Planning

After several days of procrastination, I finally sat down today and planned out my upcoming unit on plants. I always start by looking through the students' textbook and the Region's Science Syllabus; this gives me a sense of what is most important for the students to know. Then I list the objectives - simple sentences, written in student-friendly language, describing what they should be able to do by the end of the unit. Then I start looking for activities that will help me teach the students what they need to know to accomplish those objectives. For some topics, I spend hours looking around on the internet and in books to see what other teachers have done with the material; in the case of plants, I already knew what kinds of activities I wanted to do, so it was just a matter of prioritizing and putting them in a logical sequence. I find plants inherently interesting, so I found that I didn't try to find particularly unique projects for the kids to do. They will be growing & experimenting with Wisconsin Fast Plants, designing experiments to investigate germination, and looking closely at roots, leaves, stems, and flowers. I'm having them do at least two different flower dissections for the sake of comparison. Their homework most nights will be reading from the textbook that supports the material we are learning in class. The one thing I am trying that is new is presenting content through PowerPoint presentations, which I will have to make at school over the next week or so, in order to be ready. I want to use PowerPoint because it will make it easy for me to incorporate lots of images into my presentation of new material.

I am also going to try to fill the classroom with growing things: avocados, potatoes, carrots, oranges, beans, bamboo, you name it. I am going to visit the florist and see if they have any mosses, liverworts, hornworts, or ferns that I can adopt and bring in. I think I will encourage the kids to plant things on their own. Please cross your fingers that my thumb turns green before this unit begins!