Teaching Reflections
Through the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon we created lesson plans to connect kinder through third grade students to their local environment. Our team worked well together by having strong communication and good data collection. After looking through our plus/deltas of each lesson plan we saw evidence that we successfully led our field trips. Learning and adapting each lesson plan after we had these reflections made this possible. We were able to successfully lead 241 students on our environmental ed field trips, compete in the Undergraduate Research Symposium, and cultivate a website for our community and future teams to access our curriculum. Here I will be talking about some of the specific reflections we have made along our teaching journey.
After completing and reflecting on our lesson plans and my teaching methods I have learned how important adaptability is. Our team found new methods along the way to keep students engaged and saw what activities resonated with them the most. For our second grade lesson plans we switched our main activity to be a scavenger hunt and saw what aspects worked and needed improvement. Because we developed this activity on our own it gave us good insight on what we should change. We wanted to scaffold the activity to get students learning while also having fun. The main change we made was learning how to get students to dive into science and observation rather than making the activity feel like a race/game. We had to emphasize the importance of observations while also letting them safely explore the meadow.
Another lesson I have learned in the field is how to model activities for our students. I have noticed how important it is to get involved in all activities with students. As they see us perform the activity it sets an example and shows that we are all here to do science together. When our students would be doing their ‘sit spots’ I would notice them being more engaged and focused when they saw us leaders modeling these quiet observation techniques. A lot of these students have not had a quiet time like this in nature and I really saw how important it is to get them engaged in the activity. Seeing older role models helps grow passion and inspires students to engage more with the material.
With so much going on in our diverse lesson plans it is important to make sure each lesson plan has its own organization and flow that works for that material and age group. Working closely with the Natural Cycle of Learning, in both our lesson plans we worked out what time amounts work best for each activity and how to transition students from one activity to another. It is so important to find this balance because it maintains focus and engagement. We noticed how important it is to keep our younger students engaged. Timing and flow is what sets the tone for all lesson plans because their attention can quickly drift even if they are excited about the material.
Teacher/Community Partner Feedback:
One of the main takeaways that we took from the elementary school teachers is that we had a good flow with our lesson plans. They noticed how we scheduled activities in a way that maintains focus. We were happy to hear this feedback, because when creating our lesson plans we wanted to scaffold our lessons around the Natural Cycle of Learning. Even though it was some of these students' first field trip, due to COVID, we did a good job keeping their attention in an environment that could possibly be more distracting.
Our community partener, Susan, at Madison Meadow stated that she enjoyed how we were working with the Madison Meadow mission of getting students outside. The Meadow has not had this many students there at a time, but she said we did a good job facilitating and getting them to be focused in nature especially when students were doing Sit Spots/scientific journals.
Through the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon we created lesson plans to connect kinder through third grade students to their local environment. Our team worked well together by having strong communication and good data collection. After looking through our plus/deltas of each lesson plan we saw evidence that we successfully led our field trips. Learning and adapting each lesson plan after we had these reflections made this possible. We were able to successfully lead 241 students on our environmental ed field trips, compete in the Undergraduate Research Symposium, and cultivate a website for our community and future teams to access our curriculum. Here I will be talking about some of the specific reflections we have made along our teaching journey.
After completing and reflecting on our lesson plans and my teaching methods I have learned how important adaptability is. Our team found new methods along the way to keep students engaged and saw what activities resonated with them the most. For our second grade lesson plans we switched our main activity to be a scavenger hunt and saw what aspects worked and needed improvement. Because we developed this activity on our own it gave us good insight on what we should change. We wanted to scaffold the activity to get students learning while also having fun. The main change we made was learning how to get students to dive into science and observation rather than making the activity feel like a race/game. We had to emphasize the importance of observations while also letting them safely explore the meadow.
Another lesson I have learned in the field is how to model activities for our students. I have noticed how important it is to get involved in all activities with students. As they see us perform the activity it sets an example and shows that we are all here to do science together. When our students would be doing their ‘sit spots’ I would notice them being more engaged and focused when they saw us leaders modeling these quiet observation techniques. A lot of these students have not had a quiet time like this in nature and I really saw how important it is to get them engaged in the activity. Seeing older role models helps grow passion and inspires students to engage more with the material.
With so much going on in our diverse lesson plans it is important to make sure each lesson plan has its own organization and flow that works for that material and age group. Working closely with the Natural Cycle of Learning, in both our lesson plans we worked out what time amounts work best for each activity and how to transition students from one activity to another. It is so important to find this balance because it maintains focus and engagement. We noticed how important it is to keep our younger students engaged. Timing and flow is what sets the tone for all lesson plans because their attention can quickly drift even if they are excited about the material.
Teacher/Community Partner Feedback:
One of the main takeaways that we took from the elementary school teachers is that we had a good flow with our lesson plans. They noticed how we scheduled activities in a way that maintains focus. We were happy to hear this feedback, because when creating our lesson plans we wanted to scaffold our lessons around the Natural Cycle of Learning. Even though it was some of these students' first field trip, due to COVID, we did a good job keeping their attention in an environment that could possibly be more distracting.
Our community partener, Susan, at Madison Meadow stated that she enjoyed how we were working with the Madison Meadow mission of getting students outside. The Meadow has not had this many students there at a time, but she said we did a good job facilitating and getting them to be focused in nature especially when students were doing Sit Spots/scientific journals.