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3rd Grade Summer Camp Lesson Plan

InTASC Standard 7: Planning for Instruction

The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context (InTASC, 2013).

Brief Description of Evidence

In the spring of 2020 in my EDUC 224, Intro to Scientific Inquiry, class I created a 4-day science camp lesson plan for 3rd-grade students. Each day was completely planned out including arrivals, check-ins, transition times, activities, lunch, departure times, materials, budget, vocab, and related standards and objectives. Every day was focused on a different aspect of science. First I looked into life science and planned a day with 4 different activities including creating and labeling a cardboard flower, drawing the environment that the flower lives in, dissecting a real flower, and planting a flower to take home. Second I focused on physical science and simple machines. This day had 4 activities including identifying the parts of simple machines, building simple machines to finish a maze, labeling the parts of a sound wave, and a scavenger hunt to find and describe different sounds throughout the area. Third, I chose earth and space science and created 3 activities including a digging activity to find fossils and bones in a block of sand, a field trip to Kristy Woods to take photos of different rocks, and a paper activity describing the types of minerals a rock can be made of, what they are called, and labeling the types of rocks they found at Kristy Woods. The last day was a demonstration day where the parents joined the students in making and testing an egg drop device before the students presented themselves and their favorite projects from the camp and what they learned.

Analysis of What I Learned

While making this project I learned just how important it is to create a fully thought and planned out lesson before you teach so that there are no gaps in time, questions about what to do or teach next, and to ensure that the teacher has a full understanding of what they are teaching. With younger students especially it is important to know how long you plan to spend on each section of a lesson so as not to get sidetracked or start running behind and missing information. Having clear schedules and goals will help the teacher stay organized and focused on the lesson. I also learned just how easy it is to create lessons that include different disciplines like math, art, and social studies while still focusing on the main topic. Developing a creative and multidisciplinary curriculum allows students to connect lessons to previous ones and to utilize their own creativity in developing connections and answers to questions. Just as Jean Piaget says, it is not only important that students can connect their learning to previous knowledge, but that students can practice their learning in real-life scenarios rather than being told what they need to know. Using hands-on-learning approaches and creating that muscle memory helps students remember their learning and retrieve it easier in the future (Berkeley, nd)

How This Artifact Demonstrates My Competence in InTASC Standard 7

This artifact demonstrates my competence in standard 7, planning for instruction because I was able to create multiple in-depth lesson plans that spanned multiple topics in science and multiple disciplines while teaching in more than one way of thinking. I created fun and engaging activities that will help the students connect their learning to previous knowledge in multiple subjects and multiple ways while also getting them involved in the community. Taking students out of the classroom and showing them where they can learn, explore, and connect their learning to their world is important for developing a proper understanding of the lesson.

Berkeley Graduate Division. (nd). Cognitive constructivism. Retrieved April 07, 2021, from https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/cognitive-constructivism/

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InTASC Standards. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/resources/programs/interstate_teacher_assessment_consortium_(intasc).htms 

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