you are preparing to teach; however, when you graduate with a BEd elementary, you are qualified to teach this age of students. The intent of this assignment is for you to learn about Outdoor / Environmental Education.

The teachers who bring their students to Brightwater Environmental Camp have selected one set out of four possible sets of lessons. Depending on the day you choose to teach at Brightwater, you will have a different set of lessons to teach. The set of lessons will all be around one topic, such as orienteering, tracking, snow habitats, winter coats.

You will:

carry out background research for the set of lessons for your teaching day so that you will be more comfortable for teaching the lessons on your day! The lessons will be holistic, involving the students intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
visit Brightwater Environmental Camp on Friday, January 17, in the afternoon.
arrive at Brightwater Environmental Camp between 8:30 and 8:45 a.m. on the morning you are to teach. Please arrange for car pooling. If you need an extra car, you may use mine (which holds six people) (but has dog hair in the back seat sorry about that).
meet your group of students in the hall
carry out an orientation activity with them, where you learn the students’ names and they learn the rules you expect of them. Rules about rules: one or two simple rules is all you need. Orient the rules towards students being respectful of the environment, of you, of each other.
(along with one or two peers) teach one lesson from the set of lessons to a small group of students a maximum group size of eleven. (Eight is the optimum maximum number of elementary students in a small group for Brightwater. However, in order to have four groups of elementary students on each day, we have decided to exceed this limit.) The teacher or a parent or Marcia will be with you; these other adults will be in charge of discipline. You are there to try out teaching, to try out the particular lesson, to experience outdoor / environmental education, NOT to manage student behaviour. (However, last year, when your peers found that they had to take charge of student and, in one case, parent, behaviour.)
Your lesson will be about forty-five to fifty minutes long. Then you will switch elementary student groups with another team, and you will teach your lesson to a new group of students. After this next group is done, you will switch again, and teach a third group of students. (On the other hand, you and your team might choose to rotate with the same group of students. This would mean you would each teach the full cycle of three lessons.) The first lesson will be an active outdoor lesson. The second lesson will also be an outdoor lesson; however, you will have a back-up activity in case the weather is really cold. The third lesson will be indoors, where the students will write, draw or paint in their journals. This would be a good time for you to carry out an assessment activity.

To be handed in:

Each of you will

write a 5 page paper (5 pages means 4 to 6 pages) referring to your readings, the video, your experiences, in which you examine the experience of outdoor / environmental education. Answer two questions in this paper: Do you think that the goals of outdoor / environmental education are important enough that time must be taken from reading, writing and arithmetic? Do you think that the students at Brightwater are learning what they should / could learn at this environmental camp? See Assignment 3 description for appropriate referencing. Put your name only on the title page, nowhere else. Also put the name of the assignment on the title page.
write a lesson plan which is an outdoor / environmental lesson. This lesson is for the teacher to do with the students back at the school, as a follow-up to the set of lessons you taught. For example, if you taught about orienteering, you will write a lesson for the teacher to carry out at the school (outdoors) to do with orienteering.

Contact information for Brightwater: Marcia Klein at 683-8323 (School Board office) or 373-4169 or e-mail at KleinM@spsd.sk.ca

How to get to Brightwater: Please car pool. Lorne Avenue intersects with 8th St, at the very west end of 8th St. Head south on Lorne, past the Exhibition grounds, past Early’s Seed and Feed, past the Saskatoon Golf and Country Club. You will cross a set of railway tracks, and continue out of the city where Lorne Ave continues south, but is now called Hwy 219. Stay on this highway until you get to Brightwater.

Highway 219 goes south most of the time. At one point, the road goes straight, and Hwy 219 angles off to the west; your car will almost turn west all by itself, since it is so obviously the main road. Later, the hwy takes a right angle to the south. Again, it is obvious this is what you are to do. When you reach Beaver Creek Interpretive Centre, you should slow down, since you are very close to Brightwater. You will pass the interpretive Centre, go into a little valley, cross the Beaver Creek, go up out of the valley, and the access road to Brightwater Camp will be there on your left. Be sure to close the gate after you drive through.

Saskatoon Public School Board leases the Brightwater property from the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has a summer camp for inner city children on this property, so some of the facilities are not environmentally inclined! However, the two organizations have negotiated a good working relationship. Also, the Brightwater property is encircled by a feed lot. The reason for the gate is so the cattle can not go out onto the highway. Again, although the feedlot does not practice in environmentally sound ways, Brightwater has negotiated a relationship with them. If we are all to get along, if we are to be effective in our attempts to change attitudes, we must work in positive and co-operative ways. Please respect the others who use this land.

Rubric for Evaluation of Paper

	5	4	3	2	1
Organization	Masterful	Flow set up to create an argument	Logical flow	Chronological flow	Disorganized
Grammar	Grammar used to make writing powerful	Perfect grammar	Normal grammar	More than two kinds of errors	Interferes with understanding
Clarity	Paragraphs masterfully handled	Paragraphs appropriate for development of argument	Paragraphs in standard form	Paragraphs poorly organized	Sentences laborious, paragraphs inadequate
References	Well integrated set of references	Course readings plus materials from other courses	Course readings plus course notes	References only from the course readings	Insufficient
Content	Graduate quality insights	Some new insights offered	Sufficient for teaching	Basic grasp	Does not understand

Alternate to Brightwater:

For those who cannot attend Brightwater Due March 5, Wednesday 25% Some of you (those who are not in the full cohort) will find it impossible to visit Brightwater. There is an alternate assignment for these people. The advantage of the Brightwater assignment is that you will actually be able to teach in an outdoor / environmental education setting. This will serve you well when you begin your teaching career. The alternate assignment should be chosen only by those who cannot possibly carry out the Brightwater assignment.

For those who cannot visit Brightwater on the scheduled days:

Choose an outdoor location / site, within walking, biking, driving distance of a particular Saskatoon school. Describe why you chose this location. Draw or obtain a map of the site. Make note of any danger areas.

Make a plan for a day long field trip to the site, including

a model waiver form
a process for sending the waiver forms home and getting them back signed
the appropriate and recommended number of adults for supervising 30 students (Saskatoon school divisions suggest a ratio of 1 adult to 8 elementary students. If the site you choose is dangerous, you might choose to have more adults; if the students you have are unruly, you might choose to have more adults.)
suggestions for how to get this number of adults
a method for preparing the adults to be appropriate supervisors
a plan for students to get to the site
a plan for the day at the site, with a variety of activities
a plan for weather related issues
anticipation of the needs of one student in a wheelchair. This student has full use of his/her arms
anticipation of the needs of a student who displays symptoms of ADHD
a plan for students who remain at the school, because of parents not signing the waiver.

Assignment 2:
Paper on Learning Theory
Due February 14, Friday
10%

In your reading package, there are about seven or eight papers on constructivism. I have selected papers which show different versions of constructivist learning theory. You should organize yourselves into small groups three is a good number for this assignment. Each of you in the group should read one, two or three of the papers, such that your group will have read all the papers. One of our class days (Friday, January 31) will be set aside for discussing these papers. Your group will then write a two or three page summary, telling me what you think constructivism is all about. I will read these summaries, and hand them back with comments. You are then to observe students during your student teaching, connecting what is happening for them and constructivist learning theory. You will have another day of class time set aside for discussing what you observed, and you will write a summary of this. I will read this and comment. Then your group will meet (on your own time) to determine how to improve the paper, and will then co-write five pages to hand in for marks. Your paper should address the basics of constructivist learning theory, and how it should affect teaching and assessment.

Referencing: Any empirical facts must be referenced. If you observed something happen which is significant for your paper, make note of when you made this observation. (You will probably take some notes while observing students. Date the notes, so you can refer to these in your paper. Refer to them as “T. Nichol’s Field Notes, Feb 5, 2003”.) Any empirical facts which you did not personally see must be referenced to the person who did observe them be this from a peer’s observations (“T. Nichols’ Field Notes, Feb 5, 2003”), by a stranger, or an oral comment from one of your peers (T. Nichols, personal communication). Any ideas that you got from someone else or from papers must be referenced. Any direct quotations must be referenced.

To reference, put parentheses right after the quotation or fact and give enough information in the parentheses that I can find the reference easily in your reference list (you do not include personal communications or field notes in your reference list). Then, put all these references in your reference list at the end of the paper. If you are familiar with APA style for referencing, please use this.

The paper should be between 4 and 6 pages long, not including references and title page. The mark will be out of 30. In your group, divide the mark such that the average of the mark is the mark out of 30.

Rubric for Evaluation of Paper

	5	4	3	2	1
Organization	Masterful	Flow set up to create an argument	Logical flow	Chronological flow	Disorganized
Grammar	Grammar used to make writing powerful	Perfect grammar	Normal grammar	More than two kinds of errors	Interferes with understanding
Clarity	Paragraphs masterfully handled	Paragraphs appropriate for development of argument	Paragraphs in standard form	Paragraphs poorly organized	Sentences laborious, paragraphs inadequate
References	Well integrated set of references	Course readings plus materials from other courses	Course readings plus course notes	References only from the course readings	Insufficient
Content	Graduate quality insights	Some new insights offered	Sufficient for teaching	Basic grasp	Does not understand

Assignment 3: Unit Plan
Due March 24, Monday
25%

If you choose, you and a partner may work together on the unit plan. It is sometimes easier to work together, sometimes more difficult. I will grade joint unit plans in the same manner as individual ones. The two who worked together will decide how to divide the mark, so that the average of the two marks is the mark assigned.

Your unit plan will include:

title page which gives your name(s), the title of the unit, the grade level it is for.
rationale, giving the pedagogical basis for the teaching methods you use and why, describing why this unit is important for all your students to learn.
optional concept web, showing how the objectives of the unit, the dimensions of scientific literacy, the common essential learnings are addressed in the different lessons.
overview, a chart with all the lessons listed sequentially, the objectives described, the teaching method, etc. Your unit plan should be not less than six lessons, not more than twenty lessons. See sample overview on next page.
list of materials needed for the whole unit, and where you will get them, with the costs of them listed. Use the catalogs in the classroom for price lists for unusual items. Check grocery stores / hardware stores / craft stores for other items.
six lessons, written in enough detail that a substitute teacher could carry out the lesson. Each of these lessons must have an assessment tool attached. Each of these lesson plans must be a different teaching method, each one selected from those learned in this course.
evaluation overview, itemising all the data you have collected on your students and how you will weight it.
You must integrate Indian/Metis and gender issues into your lessons, and show where and how you have done this.

Framework for Evaluation of Unit Plan

1 Title Page: Includes title of unit, grade(s), name(s) of designers

3 Rationale: No more than one page, double spaced, margins of 2.5 cm, font 12. Addresses the educational value of the unit, the educational value of the instructional strategies (not methods) used, a general description of how gender and aboriginal cultures will be incorporated.

0 Concept Web: Some people think better when they use a concept web. It is not essential to include a concept web.

10 Overview: When you are an expert (after two or three years) teacher, you will teach from your overview, rather than from individual lesson plans. An example of an overview table is given. Do not waste time with technology. If you find using tables a difficult feature of word processors, either ask for help, or don’t use them photocopy as many of the overview sheets as you need and fill them in by hand.

3 List of materials for whole unit, with amounts, prices and places to get them from also included. Sum the total budget and the time taken to make and/or accumulate the materials.

30 Six lessons, each one of a different instructional method (not strategies): see rubric for assessing lessons.

13 Evaluation section: Includes an overview which shows the weighting assigned to each assessment tool, as well as the assessment tools for each lesson. See evaluation section checklist.

Rubric for Lesson Plans

	5	4	3	2	1
Components	Components demonstrate an intuitive understanding of teaching	Components masterfully integrated	All components accurately represented	All components present
Objectives	As for 4 and is assessed	Objective named is masterfully addressed	Objective named is recognizably addressed		Learning objective(s) (from science unit) and/or FSL named
Instructional Method	As for 4, & assessment matches method	Named and masterfully described	Recognizable	Named but not recognizable	Neither named nor recognizable
Common Essential Learnings	As for 4 and well assessed	At least one named, and masterfully integrated	At least one named, and recognizably there		At least one named
Incorporating Difference (gender, cultural, physical, etc.)	Plan for teaching and assessing identified differences	Plan for teaching content and strategies for identified differences	Plan for teaching content to identified differences	Needs of two or more differences identified and addressed	Identify that some students might have trouble

Each of six different instructional methods will be assessed using this rubric. If there are not six different instructional methods, you will not receive the five marks available for one of the instructional methods. This rubric will help you remember what must be included in each of the six lesson plans you will write in full. This rubric will help me to determine how well you have incorporated all that needs to be in a lesson plan.

Rating Scale for Evaluation

Overview of Evaluation
0	1			Assessment tools which will be used for final unit mark are identified and weighting is assigned.
0	1	2		There is a balance of methods for evaluation not just a focus on written and exam based marks.
Assessment Tools
0	1	2	3	There is one assignment which allows students to perform at a level 3,4,5 on Saskatchewan Learnings Opportunities to Learn rubric.
0	1	2		All the assessment tools for the unit are included, ready to copy and use (systematic and prepared).
0	1	2		All objectives noted in the unit are specifically addressed in one or more assessment tools (thorough).
0	1	2	3	The assessment tools are a balance of methods so the teacher will learn the unique needs of each student, and will actually be able to tell if the students have learned the content (thorough).

4&5 - Midterm Exam and Final Exam

Exams measure a different sort of knowledge than do assignments. Students must study and reformulate what they know in an "on the spot" situation, which can be stressful. However, there is evidence that students who study for and then write exams remember the material better than those who don't study and than those who do study but don't write the exams. Further, exams "encourage" (force?) you to synthesise the term's work. For all these reasons, I believe that exams are useful for learning, not just for evaluating.

But, to help you alleviate the stress of writing the exams, you will have the midterm, worth a mere 10 %, written on Wednesday, February 12. Treat the midterm seriously, as an opportunity to learn the kind of exam I set and how I mark. If you are dissatisfied with your performance on the exam, you should come to me and arrange to do a different assignment to make up for the poor mark on the midterm. (The mark on the assignment will be substituted for the midterm exam.) In this sense, the midterm can be considered a true practice situation. You should not suffer any ill effects. But you don't want to have to write another assignment, so do prepare to do your best on the midterm. The midterm exam will take one class period - fifty minutes. The final exam will be about twice as long, and similar to the midterm, but you will have three hours to write. The final exam will count 30 % towards your final mark.