Reflecting on the Program
Reflection Synthesis:
Reflecting upon my work has been a highly positive practice for me. By doing so I feel I have greatly improved my skills in curriculum writing as well as in facilitation of environmental concepts in both indoor and outdoor settings. Through conversing with my team, referring back to previous outdoor education lessons I have been a part of, and remembering back to my childhood experience I was able to build upon each lesson I helped teach this term, cut out activities that weren’t age appropriate and make numerous improvements each week. Looking back, I see and feel that my experience with these students was beyond incredible. The amount they learned from us and the amount I learned from them was huge. I believe my team had an impact on how these students see the natural environment that surrounds them and that is a huge accomplishment. At the beginning of term, my team and I realized just how helpful it is to have a co-facilitator during the field trips to rely on, as we were not yet comfortable with the curriculum. By the last field trip, I didn't once have to look at my printed curriculum, I just knew how the flow of the day went and I could manage time effectively and be engaged with my students the entire trip. I left each in class lesson and each field trip feeling proud of both the students as well as my team for teaching thought provoking material like professionals. Many chaperones would ask how many years we had been teaching when some of us had only been teaching for a matter of weeks. I truly believe this partnership needs to continue and grow so we can reach more and more students and give them the opportunity to make close connections with their local ecosystems. Post Lesson Blogs: 1) Tool Box: April 9th 2015 This field trip taught me three very important lessons. During the very first field trip, I quickly realized that our curriculum needed to contain more options so that it could cater to a larger range of skill levels. On this trip we had some students who could read and write fluently and wanted to draw everything they saw, while others were much less experienced, therefore struggled to keep up and left not having expressed themselves as much as others. After learning this, our team went back through the curriculum and made sure each activity had options for students at all skill levels to express themselves and reflect on the material being taught. Second, because we found that some activities were bound to take different lengths of time with different classes, we decided to build an intentional tool box. This contained many shorter fun activities that could be used to fill time while still teaching relevant information. The tool box was particularly helpful for after lunch when the students would want to run around in the grass. Having a few tag games where they could act like creatures they saw that day to choose from made the day run more efficiently and this kids themselves said they were “way more fun than regular tag!” Finally, this particular field trip made me realize that in order for a teacher to truly want to use our curriculum packet we will have to make the lesson plan more reader friendly. While teaching in the field it became clear that we needed to highlight the key points in some way. Because of this we decided to bold the questions so your eyes automatically go to the key talking points and using format tools we made it easier for the reader to find where the instructions for each lesson are within each lesson and trip. I’m very glad to have learned these lessons during our first field trip as I know it made the rest of them calmer, more intentional and most of all more fun! 2) Learn from your Successes: May 7th 2015 This trip exemplified to me what a smooth teaching experience should feel like. The kids in this class were so excited to be there and were also very good at listening to instructions which made my job the most fun it had been so far. My students constantly asked to see more which made me even more pleased that they ended up getting to see a baby snake and a centipede! This field trip’s habitat hotel activity was the most successful yet as they had last week’s structure as an example and then they got to build off of it, making and filling their own rooms. After adding bug and slugs to their rooms, I observed that the students really began to make connections and think about the reasons behind their hard work of creating these species-specific habitats. During their inquisitive process they helped answer each other’s questions, which was really rewarding to observe. All in all, this day truly gave me a lot of motivation to work and recreate this fun and engaged environment with future classes. 3) Adaptability: May 21st 2015 After this field trip I was very proud of my team. By this point we had done so many full-day field trips with older students and I think our increased ability to adapt was because we had gained enough confidence that we could pick up this new curriculum and teach it with energy and intention. Every team member was flexible and was able to facilitate despite there being a bit of a time crunch! The group Zoie and I lead was extremely creative while building elf houses as well as when they got to draw and color their special river rocks and its unique surroundings on the beach. I was glad that I was able to efficiently bring my students to the river so they got to throw their rocks in while the rest of them listened for the sound it made when it hit the water. At the end we all cheered, "OUR RIVER ROCKS!" and they all loved it! To this day this experience puts a smile on my face and I truly hope their observation skills continue to develop. |