My EDUC 4P19 Experience

Considering that I’ve never really looked at a curriculum document before this class, I found this class extremely beneficial to my future as a teacher. I have learned how to read the documents and make a whole entire unit using backward design, which I think is an awesome way to design a unit, having a big goal in mind. There are many different things that were done in this class that I think I will definitely use in my classroom one day, genius hour being one of them.

Last week's genius hour presentations were something that at first I didn’t really see having a point. I thought it’d be interesting but not very beneficial. However this was not the case. It was amazing to see other people’s perspectives on issues that I have always thought about and people passion towards so many different aspects of education. Bringing genius hour into a senior science class is something I think would be extremely interesting for both myself as a teacher and the students in my class. This will give students a chance to explore things such as different research going on, or just investigating a concept further and I’m sure many more unexpected fascinating and creative ideas. My personal genius hour was about reconstructing the Intermediate/ Senior Con. Ed. program plan to make it more effective and beneficial. Currently I think that it is too subject base, and taking fourth year advanced science classes are a little bit unnecessary to be a high school science teacher. I would much rather be taking education courses that help make me an expert in the specific knowledge that I will need to teach high school physics and science,which are concepts that I think I will have a hard time remembering considering I have not looked at them since I was in high school myself. I believe that in order for 21^st century education and the new story to ever become realistic and effective, the prospective teacher programs need to change so that we are learning more how to teach, not becoming experts at information that we will probably never use again, or observing classrooms but never actually learning and/or practicing how to teach. In order for the education system to change you need to start with the source, the teachers.

            Another part of this course I truly enjoyed was writing these blogs. It is not often that we have the time to freely write what we are thinking and reflect on our current educational experience, without being worried about marks, format and referencing. For the first time I actually enjoyed writing (I don’t think I’ve ever said that before). I think that as a future teacher blogs would be a great way to get constant feedback from my students and it was also a great tool for using assessment for learning. The three different types of assessment is another thing that I have learned from this course and will definitely be using in my future. Before this class I always saw assessment as marking tests or assignments and giving those mark to my students, as that pretty much the only type of assessment I received in high school, however I now see how much more effective it can be to use assessment for learning. Obviously assessment of learning is still important and apart of the curriculum because the students needs grades to get into post secondary schools, but using different types of assessment for the students to learn I think will be extremely effective.
          Overall many things I learned for the text and lectures are extremely useful and relevant to my future as a teacher. I now know so much about improving the education system to help students learn better, how to design units using backwards design and different methods of assessment. I look forward to using all of these tools and material in my future as a physics teacher!

from: http://48yo.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/teachlearn.jpg?w=750

Interweaving Within a Subject

As midterms come to an end and marks start to come back, again I’m left with the question of how a mark measures what you’ve learned. Why is it that so many education marks, specifically ones dealing with math and science, deal with writing papers? Is there no better way to assess these classes and what we’re learning? This is something I often become frustrated with because even though I learn so much, keep up with the readings and always engage in class discussion, my marks suffer because my writing skills are not the greatest. As a Physics major, I am used to writing in a lab report format and this is usually not viewed as a very good way of writing by education profs and/or T.A’s. But how would we change this? How could you make a mark based on what the student has learned? Everyone learns differently and will have different perspectives. Who’s right or wrong? Will creating integrated curriculums between different departments such as English and science help this?

In order for an integrated curriculum to work, I think that teachers would have to be specialized in more than one or two subjects. How would someone like myself ever be able to teach history or English in a physics classroom when I haven’t looked at these subjects since high school? I would not feel comfortable teaching these subjects, especially at a high school level, where what they learn is so important for the future. This goes back to my previous blog about elementary school teachers teaching all subjects. I think it is important for the teacher to know their material well in order to teach concepts correctly and confidently. Without knowing subject matter well how would you be able to design creative lessons that engage students in higher-level thinking? So although I do think that integrated curriculum can be done sometimes, within certain subjects such as math and science, I don’t think it can be as broad as some people picture it because in order for that to happen teachers would need multiple degrees to be experts in multiple subjects.

For my current group project where we are creating a unit where we are integrating big ideas within one subject. Instead of integrating multiple subjects, we have decided to integrate different types of science from the grade 10 science curriculum into one unit. I think that this would be a great way for students to be able to make connections between different strands such as physics and chemistry. Keeping them separate could limit students from making these connections, because the reality is they are all connected and I don’t think should be so separated until the senior years, where specialization in sciences come into play. In general science classes these connections are important. So integrated curriculum inside one class I think is great and doable for all teachers and will also lead to students thinking in a higher-order because they are making these connections and applying their knowledge to different concepts.

from: http://cdnetr.a.cdnify.io/images/learning_science_in_the_21st_century.jpg