Sample Teaching Products

As a part of Restoring Connections, I worked alongside six other undergraduate students, our project manager, project director, and our community partners, Adams Elementary and Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Over a six month period, we designed and implemented lesson plans for kindergarten and first grade students. The first three months, we split up into pairs and created different lesson plans for each season, since students would be visiting Mount Pisgah Arboretum in the fall, winter and spring from kindergarten until fifth grade. Me and my partner created the spring in-class lesson plan and field trip for first graders. The in-class lesson was designed to prepare the students for their field trip two days later. Our lesson plans were designed according to the Next Generation Science Standards theme for first graders, which is how seasons affect living organisms. We familiarized the students with this theme by focusing a lot on wildflowers, the regrowth of deciduous leaves, and baby animals. The two sample items below demonstrate one of the activities we created, which is a scavenger hunt for wildflowers using a field guide. This was intended to familiarize them with local Mount Pisgah flora that could be found in the spring.

First activity from the spring field trip lesson plan for first graders. The document below gives a sample of the field guide they used in the field at Mount Pisgah Arboretum.

Example of one page from the first grade field guide to help them find plants at Mount Pisgah Arboetum. This was used for their first activity on the field trip, or could be referred to throughout the field trip.