Professional Standard 5

“Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning and development.”

In order to properly facilitate learning in our students, many teachers encourage personal curiosity from students in order to make the subject matter relevant to them. Another method includes finding multiple new ways of illustrating the same concept to account for varying learning styles in the same room. A great way of doing this can be to make practice around a new idea more active and collaborative for students.

One of my favourite (and tastiest) examples was during the phase-out period of my practicum, in which my coaching teacher had just introduced the concept of Bohr models to the Science 9 class. In a nutshell, these models demonstrate how many subatomic particles (protons, neutrons and electrons) are present in an atom or ion of a given element. Standard ways of giving students practice with these models is drawing the circles and dots on a piece of paper for elements #1-20 of the periodic table.

Pictured: A simple Bohr model of an oxygen atom. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

However, this worksheet ended up being tabled until after spring break in order to refresh students’ memories after vacation. Instead, students were paired up and given a cup of Skittles and a blank Bohr model template. Each pair of partners were then tasked with colour-coding the candy to three types of subatomic particles, then construct the model of an atom of a randomly-assigned element.

Given the infamous attachment between kids and sugar, the interest of the class was definitely piqued. Soon enough, they had their colour codes figured out and set to work constructing their models. The excitement surrounding the activity was slightly tempered by several instances of uncertainty of the modeling procedure. However, my coaching teacher and I were both on hand to walk our students through each step and slowly instill confidence in them.

Following inspection by one of us, students were allowed to have their Skittles, inviting possibly the only time where I would be able to tell them to “eat up their labs.” I even got to enjoy the sight of students very carefully dividing the candies with their partner to ensure an equal share. To me, there was just something about an activity that not only gave students a chance to practice and develop academically, but personally and socially as well.