The Big Presentation

Well we did it! Our direct, inquiry and cooperative lesson plan presentation is complete. I feel like I can breathe again! Never having done something like this before, it was a pretty stressful undertaking to complete in two weeks. Both myself and my colleague had never taken a class with Dr. Smirnova before so we had to just do the best that we could! I honestly think, especially for being the first group, we did amazing! A large part in our success was a game that my colleague came up with called Beat the Teacher. If you are a sub, this game needs to be incorporated in your classroom management. It is a very simple game, you have the students versus you and any time you see the students doing the right thing (i.e listening to directions, actively participating, being kind to their peers) you give them a point! Then any time you see them not following directions or getting a little too out of control, you give yourself a point. The key is to never take away the points they earned. By the end of the day, you are able to add up the points on both side and hopefully the students win! Make sure you have a prize too! It can be something as simple as erasers or maybe, if the school permits, they can earn extra recess time!
Back to the lessons, the overall theme for our lesson was water pollution. We had to complete three lessons in one session of fieldwork so our goal was to make it as fun as possible and I think we accomplished that goal! Looking back, there were definitely a few technical problems that we ran into with technology. For example, we had a really fun QR code activity planned but some of the links that we had attached to the QR codes were not working. Note for next lesson, check the links before the lesson. We also quickly learned that we were fighting the clock. It is insanely hard to complete three different lessons in an hour and a half, but on the plus side we definitely kept the class busy and interested in the subjects. For the final project in the lesson, we broke the students into two groups and they had to complete a poster and gather signatures from peers about why they should have refillable water bottle stations in their school. Overall, I was so impressed with these students and all their hard work. Maybe we will begin to see refillable water bottle stations in their school soon!