My first PD - Project Wild

On October 22nd I attended the Project Wild professional development at Brock University's Hamilton campus. I was provided with fantastic information and resources on how to effectively teach and link the environment to Ontario's curriculum objectives (including cross-curricular) across all grade levels. We had a series of energizers to break the ice involving meet and greets, and fun facts. The session leaders were effective in their instruction illustrating how to effectively teach about the environment even if you are at an inner city school. What I took away from this is you do not need to go out into the mountains, or the Niagara escarpment to have an effective lesson. Moreover, I was amazed at how many different ways you can teach cross-curricularly when you incorporate the environment.

Our afternoon was devoted into breaking off into teams with whom we collaboratively created a lesson plan to teach the rest of the session attendees. My group taught "Quick Frozen Critters" to our class which was a great deal of fun, running around, and laughing. It was great to see 5 different lesson plans completed during the afternoon, as it really demonstrated the effectiveness and ease of combining the environment to our daily lesson activities.

We are so fortunate with the environment and landscape we have in Canada, and I feel it is incredibly important for us to share this with our students, and teach them to respect and appreciate it. This being my first PD I have attended as a teacher candidate, I feel it was a very worthwhile experience; and have come away from it with many new ideas, lesson plans, resources, and teaching strategies. The only negative I found about this PD was its location being at the Brock University campus in Hamilton. I strongly think this PD would be best facilitated at a conservation area, in the natural forests, mountains, lake; any natural outdoor habitat where we could discuss the changing environment due to human presence as well as gain a greater appreciation for its beauty.

I have attached a group photo of my colleagues and I from Cohort D at Brock University with one of the PD's facilitators Linda.