In many of our classes at UVIC in the bachelors of education program we have focused on creating lesson plans. Sometimes with a group and others individually. Here on this page are 3 of my favourite plans I have created in this first semester in the elementary education program. For both the seminar lesson and the gym lesson plan we actually have been able to practice teaching a lesson that we came up with. This has been very beneficial to developing my skills of lesson planning and teaching because it allowed me to actually see how the lesson would flow and come across in a real classroom of students. 

English Language Arts 

Once upon a Ballon is one of my favourite children's book that I recently found while searching for a book to do the very first assignment in the course Literacy and Literature for Pam Quigg. 

In the assignment, we were asked to write a lesson plan based on a story/picture book of our choice. Once I saw this book about where balloons end up after the float into the sky I knew that this book was the one for me. This book follows a young boy thought process into the injury of where balloons end up once they break loose into the sky. In the end, his brother tells him that they all end up in Chicago, the windy city, where they get collected each night by a very lonely balloon catcher. 

The story continues until the young boy writes the balloon catcher telling him how thankful he is for the work he does at night to clean up the city and how valued he is. 

This idea of shift/night workers getting recognition for the difficult jobs they do at night lead me to plan a lesson around reading this story and then teaching the students how to write letters to the janitors of the school.  Who clean up for them each day in the classroom, without them even knowing that they are doing this. 

The BC teachers standards that are meet are: 

• Educators are role models who act ethically and honestly.
  
• Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.
• Educators value and care for all students and act in their best interests.

Seminar Class

This will always be a very special lesson to me. Not because it is my best one I have made or that I got the highest mark in the class on it, however, it was the very first lesson plan I ever made in the bachelor's program at UVIC. Lesson planning, BC's new curriculum, assessment, ect., was all new to me. 

Something I did remember from school though about lessons and my teachers was that all lessons about social justice and/or being charitable were always very interesting and fun to do.

As a group in our seminar class, two classmates and I wrote up this lesson plan based on the book, New old Shoes by Charlotte Blessings.  This book is written from the point of view of the shoes and follows the shoes  through the journey they take. Starting first in a fancy store bought by a young boy and being worn right through the soul. Then being shipped off to Africa to be passed on to another little boy who needs shoes to go to school and the life of the shoe continues. 

This lesson was based on our social responsibility to take what we need from the society such as clothing and shoes. But, also make a difference to someone less fortunate than us by donating or repurposing our material items again once we don't see value in them. 

BC Teacher's Standards:

• Educators are role models who act ethically and honestly.
• Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
• Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.
• Educators value and care for all students and act in their best interests.

All of these standards are meet through the lesson plan and the specific details of our lesson. 

Physical Education

I suspect that PE will be one of my favourite parts of the day with my class. I really support the idea of daily physical education for all children and adults, starting at a very young age.

For this lesson, we go the privilege of teaching a real kindergarten class at a local Saanich school. A teaching group and I (3 people in total) planned of the lesson which ended up being an obstacle course which focused on big stops with their hands up, jumping on the stop and rolling and aiming balls between two cones. 

In preparation for teaching in the kindergarten class, we had the opportunity to teach the 4th year elementary education students our lesson first which went remarkably smooth and they provided us with lots of positive feedback. 

When we did end up teaching in the kindergarten class the lesson went off without a hitch. We all loved the flow and were impressed with each others teaching abilities. There were definitely some small changes we made to the lesson after we were done in the class, but overall, there were minimal corrections/improvements that we thought to make. 

BC Teacher Standards that are met:

• Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
• Educators implement effective practices in areas of classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.