Renovating My Classroom

These “units” span the entire Science 8 and Science 10 courses for BC (more examples of other unit plans). They were created by Karen Greig who is sharing them under a Creative Commons Licence. Feel free to use but be sure to credit Karen.

Students have found them to be very useful. They use them to see what we are going to learn, refer to them during the learning and use them for filtering what they know from what they don’t know when preparing for an exam. They also act as organizers for their notebooks. This will be helpful when they begin preparing for their year end exam.

The “owning my learning” theme is also working well. The students seem to feel more responsible for their learning in general. I see them checking off the B and A columns on the sheets, being honest with themselves about what they feel they know and what they need to work on. They appear to like seeing in print all of the ideas that they have learned. Rather than being intimidated, they appear to be proud.

An unforeseen advantage has been that the learning intentions sheets have helped with students who are away from school for extended periods of time. They can see what work we are covering in their absence and try to keep up.

I have taken out the references to the textbook and have been referring to the learning by the title I have given each section, not by the chapter number. Students have realized on their own where they can find supporting information in the textbook without me having to use specific page references all of the time or give assigned reading.

I am happy with the way in which this is unfolding and am glad that I attended the workshop last February. I feel this project has helped my students see where I wish to take them in their learning and to feel ownership in their journey.

Karen Greig

Link to Karen’s Science 8 and Science 10 “unit plans”.