The last two weeks of our project consisted of last minute additions to our lesson plans, and the planning of the presentation that was to be presented during class. In week 11, Gabby, Katie, and I attended the Science Networking Fair with Tobias, and had the opportunity to explain our project to the interested students. It was a cool experience to be able to be on the other side of things, and allowing others to have interest in Newark SAS, instead of us learning about it. Tobias gave us many opportunities to explain what we were doing, and we all took turns in doing so.
Week 12 was planning week. We met that week to work on our presentation that we gave to the class. We each had a few sections to complete, and then we brought it together and added coherence and flow. We were originally planning to do a run through of our blog, but we decided a PowerPoint would be more efficient and put together. It ended up; working great, and the class loved it. I had a great time working with Tobias and Newark SAS. He was a great mentor for us, and I hope we can continue the relationship we have fostered in years to come. I definitely would recommend a continuation of this project to any incoming education and environmental studies students who take this class next. It is a great way to collaborate with others, and practice for writing lesson plans that will be used in real classrooms.
0 Comments
This week, I continued to work on my lesson plans. They are not able to be posted at this time, as I need to finalize them and make sure that they are the best they can be. My third grade lesson plans are focusing on creating a project based off a situation, which will be the decrease of renewable energy sources and the increase of nonrenewable sources. The students will be designing a way to preserve the nonrenewable sources so that they can be used continuously throughout a lifetime. My fifth grade lessons will be a more complex version of this lesson, as the students are older and are able to handle more. These lessons will consist of more research and will conclude with a presentation on their findings.
I am working as hard as I can to finish these lessons, as I know some of them needed to be submitted prior to today's date. I am aiming for them to be finished as soon as I possibly can. These past few weeks consisted of me writing my lesson plans on renewable energy. On Saturday, we met with Tobias via conference call, and discussed the progress of our plans, and what will happen with the project moving forward. He explained that there are two school districts in Newark that are interested in using the curriculum that we are currently forming, which is very exciting. In addition, the grant for the apps will be happening, and Tobias has to meet with the schools to discuss them.
Because there has been a lot going on in my life, I am behind on the calendar of deliverables that Katie, Gabby, and Bido came up with. I am hoping to get everything finished by next week, so that I will be all caught up with everything that needs to be done. This week, I have been working on my lesson plans. I am currently working on two third grade plans with the topic of renewable energy. For the first lesson plan, the students will be learning about the differences between renewable energy and nonrenewable energy, and will be completing activities on identifying each type when using the given examples. The second lesson will consist of the students using what was taught in the first lesson to think of ways that they can conserve nonrenewable energy in their home and personal lives. If I were to continue this mini unit with more lessons, I would have the students complete a project that will actually help them in real life. The lesson I am working on is to simply brainstorm ideas for the project. They will do this in the form of writing, so literacy and be integrated into this science lesson as well.
As for meeting with the SAS team, I am unable to do it this week due to my traveling with the SHU Pep Band for NCAAs. However, we will be planning to meet either in person or over the phone next week to continue our progress and to share what we are doing. Week 6 was another uneventful week for Team SAS. We were unable to meet with Tobias this week due to time restraints. However, each of us picked the standards that we will be writing our lessons on, and are currently working on them. According to the calendar of deliverables that was made up for this project, we should be handing in the first lesson by Saturday via our folder on Google Drive.
The lessons I will be creating will be dealing with renewable energy. I have not had much time to brainstorm a complete list of ideas on what to do with these lessons due to the insane amount of homework and tests I have this week, but I will getting to it later in the week after everything slows down. Katie, Gabby, and I hope to have a conference call the week after spring break to discuss our progress with everything, so more updates are to come for the next blog post. This week, Team SAS met up with Tobias, along with a grad student from NJIT, in the cove on campus. We explained to this other student, Eric, our project and what we were planning to do with it. Eric works with technology, and he explained to us that he will be taking our project, which was the lesson plans, and going beyond it with an app that teachers, students, and parents can use to learn about agriculture and other environmental topics. Katie, Gabby, and I will be creating lesson plans that include the five pillars of Newark SAS, that any teacher in any school can use, while Eric will be creating this app that is optional for schools and districts that can afford the use of computers or can assume that each child has access to an internet device at home. Together we decided that it will be up to the teacher's discretion on how they want to use this app.
In addition to forming a more solid plan, we came up with NJ State Standards that we can use to write these lesson plans. We will be creating two lesson plans per grade, with two grades, which will give us a total of 12 lessons between us. We set up a calendar with dates to complete each lesson plan by, so that we can keep track of what we are doing. I am excited for this project, and I can't wait to see where it takes us. This past week was not very eventful in terms of our project. Monday night, Gabby, Katie, and I participated in a conference call with Bido. We discussed the file on Google Drive, and how it would be utilized for all of us as we work on the lesson plans. After each phone conference, Bido types up a document with a recap so that we all know what went on during them. This file will also contain a calendar so that we can all easily view the dates for when we want the lesson plans to be finished by.
Overall, we decided that each of us will tackle two lesson plans, as there are six altogether. Between work for other classes, our field placements, and other commitments we all have, it will be better if we split the work in a way that we can all complete it at our own pace. The three of us plan to meet sometime this week or early next week to discuss due dates and who will be taking which lessons. Hopefully the blog post for next week will be more informative and exciting! This past weekend, Team SAS had a conference call with Jacquleen Bido and Tobias about the plan for our workbook. We collectively decided that because the three of us are all elementary education majors with the most experience in K-5 classrooms, we will focus the workbook on K-5, instead of K-12. We also figured that because we are also students with work for 4-5 other classes, doing a workbook for every grade would be too much and would interfere with them. We then narrowed the project down even further, so that the final project will be a third and fifth grade mini unit that aligns with both the NJ State Standards, and the five pillars of Newark Science and Sustainability.
To make sure the entire project is organized, we have made a collection of files on Google Drive, and we will place everything that can help us for the project in that collection. So far, we have included the recap from our meeting on Saturday, and a folder where we will post the template for the Seton Hall lesson plan. Bido does not live in NJ and is not familiar with our version of a lesson plan, so we will be posting it in there for her reference. We will also be including information on the five pillars of Newark SAS, so we can have those for reference as well. The next steps in our project are for Katie, Gabby, and I to work with Tobias and Bido to find a day and time where we can have a conference call to discuss the progress of our project. I am so excited for this to officially kick off, and I look forward to finishing the final workbook. Week 2 consisted of Katie, Gabby, Professor K, and I taking a tour of Newark with Tobias in his minivan. We visited three gardens, and other sights around the city, such as the two largest parks, a beautiful cathedral, shopping centers, and the "suburbs", as Tobias likes to call the nicer part of Newark. Our first two stops consisted of the two gardens Tobias manages; the first being "the Garden of Hope", and the second being "The People's Garden". These gardens were created using Newark's Adopt-A-Lot program, which is adopting abandoned lots for a mere $1 per year. As nice as these gardens appeared, they did come with many struggles, with the main struggle as being the lots being taken over for real estate. Other difficulties include the debris alongside the roads, community upkeep, neighboring landlords destroying the property, and the distribution of food. After our sightseeing tour of Newark, the three of us decided that our project will consist of working on curriculum with a friend of Tobias, who lives in Orlando, and happens to be a Ph.D. student here at Seton Hall. Our project was inspired by the fact that we are all education majors, and we enjoy working with children in schools. In order for us to successfully complete the curriculum, we came to the conclusion that we will have to meet with Tobias at least once a week, whether it is in person or a phone conference. Overall, the trip we took yesterday left me with many feelings of excitement and motivation. I cannot wait to work on this project with my group, which we named #TeamSAS, and I look forward to updating on this blog every week with what we are doing. Newark Science and Sustainability Inc. is an organization that works to create self-sustaining communities throughout the city of Newark, NJ. Since they began in 2012, they have created three lots that were previously abandoned into fully usable community gardens for the Newark residents to enjoy. Because this city is heavily urban, there are not many open places to put these gardens, so without the help of the Newark SAS, the people of Newark would be deprived from such an environment. This organization does more than help creating gardens. Just by browsing through their website, one can see that they have programs in sustainability, horticulture, eco art, wellness & nutrition, and ecological building. The website itself is extremely informative, and is easily accessible. Each of the tabs are well explained, with several subheadings in the drop-down menus. These tabs include Home Page, Newark SAS, Programs, Sustainability, Coalitions, Glocal Media, and Get Involved. Anyone can get through their website and can learn a lot simply by browsing.
I do not know what our group will be working on specifically with the Newark SAS, but I think it would be interesting to help with creating additional community gardens for Newark residents or working with the gardens that have already been created. Working in gardens is something that interests me, and I would love to be able to interact with those who use it regularly or semiregularly. Gardens tend to bring people together in more ways than one, and it would be enjoyable to see this in action. However, my group and I will have to work with the founder of this organization, Tobias A. Fox, to come up with a project and some goals for us to do with Newark Science and Sustainability Inc. |
|