Treaty Lesson Plan – Process Paper and Reflection
I always find creating lesson plans to be an engaging, creative, and thoughtful process. I would even go as far as to say that I genuinely enjoy creating lesson plans. Each lesson I develop incorporates more and more knowledge that I have gained through my ECS classes and major education core classes. This lesson was different – and more challenging – because we were given authentic evidence of student needs and preferences, and it was these needs and preferences that guided the creation, organization, and assessment of the lesson plan that we created.
This lesson was also different because it incorporated an aspect of lesson planning I have considered but never completed before – specific cross-curricular connections between the Wellness and English Language Arts curriculum. The task seemed difficult at first. How could we connect Wellness or Health, English, and Treaty Essential Learnings all into one lesson? Nonetheless, when we began searching through the Treaty Essential information and Saskatchewan curriculum, connections were quite evident, and we chose to explore and examine the connection between First Nations’ worldviews and the Medicine Wheel, the Wellness Wheel, and the English goals of reading, comprehending, and responding.
Planning this lesson did not involve a simple or straight-forward process. We began by choosing our topic and curriculum connections. From there we developed a general idea of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to facilitate the lesson. The final plan was not complete, however, until we had examined the folder of special needs and adjusted ideas, readjusted ideas, and made adaptations to the lesson plan, instructional methods, and student expectations and assignment.
The group discussion and feedback addressed many comments and a few concerns with the lesson plan. We agreed that the lesson will be reasonably engaging to students. However, because much of the project incorporates group work, classroom management will likely be an issue and would likely be our “target” if this was a lesson plan we were doing in the classroom. We also discussed how grouping will be important for classroom management and student achievement purposes. Knowledge of student capabilities and concerns will be important. The act of discussing our lesson with an outside source – and even creating it as a team – was beneficial because it allowed a chance to deeper engage with the lesson and the rationale behind it.
Link to Lesson Plan
Link to Additional Handout
Miss Michelle L. Schepp 
Michelle – it sounds like you put a lot of thought into creating this lesson. I’m glad that you explored the idea of cross-disciplinary planning, and I hope that you’ll try to explore it further during internship if you have the chance – I think it’s such a positive things for students in that it allows them to creating so many meaningful connections between subject areas.