Today in our Social Subjects input we spoke about lesson planning around current/recent news events which relate to social subjects. This way the children are learning about current issues.

Jennifer and I paired up to create a lesson plan, for a primary 7 class, based on a new article we found online about the effect rubbish pollution has on sea turtles. We used this as a stimulus and hence based our lesson around recycling. The lesson we created could be anywhere in the series of lessons, so we chose to create a lesson which in 2 or 3 lessons into the series.

The lesson plan we created is shown below:

Once we had finished our plans we then presented them to another pair in the class. The activity was very useful for giving us as student teachers ideas on how to come up with lessons that relate to what is happening in the world around the children at the current time, making it meaningful and gives context to learning.

Our tutor also gave Jennifer and I some tips to edit our lesson plan which i found very helpful. One tip she gave us was that instead of telling children information about a topic, get the children to research and find answers/knowledge out for themselves, this way to are using active learning and engaging the children to use researching skills. Allowing children to research topics also develops children’s teamwork and note taking skills along with children learning to decipher if information is useful, reliable and appropriate. This idea is also a bonus for teachers as it reduces their workload and they can use this extra time for other things.

I feel like after this input I will be more critical when writing lesson plans and be more inclined to look back over drafts to see what could be changed for the better, whether its to benefit the children or teacher.

References:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45509822