Amadeus' EDUC 450B Blog

Bodily experiences can be described as physical and visual learning that can consolidate knowledge in a way that typical classroom learning sometimes cannot do. In my opinion, bodily experiences are very useful as a learning tool in the classroom, however I don't feel that it should be the main, or the only way to learn. My philosophy for teaching at the moment involves teaching with several different techniques: oral, visual, physical, etc. I believe that in doing this, a greater range of learners needs will be met since everyone learns better through different techniques. Therefore, bodily experience will definitely be useful to me. Furthermore, as a hockey coach it is easy to see that physical learning has a huge impact on children's learning and consolidation. You can't learn to play hockey from watching a hockey game, you actually have to physically play it to learn it. In the same way, you can't fully learn in school until you put the concepts into practice. When ...

I still feel that my ideas are relevant to me for my inquiry project (http://amadeuseduc450b.blogspot.ca/2017/09/entrance-slip-inquiry-topic.html). However, there are some new ideas that have grasped my interest, especially after today's class on "are marks accurate?" Marks have been a form of assessment for longer than I can remember and I don't think answering the question "are marks accurate" is black/white. However, I do feel that I stand more on the side of yes, they are accurate. This brings up the topic of assessments: what are the best ways for biology to be assessed (multiple choice, short answer, essay, presentations, etc)? Is there a best way? How can we prevent students from learning to take tests and get them to learn for their own knowledge? I believe this comes down to objectives that differ. Students often want to learn so that they can get good grades, while teachers often teach so that they can educate students. These objectives are subtl...

I liked this reading (http://einsights.ogpr.educ.ubc.ca/v14n01/articles/sarte/index.html) because it is highly relevant to me right now. I was in my first ever classroom observation session yesterday and students in Science 10 were learning about gene alleles and traits. Briefly, this has to do with how certain alleles are dominant over other alleles: if B=brown fur, b=black fur, then BB= brown animal, Bb= brown animal, bb= black animal. When I asked one of the students if she understood this concept she said "Yes, when the letters are both uppercase it's homozygous and when they aren't it's heterozygous." I took a step back and asked the student "Yeah, but do you understand where in the body these 'uppercase' and 'lowercase' letters come into play? Like how are these pairs of letters even relevant to our bodies?" She had no answer for me. Now this is just one student, but I feel like she represents more students in the lack of conceptual...

The media plays a role in almost everything that goes on in the world, and for this reason I believe it is important for us to consider its role in the classroom, especially as a prospective teacher. I personally feel that the media plays its biggest role by instilling a certain attitude around schools, classrooms, and most importantly students, all prior to them even entering the classroom. They are given preconceptions about "coping with back to school stress" instead of being "excited to go back to school" just as an example. Furthermore, certain subjects are deemed to be "better for males or females" than others. The list goes on about some of the ways the media influences student's feelings towards school but I believe the media has the potential to generate joy and enthusiasm about school just as easily. The benefits of this would be that students will want to come to school and enjoy their time in whichever subjects they wish to take. As a teach...

Today we visited the UBC Orchard Garden and my experience, as a prospective teacher was one much different than I have had before. This time around, I took in the garden as a place of learning. It was a place where I could engage my senses and gain a sense of wonder for the space I was in. Susan did an excellent job of allowing us to show our wonder via the drawing activity we did. We were asked to draw man-made and natural things we saw but I found myself spending all 30 minutes drawing a pumpkin and a bit of its background. One thing I learned from this activity was that when drawing man-made objects there is often a start, and a stop. Contrastingly when I was drawing this pumpkin I saw the stem attached to another plant and the plant attached to the ground and the ground holding other pumpkins and insects on the leaves and on and on and on…What I took away from this is that natural objects are continuous, and are all interconnected. This struck a bell for teaching in...

This paper was interesting to me because I felt it was very relevant to what we are learning, as teacher candidates, in several of our classes. The idea of place-based learning is one that intrigued me not as a "eureka!" idea but more like an idea that made me think. How can place-based learning apply to subjects across the board? It is more obvious in some subjects than others. In Amy Cutter-Mackenzie's article about multicultural school gardens she provides thoughts on children's gardening and how this can transcend language and cultural differences. I feel that learning in gardens or any outdoor space can totally enhance the learning experience. When you are outside your senses are all engages. Your sight, hearing, smell, touch, and even taste are all different compared to when you are inside a typical classroom for every single one of your classes. I believe that when you are engaged, you begin to question. When you begin to question, you are at the heart of inq...