During my second placement in a grade 5 classroom, I had the opportunity to plan an entire science unit and to teach most of it (as our placement was cut short). Initially, I began the unit of Conservation of Energy with an inquiry-based approach where students researched the different types of energy sources around them and what energy truly is. I felt that having the students investigate the material on their own focused on their individual learning, which made facilitating the following lessons quite enjoyable, where students had the opportunity to know about the material ahead of time and the ability to participate in a class discussion.
During this unit, I found that introducing terms and definitions throughout the unit was a great way for students to focus on certain concepts. Every lesson students would add to their own personal word bank handout and as a class, we would put up a definition to our word wall which stayed up during the entire unit.
A mid-unit project that the students completed was to create a magazine that included a title page, advertisements, images and a magazine article. This cross-curricular project allowed students to demonstrate their understanding of a renewable energy source, their ability to write a magazine article, identify text features and use different techniques from the visual arts curriculum.
I felt that following this unit preparation and implementation, that as an educator I was able to educate these students on sustainable alternatives in the world, specifically our energy sources. Helping the students to understand and hopefully act as contributing citizens to our global climate crisis was a goal of mine at the beginning of the unit, which I feel was met through my analysis of their mid-unit projects.