Wednesday 4/11 we met with Tobias at the Networking fair. We informed him about our presentation on May 9th and he will be there! We showed him our blog and he was really impressed. We made the deadline for our blog and lesson plans to be the very end of the month, Sunday April 28th so that Tobias can review and give us any suggestions to fix things. At the networking fair we spoke to students who were interested in working at Newark SAS in the future. We told them about our project and the type of things that we hope can happen in the future. A lot of people seemed to be impressed with our work.
The semester is quickly coming to an end!
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This week the group will be meeting tomorrow from 5-7 pm with Tobias. We will be working a table with him at the Networking event on campus that displays various organizations to students who may be interested in holding a future position. We will be able to catch up with Tobias and also help spread the word about the important work done at Newark Science and Sustainability. Education students might have an interest in our project and be able to take it on next year if in the capstone class. Or they may even be interested in applying for a position that helps fulfill the mission of creating the K-12 workbook and implementing it in schools. This week I will work on my last two lesson plans and as a group we will make sure that everything is edited and finalized in our blog and lessons for the presentation. It seems like May 9th is far away, but these next 4 weeks will go by quickly. It is easy to lose track and sight of what is to be completed, so organization will be extremely important these next few weeks.
In class on Wednesday 3/28 we each presented our senior capstone projects to our classmates and to a guest student who is writing an article for the Seton Hall page on the environmental studies program. Katie wasn't here because of a family emergency, so Rebecca and I spoke about our project. We explained how unlike most groups, we are not hands on and doing things in the gardens, but our goal will help Newark SAS in the long run and make the community more aware of the CSA that is available to them. Our project will be implemented in the classrooms of a few schools this upcoming school year to see just how it fits with Newark SAS and to see if anything needs to be fixed or added to the curriculum. As students in school, we can only provide so much of the curriculum, so it will be an ongoing project for someone else to continue, but we started it and that is the most important part. The project if finally off the ground and in the works, even though we can't provide the full workbook for grades K-12 that they would like to have. Other experts or even future capstone students will be able to continue where we left off once the year ends. Even with a few lessons though, students will still learn a little about Newark SAS and be able to share that with their family members in hopes of getting more people to subscribe to 20 weeks of fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs.
We finally found the time to have a phone conference with Tobias this past Saturday 3/24. It was a very productive call and we were able to clear up a few things about the lessons as we continue. We are working with a graduate student, Eric from NJIT who is proposing an app to be created along with our lessons. It would help teachers as a technological support that can be used in class or even for students at home. We were forwarded more information about it so that we can go back into our lessons and incorporate this information into what we do. We are at a good place in our work right now and unlike some projects our work is not hands on outside with nature, but our work will have teachers to educate their students about the gardens and make the community aware of Newark SAS. In the long run it will have a great effect.
I finished lesson plan 2 which was a nutrition lesson plan. Students were learning about healthy vs. less healthy foods and this is important with the growing obesity rate in children, especially in the inner city where people tend to have less money to pay for healthy foods in the supermarket. The lesson makes students aware of how healthy foods and fruits and vegetables are important. It also brings awareness to Newark SAS and the various fruits and vegetables being grown, even giving them a chance to try something if possible. It will get the students interested and hopefully wanted to eat healthy, so they could let their parents know about the CSA membership. It could help them gain a greater following and more members. Just a quick update: We've been having trouble finding a time for all of us to get together with all of the things happening in our lives- the four of us just don't seem to have the time to do an in person meeting as Tobias would like. The plan for now is to have a conference call on Saturday evening to discuss our submissions thus far and how we will be taking the rest of the project. We will see if Tobias has anymore ideas or suggestions to help us along. We are 25% of the way done which doesn't seem like much, but it actually is and it's progress. We each have 4 lesson plans to do- meaning 1/4 is done so far. Not bad considering we have about 6 or 7 weeks left. I have to work on my 2nd lesson plan this week and maybe even get ahead of the game by starting my 3rd one as well. It just depends because right now I'm trying to catch up on missed work from when I was out for my surgery.
I'm surviving and thriving. Considering that last week was the Spring Break for Seton Hall Students, this is technically the post for week 8, but we took a break to allow for some R&R. Personally I had a good break that turned into way more rest than expected. I had surgery on the Thursday during break and ended up being in the hospital 2 days longer than expected and had to take an additional week off from school. This surgery was a personal decision to better my health and I realize that not everything can go perfectly, so I really needed the extra days of rest to recover. My body is still not recovered at 6 days post opp, but it was a major surgery so I will rest for as long as my body needs and follow my doctors orders. Because of this I'm actually missing an extra week of school (this week) and am not returning to campus until Friday. Being sore and tired has made it very hard to concentrate on my work and I've only just recently (yesterday) felt alive enough to do some work. Today I will be getting out of the house which is good and well needed (get my steps in ya know). I need my body to adjust so that I can return to school in good health :)
In terms of the project I was able to submit my first lesson for 3rd grade on the life cycle. It had yet to be reviewed, but that is no big deal as I now need to work on my second 3rd grade lesson due toward the end of the week. For my second plan, I will be focusing on nutrition by discussing a few of the plants in the garden. How can we be healthy and make better food choices (planting our own food!) For this lesson I would expect teachers to get permission forms from students parents because I think it is important for students to try some of the different plants and even exploring with some of the recipes that the plants can be used in. This will allow students to explore some things that they may or may not like in the garden and what they do like they can encourage their parents to buy from the garden and incorporate it in their meals. The goal is to get students excited about being healthy through healthy and tasty organically grown foods. This week we got started on our lesson plans. We did not have a conference call or meeting with Tobias or Bido this week since there was nothing to really discuss. We previously discussed that we would be working on our lesson plans this week and have the standards set along with each of us knowing what plans to work on individually. We each have two 3rd grade lessons and two 5th grade lessons. I worked on an outline with both of my partners and we submitted that into our shared google folder with Tobias and Bido so that they too could keep track.
We are planning to meet or talk with Tobias the week after spring break. Right now we pushed back the due date of our first lesson plan just 3 days to March 3rd to give us all a little more time since we are currently working on studying for our Midterms. The first lesson plan that is due is the first 3rd grade plan. The lesson plan that I'm working on is the plant vs human life cycle. I realized that it would be difficult to put everything into one lesson because the life cycle tends to be taught as a unit plan. So, my plan is to do one lesson on the life cycle as a basic "crash course", but it would be one out of the many that can be added to make it a unit plan if a teacher decides to do so. The information will give key vocabulary and be enough to know the basics about life cycle. An in depth teaching of it should be done over a few days and be more than just one lesson, but that is something that I can't do as it could take up to 5 lessons for the one topic. We are required just to do a small workbook with 2 lessons per each grade per person. Again, quality over quantity. I'll just be doing regular 45 minute lesson plan for the plant life cycle. This week was very productive and we were able to create an outline for our lessons. On Monday (today) we met in person with Tobias and a friend of his from NJIT who is interested in collaborating with us. He is working on creating apps for technology to integrate in the classroom. He wants it to align with our lessons and be an interactive piece where the students could take care of their own virtual plant and see visuals relating to the plant cycle and how to effectively grow plants. If created, this app could provide as a valuable resource to teachers.
After the meeting we stayed together to pick out NJ state standards for 3rd and 5th grade that could align with one of the 5 pillars. We tried to have one pillar match with each lesson. A few of the lesson topics are health and wellness (the benefit of eating and growing plants at home), plant life cycle, agriculture, and renewable energy. We each chose two standards from each grade to focus on and will start writing plans at the end of the week. We also put together a calendar of deliverables, so that our collaborator through Tobias, Jacquleen Bido, could look over the lessons as we post them according to dates and make sure they are well written and follow the mission and pillars of Newark SAS. This project is coming along well and Tobais is pleased with the work we have done so far. This week was a bit of a slow week, but we are slowly progressing! After class we discussed and brainstormed some ideas of what we plan to create our lessons on and how we plan to go about the project. Yes, the lessons are about the gardens and will embody the 5 pillars of Newark SAS, but there is still so much room for creativity and to exactly what subjects will align with each pillar. That part will take more planning which is why the 3 of us in our group decided that we need to have a meet up day to discuss our plans and start creating a calendar of due dates to get ourselves organized.
We had a phone conference on Monday with Jacquleen Bido, unfortunately Tobias had family matters to take care of and could not join in. Every conference we have Bido updates a document with a recap of the meeting, so that we can all look over what was discussed as a refresher. There is also a list of goals for the week that we have to complete. We have a google folder shared between the 5 of us so that everyone can see the progress and all documents are kept organized in one place. The plan for next week is that hopefully we can each have in one lesson plan done or at least a short outline. Saturday night while on my train ride home I fulfilled my weekly commitment to this project. I had a confrence call with my group members, Jacquleen Bido, and Tobias. We had a lenghthy discussion about our project and how we would continue. Being that the 3 of us working together in this group are elementary education majors, we decided that we would focus on the education aspect for this project.
Initially the project goal was to create a K-12 workbook that corolates with the core curriculium and would fulfill the 5 pillars (urban agriculture, wellness & nutrition, eco-art, renewable energy, and ecological building) of Newark SAS. Seems like an awesome project, right? Well for us it has 2 flaws.
With Bido, we decided that our best route was to focus on two science testing grades 3 and 5, and create a mini unit that would stretch through out about a 2 week span. Essentially, a workbook of about 6+ lessons for each grade that teachers can modify to their own and work with. We decided to share things through google documents and to touch base with Bido as we need, but to make sure we touch base with or meet with Tobias at least once a week and to utilize his expertise with SAS. |
Gabriella Brycea Junior at Seton Hall University studying Elementary and Special education with Environmental Studies. Archives
April 2018
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