Featured Lesson

Preparing your lesson plan using the Fishing: Get in the Habitat! Unit Matrix

by Roland Sigurdson

February 2010

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Have you managed to get past all the amazing images yet? Yah, me either. However, if you take just a few moments to make your way to ‘the back’ of the leaders guide you will find one of the best kept secrets in the guide. The Appendices!!! Specifically I’d like to turn your attention to the Appendix: Planning Aids > Unit Matrix section. Download the PDF

The Fishing: Get in the Habitat! Leader's Guide is versatile and interdisciplinary. These lessons can be used alone, integrated into an existing curriculum or program, or several lessons can be combined to form a thematic unit or strand.

For example, let’s take the interdisciplinary approach to a lesson plan. In the Unit Matrix, the following lessons from each chapter are suggested under the Interdisciplinary strand.

Interdisciplinary
Lesson 1:3 – Run For Your Life Cycle (Physical Education)	Lesson 2:7 – Fish Tales (Language Arts)	Lesson 3:2 – Function of Aquatic Plants (Biology)	Lesson 4:2 – Fish Surveys (Math)	Lesson 5:5 – Flashy Fish Catchers (Creative Arts)	Lesson 6:5 – Eating Fish (Health/Risk Management)

As you can see, by selecting lessons that stretch across a number of disciplines one can teach from a wide spectrum of topic areas to engage students, address various learning styles and prepare them for a culminating fishing trip where all of the objectives from the lessons can easily be reinforced.

In fact, in order to continue the excitement and kick up the fun you may choose to try out additional lesson plans while on your field trip. Ones that come quickly to mind for me include:

• Lesson 1:4 – Water Habitat Site Study (you are already at the lake!)
• Lesson 3:1 – Incredible Journey (great after lunch activity)
• Lesson 5:1 – Freshwater Rods and Reels (includes How to Cast a Closed-face Rod and Reel Combo activity to reinforce safety)

It’s that easy!

So next time you’re stumped on which activities address the topics that you’d really like to cover, try out these matrices:

Happy Planning!!