Upcoming Units and Advanced Notice

 Is it a good idea to tell students and parents in advance about the themes and topics you plan to teach?

Sometimes, I'm not sure how to answer that question.

This year, I teach social studies, media, health, problem solving (one of the four frames for kindergarten learning) and library. I also have collaborative partner teaching times. Three recent examples involve giving some prior notification and the results from that news.

Health - Human Development and Sexual Health

According to the 2019 version of the Grades 1-8  Ontario Curriculum for Physical and Health Education,

Principals and teachers must follow their board’s policy that allows for students to be exempted, at their parents’ request, from instruction related to the Grade 1 to 8 human development and sexual health expectations in strand D.

I teach Health to a Grade 1-2, Grade 2-3 and Grade 3 class. I calculated approximately when I would begin and end these units and included the dates in the letter that gets sent home. Letters are grade-specific, so the Grade 1s receive a different letter than the Grade 2s, and so on.

The results of this notification is that I've had several families request exemptions for their children, even though I am uncertain whether or not they understood the information that was sent home. Unfortunately, there are no translated versions of the very wordy, lengthy form letter we must send. I have to trust that they knew and understood; I don't want to call into question their decisions. There are only four lessons I'm giving on this topic (in May 2022). I'm not sure where the children will go when I'm teaching these four lessons; I guess I will need to discuss this with my principal.

Social Studies - Communities in Canada 1780-1850 (& Minecraft)

Minecraft is not an official part of the Ontario Curriculum for Social Studies. However, I am a big proponent of games-based learning and my past experience with Minecraft has taught me that it's a powerful, motivating tool for students to explore concepts and make connections.

Last term, I took the Grade 2s to create a stop-motion animated mini-film and the Grade 3s insisted that I take them afterwards to do something equally as "cool". I decided I would use Minecraft and to try and encourage a student in the class who traditionally balks at completing work, I told him in advance about our plans. Almost every day for the subsequent 2-3 weeks before we launched the unit, he'd approach me (often at the most inconvenient times) to whisper "Min-Craft" to me.

Once the rest of the class knew, similar interactions occurred.  We made a list of "In-School Use of Minecraft Do and Don't Rules" and had to include lines such as "We do not pester or bother our classroom teacher about when we are playing Minecraft - it's with Mrs. Mali during our Partner Social Studies time". 

The Grade 3s talk a big game about being Minecraft experts but I suspect that's a lot of bravado since much of the most recent social studies periods involving Minecraft have meant a lot of technology trouble-shooting. During our first official session playing, we could only get four of the class Chromebooks to run Minecraft, despite the best efforts of the Grade 4-5s, who have been using Minecraft for their science projects without much issue. Knowing there were only four working spots, I next created learning centers for Grade 3 social studies, with Minecraft being just one of the four tasks. All of a sudden, the four working stations dropped down to two; the students said they just couldn't launch the program. It can be a little frustrating, especially when the focus is not supposed to be on the game, but on the insights linked to social studies that comes from the game. 

Media - Cakes

I only teach media to the kindergarten students and the Grade 1-2 in-person class. The kindergartens are busy with their current media unit on decision making (and using lists to help the process and games to practice the process). Now that the Grade 1-2s have completed their Playground unit, we are examining cakes. To get them excited, I told them that a future lesson would involve them decorating their own cakes. (I plan on buying Jos Louis or Vachon Moon cakes for them to use - they are bigger than a cupcake but not as big as a traditional cake, and we don't have to bake them ourselves.) 

Ever since I told them we were going to do this, whenever I pick them up to bring them to the library (for library, media, or health), at least one person is bound to ask, "Are we decorating the cakes today?" I had to explain that there were many other tasks we were going to do first, including consult with a professional cake decorator. Now, the new question is "Are we seeing the cake maker today?"

I'm glad that the students are excited about these upcoming lessons; I just wish that these engaging events didn't dwarf the other learning happening regularly.