Lesson Plan: Week #1

Week #1 Lesson Plan

Theme: Observations of Habitat (school yard)

·      Introductions

o   Name, age, favorite thing about the environment

·      Inventory of Habitat

o   Have them work in a group
       BUT they each need to copy into their own notebook their own answers

o   Emphasize the answers all have to be from within the school yard (Shark is not a valid answer for animals)

o   Do an example in the area the group is sitting in, what do we see? Have kids shout out answers 

o   Kids should copy the following list into their notebook:

  5 things we can see

 5 things we can feel

                               5 things we can hear

 3 things we can smell

 3 types of tress

 3 types of plants

 3 types of insects

  3 things made by man

o   Share findings as a group

  Note similarities, differences (the most unique insect, the most unique feeling, the most common flower, etc.)

·      Ideal plan for your garden

o   Have kids get creative and draw whatever they want, sharks, ponds, whatever they can come up with. “If I had a million dollars to make a garden…”

o   Share

·      Materials

o   Paper/notebooks

o   Colored pencils

Comments:

The biggest lesson I learned from this week was to be EXTREMELY clear with my instructions. My original plan had been to do an EPS activity that I really enjoy, which is to do a single spot observation. In this activity the student finds a spot in the school yard and takes 5-10 minutes to make observations in the form of a list, story, song, poem, or any other format the student choses. It is a good exercise to get the kids thinking about their surroundings, as well as giving them a chance to be creative. What I didn’t realize going into this week is that the learning and teaching process in Nicaragua is VERY different from the U.S. While the U.S. is geared toward a more critical thinking style of education, Nicaragua is geared toward a memorization based learning system. The teacher writes the information on the board, the students copy it down, memorize it, and then are tested on it.

When I asked the students to do the single spot observation all I got was a classroom full of blank stares. I re-phrased the assignment and told the students they could get started, nobody moved. I quickly improvised and told the students that all I wanted was a list of everything they observed in the surrounding environment. They did a little better with those explicit instructions. When I went home that night I re-wrote my lesson plan with specific instructions for what I wanted the students to look for.

The students had a lot of fun drawing their ideal gardens. I encouraged them to draw whatever they wanted, even if it sounded ridiculous. My favorite drawing was of a garden with a pond containing sharks. My goal with this activity was to get the kids to think big and then to brainstorm how we could make those gardens a reality.  
Below are some examples of student work: