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Engaging in Career-Long Learning

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A teacher engages in career-long professional learning and ongoing critical reflection to improve teaching and learning.

I attended a PD session called The Power of Play at SWATCA 2019 hosted by Kathleen Silverman. This session was about how important play is to student learning and some ways to incorporate play (gamification and game-based learning) into our own lessons. This session resonated with me as I have been using game-based learning with some of my lessons, but I felt inspired to incorporate it into more of my subject areas. Below are two exemplary lessons where I incorporated game-based learning to enhance learning. 

Grade 4 Science: Light and Shadow Exploration

 

In my science class, I had the grade 4 students use Google Classroom to learn about reflection, refraction, and shadow manipulation. From there, I then turned the application activity into a quest, where students had to do simple things to obtain the information they needed to complete the activity. One key takeaway from the PD session was the changing of words to make the task seem more fun. This lesson plan demonstrated how easy it is to engage student just by using words that imply gamification. I changed the word from a "task" to a "quest" to entice students to do the work. This activity was meant to be self-led and to encourage students' curiosity to have them explore deeper. Students wrote their thoughts and ideas in their science journal. 

 

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