Teacher Resource Room
Recognizing the need for standards-based curriculum, Grand Canyon Railway approached NAU’s College of Education to have senior-level courses develop lesson plans and materials for teachers participating in Conductor’s Club. While developing new resources for today’s time-strapped teachers, the partnership is also providing the next generation of educators with real-world teaching applications.
In fall 2006, Grand Canyon Railway partnered with Northern Arizona University’s College of Education to develop multiple grade-appropriate lesson plans for teachers. Two professors of ECI307 – Dr. Paula K. Greene with NAU’s Yavapai Campus, and Martha Brady, participating associate professor with NAU’s College of Education – committed their classes to the project, with their education majors developing all of the lesson plans available to you today.
Martha Brady included this preface with her submitted lesson plans. It wonderfully introduces the resources found at this site:
During the beginning days of fall semester 2006, two members of the Grand Canyon Railway came into one of our area meetings and asked quite simply if any of us professors in the College of Education at Northern Arizona University would be interested in creating K-12 curriculum for them in relation to the Grand Canyon Railway and the Grand Canyon. My mouth began to water as I saw the possibilities and in an instant, my whole idea for a final for one of my upcoming ECI307 (Social Studies Methods) courses became crystal clear; we would take a trip on the Grand Canyon Railway, as a class, and write and compile a K-12 teachers guide for teachers all over Arizona as a means of assisting them in their efforts to teach effective lesson plans about the Grand Canyon Railway and the Grand Canyon.
My 26 students brainstormed and groaned, and brainstormed, and groaned, and brought me ideas and thoughts, and groaned…and then the smoke cleared and wonderful teachable ideas began to emerge. Their assignment was to write child-centered lessons for K-3, 4-6 and middle and high school…With visuals, rubrics, worksheets, children’s literature, and anything else that would add color and flavor lessons about trains and that big hole in the ground.
To whet everyone’s creative appetites, Grand Canyon Railway gave us free tickets to ride the railroad from Williams to the Grand Canyon. Perfect! Everyone came back with more ideas, and more importantly, a better understanding of would the lesson plans they had already written actually work.
Soon, the lessons came flooding in; Mary Coulter, Jesse James, Safety on the Railroad Tracks, Haikus, Timelines, Geology, Creative Writing, Animal Habitats, and a myriad of other wonderful teachable ideas that research, thoughtfulness and hard work made happen. My black pen worked overtime as the students honed and polished, over and over and slowly began to see…a change in their abilities to do excellent work.
My students in this particular ECI307 class took this challenge head on and the results are phenomenal. I am so proud of their efforts. They got it…
Martha Brady
Participating Associate Professor
Northern Arizona University’s College of Education
