This week I began to condense my literature review into digestible pieces of information to present in my workshop series in January, 2023. Choosing what to include on the presentations themselves was a challenge as I wanted to include everything I’ve learned so far this summer! Alas, I will only have about an hour each week to divulge the information I deem most important in helping pre-service teachers understand critical science literacy and implement these activities in the classroom. I need to be strategic with my decisions. I have narrowed down the key points I would like to focus on for each of the four sessions. My task moving forward through the rest of the month will be to refine my presentations and add speaker notes of key things I may not have included on the presentation itself but still deem worthy of noting during the actual delivery of the workshops.
The workshop format will follow more or less the same structure each week. Each workshop will begin with an informal discussion in small groups of any thoughts or breakthroughs participants had throughout the week. In the first workshop, since there will be no previous learning as a group, the opening discussion will centre on participants' preconceived ideas about critical literacy in addition to why they decided to attend the workshop series. After the initial discussion, the workshop will then move into a mini lecture on the dimension of Lewison et al.’s (2015) critical social framework pertaining to that week. I was originally planning to immediately move to the dimension’s connections to science after the mini-lecture but upon reflection of my workshop format I came to the realization that participants would likely benefit from a short activity to solidify their understanding of the dimension which was discussed. I had to remind myself that though I could jump right in to connecting the dimension to science this is because I am studying these dimensions thoroughly for many months. For the participants on the other hand, this may be the first time they are even hearing about the notion of the four dimensions of critical social practice.
After the enrichment activity to deepen understanding of the dimension, we will move into a discussion about how inquiry-based learning can be used to teach science concepts and competencies related to the dimension of the week. I have decided to focus the connection to science on inquiry-based learning as this is something that we discuss a lot in our BEd science specialization classes. Therefore participants should already be familiar with the concept. After the discussion relating inquiry-based learning to the dimension of the week I will provide the participants with a challenge relating to what was just discussed. This challenge will serve as an opportunity for participants to practice using inquiry-based learning ideas to develop competencies related to the dimension of the week.
At the very end of the workshop I will leave participants with a challenge of the week to promote thought and learning outside of the workshop session. Because we will be asking participants to submit a lesson plan which uses the four dimensions at the end of the four weeks, these weekly challenges will likely contain some sort of prompt or question to help participants add to their lesson plan over the course of the four weeks. In subsequent sessions, the informal opening discussion can be used as an opportunity for participants to discuss ideas and progress on their lesson plans with their peers.
It is my aim to make these sessions as collaborative and discussion based as possible. I think discussion is an integral part of successfully implementing Lewison et al.’s four dimensions of critical social practice so I would be remiss if I didn’t make that a focus. In my next couple of blogs, specific details about challenges and discussion points to be included in my workshop series will be discussed. I am really enjoying the shape that this project is beginning to take and I am looking forward to continuing to share my ideas as the project grows through this blog!
