Teaching Strategies
This unit explores the system of pollination through a pollination party, framing this content in a positive and joyful way for kindergarten students. At the kindergarten level, biodiversity is an awareness and in our current curriculum, it tends to be human-focused or from a human perspective. Using the One Heath model as a foundational lens for this unit, I am aiming to present students with a more equitable approach to learning about biodiversity. We will focus on the importance of having all of the guests at the party, who each play important roles in the health of the pollination system, i.e. the party. Each part of the model is represented through the guest list. For example, animal guests include bees, worms, and birds; human guests include partners, students, and teachers; environmental guests include plants, soil, and weather like wind. To help students build a better awareness and understanding of the importance of biodiversity, we will spend time in this unit on attention activities where students will be able to observe and study nature. We will use sit spots outside to journal about what nature we observe with our five sense, what parts of the system are visible, and ways we envision our green spaces. As a teacher in an urban environment, it can be hard to find what we envision as wild “nature” in the city, but I want to encourage you to observe a little more closely. By returning to the same sit spots in a regular routine, students will be able to see small changes in the environment that they may have missed before, such as the sun shifting through the seasons, animals who come and go, or impacts changes they make have on natural spaces. This also supports students in actively engaging in place-based learning, where they will become experts on the natural environment of our school community.
Learning throughout this unit will incorporate hands-on activities that allow students to take individual ownership and collective action in the health of our pollinators at school. Through tools like a sensory table, working in the garden, and supplying students with their own toolkits for the outdoors, I plan on students get down and dirty with natural elements like soil or compost, plants, and some living organisms like caterpillars, worms, and bees.
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