Module Day 3: Ice-Breaker Community Building Through Making & Professionalism Presentation
September 8, 2017
of barn animals, as we can in the allotted time. It was great, fun, and I didn’t want to stop. This activity is something I would use in my own practicum, however with an adaptation. I would ask students to create values and words out of the playdoh on what they believe is important to have in a community agreement. They would have to make sure that within their own groups that there wouldn’t be aby repetition of words. One could even provide students 5 – 10 minutes to discuss the values and words they want to have in their agreement as a group before making. After each person has made their word out of playdoh, I would get students to arrange their words randomly very like a wordle. Therefore, it will be a playdoh wordle community agreement. I can then display their agreement around the class so that everyone can hold each other accountable for their actions. A follow up assignment can even be done by having the group create a paragraph or two on why they chose the words and what it means to do them.
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Resource: www.bcteacherregulation.ca
Best part of what happened today was hands down the ice breaker activity of the morning. The facilitators started off with explaining how this could be an alternative way to create a community agreement other than the poster we have created in class. They broke us into groups of 4 and provided each group with various colors of playdoh. The instructions were to make as many different barn animals, essentially making a community
We also spent time looking at what makes a good unit plan, and I really like the idea of having a checklist. A unit plan is something that is unique to who you are as a person, and how you arrange things. Therefore, I really appreciate the autonomy of being able to arrange a unit the way you want to, and that checklist serves the purpose on making sure that you have everything. This makes me question, how many time we as educators force students to be or create learning and knowledge one way when it is not necessarily the best way for certain students. This is one of the reasons why I believe that inquiry projects as a form of summative assessment is a good idea because it doesn’t force students to depend on getting good grade based on just a written test. Students are given the autonomy to choose how they believe the best way is for them to demonstrate their knowledge and learning. All we must provide is a checklist to help guide students on the right track and help them be successful.
The last part of the day was devoted to a presentation by the TRB (Teacher Regulation Branch). We were put through case studies and scenarios where we had discussions about the type of breach if any was
made and the implications of the actions. Some of the scenarios were shocking and I personally couldn’t believe that a teacher can ever do such things. Things happen and what I took out of the presentation is that it is your responsibility as the teacher to always protect and care for your students first, and be aware and reduce any risks for yourself to be in situations that can be perceived as a breach of your contract or against code of ethics.