Today we started the day with a very important discussion with Toni regarding different ways teachers can incorporate garden planning/development into their unique pedagogies. I was glad that Toni was able to show us her resource book because she had a variety of activities that could be easily adapted, regardless of the teacher's background (i.e. non-home economics teacher). While listening to her explain the different activities, I was able to see how the activities could be modified to have a focus on Social Studies in which I could include PLO's or 'big ideas' of the new curriculum while also doing something creative and outside of the traditional methods of teaching Social Studies. The activity I liked a lot was the "Wanted" poster activity where students are advertising a particular plant while including research in their poster. I immediately thought of modifying this activity to focus on a historical figure/group that was wanted for a particular students, which would allow students to explore the historical significance/perspective of a certain time period in history. Furthermore, I was more comfortable incorporating garden development/teaching into my future teaching career after seeing these activities because I felt that I had a solid foundation to start from because of how simple it seemed after simplifying the theory aspect.
It seemed that other practicum students felt more confident and we were able to discuss the theme, menu, and overall plan for the Workshop on the 14th of May. We came up with a catch phrase that went well with the food we are planning to create. Its a surprise (for now) so I won't share what we decided on, but am I excited to DIP right into this workshop!
Lastly, we worked on our lesson plans with our pairs that we will be doing with students from Tyee Elementary on Wednesday. My pair and I will be doing flower pounding - and the internet makes it seem a lot easier than it is! We tested the activity during the last hour of the day in the garden, and it was quite difficult. We tried different coloured flowers and leaves. In the beginning, a lot of the "imprints" were brown while the shape was very blob like; however, once we found bigger flowers and better paper (more stiff/rough than smooth/slippery/oily paper is better) to pound the flowers on, the shape was a bit more recognizable and the colour was more vibrant. Pounding the hammer harder helps create a better shape and colour than pounding lightly - online sources were telling us to pound lightly and I feel that is where we made the mistake! I am happy that we tested out the activity before demonstrating it at the elementary school. We were able to learn from our mistakes, and better prepare for Wednesday's mini lesson.
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