Botanical Cells
For EDCI 336 (Technology in the Classroom), we were tasked to create a technology initiative that would assist learning in the classroom. The aim was to teach a current teacher how to use a piece of technology that was fundamental for a particular lesson. Myself, along with two of my peers Anthony Loenen and Laura-Jane Wallace, decided to bring microscopes into the high school Art classroom in order to teach botanical drawings.
The Steps
There were a multitude of steps that had to be taken in order for this lesson to come to life. As you scroll down that page you will become privy to all of that information in the sequenced order of steps it took.
Part #1
The first thing that we had to do to make this lesson happen was to propose the idea to the actual Art teacher at Reynolds, Danielle Anderson. Danielle was very supportive of our idea and guided us towards certain resources in order to move forward with the planning. She went the extra mile by offering us the opportunity not just to make a lesson plan for her but to all us to have a teaching opportunity and teach the lesson ourselves to her grade 10/11 class.
Outline of Lesson for Danielle
Part #2
After gaining approval our next step was to collect resources and create a lesson plan. The three of us began by brainstorming how we wanted the lesson plan to look and how we wanted the timing of it to go. Then, we took a trip to the forest to gather some botanicals both for a physical model for the students to draw from, as well as for making the cellular microscope slides. After we collected a numerous amount of botanicals we organized, labeled and identified them. We researched their unique characteristics and created handouts for each botanical that included its latin and modern days names along with a picture of the plant and some of its identifying characteristics. Once all of this work was done we cut off small pieces of each botanical and created microscope slides of each plant so that you could see its cellular structure.
Finally, our final task before the actual lesson day was to create a presentation powerpoint and find some microscopes.
Our Botanical Handouts
Part #3
Now that we had gathered all of our resources all that was left was to teach! We all arrived at school early on that Wednesday and spent about 30 minutes setting up the plants, microscopes and powerpoint presentation. Finally, the bell rang, the class arrived and we began our lesson. This lesson went phenomenally well, surprising both us and the teacher. The cellular slides looked incredibly detailed and the students' work turned out amazing. Overall this experience was really meaningful and in my tech report (posted below) I describe in greater detail the ups, downs, and learning that went into making this project happen.
Tech Report
Emerging Teacher Identity
This project was so meaningful to me that I decided to write about it for my EDCI 787 "Emerging Teacher Identity" report. This report is attached below and notes my development within the teacher competencies throughout the semester and how particular projects and assignments helped this growth more than others.
Emerging Teacher Identity Report
Reflection
This reflection is for my first full "teachable moment" when I was given the opportunity to teach a grade 12 Art class at Reynolds high school along with two of my peers. This was a whole new experience for me as I had never taught or presented in front of a room of high school students in the role of "teacher", nor had I ever taught (or planned) an Art lesson. It was such a cool and exciting opportunity where I was allowed to grow a whole new set of skills in a short amount of time. I learned a lot about Art, and Science (via the microscopes) and found myself learning along with the students.
I feel as though this experience shows a demonstration of multiple of the BC Teacher Competencies, including but not limited to:
- Educators engage in career-long learning.
-Educators contribute to the profession.
-Educators develop a growth mindset demonstrated in collaboration with others.
-Educators practice working collaboratively and collegially as well as independently.
This experience also demonstrates the following First Peoples' Principles of Learning;
-Learning requires exploration of one's identity
-Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
Looking back & forwards
Looking back...
This assignment allowed me to see where my skill set was at in other disciplines and how my teacher identity was developing. I was able to really start to feel what my future as a teacher would be like and how my passion for the assignment inspired the passion of the students to create beautiful works.
Looking forward...
Moving forward, I would love to do this assignment or one like it again. I hope that I can find some way to bring something like it into the English classroom. I also know that I am looking forward to working collaboratively with other teachers again.