- EDTL 3200:
Having EDTL 3200 with Christie Fraser has been a wonderful experience. In this course, we learned how to design unit plans, create and reflect upon assessment strategies and achieve equity and inclusion in a classroom. During this experience, I realized the importance of creating indigenously-inspired lesson or unit plans for students to feel the wisdom of Indigenous people. Also, knowing our students should be the first step in a new school year. Once teachers learn enough information about their students, they can try their best to accommodate students’ needs and plan for the UDL and DI parts. Using various assessment strategies (including assessment FOR/AS/OF learning) can be beneficial for teachers to activate students’ schema and monitor their learning along the way and for students to take ownership of their learning and see where they are at. I learned that inclusion can be achieved by taking different students into consideration when we create unit plans and design assessment methods. In this way, every student can demonstrate their strengths and feel a sense of belonging in the learning community.
2. EDMA 3200:
I had EDMA 3200 with Amanda Russett. I was surprised to find that the course structure for a Canadian Math class is so different from the Chinese one. The teacher needs to think of creative hooks to engage students and introduce the topic. I could see that students’ work time takes a large portion of each lesson (the “body” section). In this part, students can develop their communication, cooperation, creative thinking and critical thinking skills. Finally, there should be a discourse for students to share their learnings and thoughts with their peers and for the teacher to pull it together in order to emphasize and summarize the main concepts being presented in each lesson. I was excited to find the value in this type of course structure: Shifting away from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning allows teachers to act as a guide to students’ self-exploration process and offer students the opportunity to develop their various abilities and increase their autonomy in their learning journey.
3. EDSC 3200:
I had EDSC 3200 with Robert Wielgoz. In this course, we had lots of opportunities to do hands-on activities with our fellow TCs virtually. Also, we got to conduct a science activity with a volunteer in our safety bubble and present it to the whole class. Hands-on learning was emphasized in this course and I really appreciated the value of it. As future teachers, it is necessary to give students the chance to perform scientific experiments either individually or in groups and allow them to reflect upon their hands-on learning experiences. Investigating by conducting experiments can be engaging to students and they can form a deeper memory and understanding about the knowledge behind it. Also, allowing students to learn from trial and error can develop their persistence. I want to incorporate hands-on learning into other subjects as well in the future to help my students gain some real learning and develop their various skills.