The three main classes I taught in PSI were art, social, and drama. Below are examples of planning and curriculum utilized in each.
Art4/5: (Watercolour)
In this class, my planning focused on reducing inefficiency to maximize the time the students could spend painting. I believe that those who do the work are the ones who learn. Thus, I strove to fight my natural tendency to spend more time instructing than letting the students discover, and I believe it paid off with the students exhibiting meaningful expression. For curriculum, I consulted art books on watercolour, yet ultimately I used numerous youtube videos to show the students the techniques in real time in a more tangible way. Below is an example of one of my lesson plans for this class.
Example Lesson Plan
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Social 6: (Ancient Athens)
For this social studies unit, I endeavoured to base my lessons around ways I could relate the student's own lives to the material in order than the history might come alive. We debated and discussed ideas, created word walls, drew maps, and ended the unit with a party recreating the Agora (market) in which the students dressed up in Athenian attire and acted out characters of their choosing in a historic way. Not only were they able therefore to appreciate the historic influences of the Athenians, but imagine in some way what it would be to live like them.
The curriculum used was primarily the textbook for focus and ease of study for the final exam, though each reading branched off with slides containing information taken from other books, images found online, and videos of Athenian artifacts and ruins. In this way, the ideas the Athenians brought forth were not simply immaterial notions of a bygone age, but the products of real people, which still affect our lives today. Below is a sample of one of my lessons from this class and the accompanying slides. Example Lesson Plan
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Drama 6/7: In Drama class I focused on the principles which govern the ideas behind drama over the mechanics of acting itself, as I knew I would have a chance to follow up on those ideas during the run of the christmas play which I was honoured to help direct. Thus, each class followed a different idea, such as character, story elements, or improv. For curriculum, I used a number of my old drama textbooks as reference, but I prescribed almost no reading so as to focus on engaging the skills of acting in practice.
Example Lesson Plan
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