Unit Thoughts

After seeing an example of inquiry unit planning in class that set the big question as the header and the summative assessment as the footer and challenged us to fill in the middle, I had a sense of clarity wash over me. It was very much an “ah ha” moment where I realized that planning an inquiry could be less intimidating. When we convened as a group, we all agreed that we needed a big whiteboard pronto to properly plan out our lesson. Once we laid out our big question and summative assessment it gave us an opportunity to visualize what we wanted out of this lesson. We already had some questions in the mix such as What is an environmental hazard?, How is/isn’t our government protecting us from environmental hazards?, How are we affected by environmental justice?, etc. From those we came up with our three main supporting questions and their order was determined by the concept of past, present, and future in relation to environmental justice. Our first supporting question, What are environmental hazards?, provides a background for the problems that these government programs and laws are working to provide us protection from. Our second supporting question, How is our government currently protecting us from these environmental hazards?, brings the class to think about how currently environmental justice is present in our government and society. Our final supporting question, How are we affecting the environment and how can we make changes?, puts the students into the scenario. It asks them to place themselves within environmental justice and see how they can take action.

I want my students to remember that their government is supposed to protect them from these environmental hazards. In addition to this, I hope that they learn to stand up and take action if their government is not protecting them from those hazards. I hope that my students recognize this in relation to themselves and others that they see facing environmental hazards including animals, plants, and landscapes.

Our lesson works in range of sources and events that students get the opportunity to analyze both in a group and individually. Additionally, they are able to take in new evidence as the learn to shape their new understanding of the topics. Finally, students will be looking into real world events to help formulate their understanding of Environmental Justice and their place within that. This reflects how I want to be a teacher because it gives students the power. We created a unit that works to make students informed individuals who know how to take action when they see something amiss in the world.

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