Lesson 6 will take us two weeks complete, but PSU has a week-long Thanksgiving break, so I'll make the due date after that. This lesson is the capstone project for this course, in which you are free to design your own course module, based (as much or as loosely as you want) on one of the topics we covered in the earlier lessons of this course.
By the end of Lesson 6, you should be able to:
The chart below provides an overview of the requirements for Lesson 6.
Lesson 6 will end on 3 Dec 2019
Requirement | Details | Due Date |
---|---|---|
Choose a topic | Just email me a brief description of your plan | 19 Nov (end of week 1) |
Capstone project | Submit this to the Capstone project assignment in Canvas | 3 Dec |
Student Educational Experience Questionnaire | This is optional and anonymous but useful for me. Please do it! It won't take you long. It's linked from Canvas in the Lesson 6 module | 13 Dec |
If you have any questions, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not e-mail). I will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
I chose the topic of contemporary Earth sciences controversies because I wanted to focus on issues that wouldn't necessarily be covered in a textbook since they are ongoing and unresolved debates. I tried to put together a mix of types of controversies . . . for example, the New Madrid seismic risk controversy pits scientists against each other but also pits scientists against policymakers. On the other hand, mass extinction controversies do not involve any public policy. I also wanted you to participate in the process of science by carrying out analyses as well as reading research papers. I used publicly available datasets because I hoped that if you found any of the analyses interesting, you could easily co-opt them for your own use. The "teaching and learning" discussions were intended to get you to think about how you might use some of this material if you wanted to turn around and teach it, and also to think about necessary science skills independent of science content.
My guess is that you can take bits and pieces of this course and transform them into a lesson for your own use. Now is the time to prove it!
In this activity, you will design a lesson for an audience of your choosing based on one of the topics we covered in this course.
Save an electronic version of your activity in the following format:
L6_capstone_AccessAccountID_LastName.doc/.pdf/.pages/.your extension
For example, Cardinals manager and former catcher Mike Matheny would name his capstone project L6_capstone_msm1_Matheny.doc
Upload your capstone project file to the Capstone project assignment in Canvas by the due date on the first page of this lesson.
I am interested in the scientific accuracy of the topic you choose to teach and how well your lesson incorporates scientific thinking skills.
I am not going to base my grade on whether you have constructed a lesson plan in some special way (as long as all the components listed above are there). My assumption is that for those of you who are teachers, you don't need me to tell you how to write a lesson plan because you already know. For those of you who are not teachers, I am not the one who is going to instruct you on correct lesson plan-making. However, I am a scientist, so if facts are not right, or could use clarification, I can assist with that.
This has been fun and hopefully, you've had a useful experience and learned a few things in this course. I'd like science to be more interesting and more accessible to more people. You are free to use any of the lessons and activities from this course for your own purposes in teaching. If you do, I'd love to hear about it.
You have finished Lesson 6. Double-check the list of requirements on the Lesson 6 Overview page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there.
Glad you asked! If you liked this course, here are some others we are offering during the Summer 2017 semester:
EGEE 401 [1]: ENERGY IN A CHANGING WORLD
EARTH 540 [2]: Oceanography for Educators
There are two C I (curriculum and instruction) courses that are required for the program
C I 501: Teaching as Inquiry
C I 550: Overview of Contemporary School Curriculum
A complete course calendar for the M.Ed. in Earth Sciences program can be found at the M. Ed. in Earth Sciences website [3]