Genius Hour Lesson plan

By Scarlett Yuan

PREFACE：

This lesson is following the question of “How can we strengthen collaboration & connectedness in our classrooms?” .

Topic	The Endangered Animal
Time	60 mins + 1 field trip
Grade	4~6

Overview:

Animals are good companions of human beings, but the number of their habitats has been drastically reduced due to human activities. We have a lot of people who hardly ever know their environment and feel it is very far away from our lives. Therefore, I hope through the lecture to remind students to pay attention to protect the environment, protect the habitats of animals and protect endangered animals.

Learning Outcome:

Student will be able to:

• Know the variety of endangered species, and how they become a global concern.
• Learn the difference between the terms threatened, endangered, and extinct.
• Learn facts about select endangered species around the world, and be able to discuss.
• Help to save the endangered species.

Preparation & Material:

1. PowerPoint for the lecture
2. Handout for the lecture
3. Art supplies
4. Take home activity https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/557394044/
5. Field trip form

Curriculum Connections:

Big Idea:

• Working Collectively
  As members of a group, they appreciate interdependence and cooperation, commit to needed roles and responsibilities, and are conscientious about contributing. They also negotiate respectfully and follow through on plans, strategies, and actions as they share resources, time, and spaces for collaborative projects. (BC Curriculum)
• Working Connectedness
  Create opportunities for decision-making processes that facilitate student, family, and community engagement, academic achievement, and staff empowerment. (BC Curriculum)

Curricular Competencies:

• Communication
  Students engage in informal and structured conversations in which they listen, contribute, develop understanding and relationships, and learn to consider diverse perspectives.
• Collaboration
  Students are assigned as group members during the lecture. Collaborating involves the skills, strategies, and dispositions that people use to work together to pursue common purposes and accomplish common goals. Students who collaborate effectively recognize how combining others’ perspectives, strategies, and efforts with their own enhances the collective understanding, use, and impact. They value the contributions of group members, interact supportively and effectively using inclusive practices, and strive for shared commitment and mutual benefit.
• Connectedness
  Students are giving opportunities for decision-making processes during the lecture. Students feel connected to the class, which helps them to develop belonging in the classroom. If students are valued by the school, they are going to perform better at school, and be able to reach their best potentials.
• Science
  Extent the animal to the global concern provides students with scientific pieces of information, which provides opportunities for us to better understand the natural world. Through science, we ask questions and seek answers to grow our collective scientific knowledge.
• Social Studies
  The animal studies process actually belongs to social studies education, which follows the BC curriculum. It provides students the knowledge, skills, and competencies to be active, informed citizens who are able to think critically.
• Art Education
  Experiencing art is a means to develop empathy for others’ perspectives and experiences. By making an animal protection artwork, students research, describe, interpret and use processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, techniques, and environments in the arts. Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play.
• Personal Awareness & Responsibility
  Learning the connection between animals and human helps students to develop personal awareness and responsibility between personal and social behavior and well-being. It encourages people to make constructive and ethical decisions and act on them.

Learning Procedure:

Plan for Closure:

By making the endangered animal art work, student are not only creatively absorbing the new information, but also actively processing the new information. Making art work is also a good way to clam their body down, and wait for their parents to pick them up.

Take-Home Activity:

When students go home, they have to use devices to open this self-make programming https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/557394044/ to go over the essential information we learned today, and review by finishing few multiple choice.

Reflection:

Collaboration and connectedness in the classrooms are essential. After planning the lesson plan, I generally realize when students work and collaborate together, they learn and grow from each other. Collaborative learning help student develop higher-level thinking skills and also increase their confidence and self-esteem.
While connectedness in the classrooms, students feel connected to the class, which helps them to develop belonging in the classroom. If students are valued by the school, they may increase participation in class activities, and be able to reach their best potentials.
Therefore, it is necessary for educators to collaborate and connect with students in the classrooms. Below the video is my self-make video for the reasons and ways to build collaboration and connection with students, families in the classrooms, school. Hope that helps!

Reference:

BC Curriculum Retrieved from:https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca