Last Day

Today was our last day and of course none of the kids wanted us to leave, neither did we. We had a celebration party and the kids and teachers gave us presents as we handed out our gifts. For the kids we wrote them all letters for their post office in the school, our CT was excited and couldn't believe how much the kids would love getting a letter from us in the mail. The students also do not want us to go to Australia to teach, instead they want us to teach them. Well last day of practicum and shortly it will be the last day of this semester!!!

Final blog

I hope everyone has had a great semester and good practicum experiences!

I can't believe we are going to be student teaching in the fall...I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!

I just want to wish everyone good luck this fall semester during their student teaching and hope that everyone has a memorable experience they never forget. Have a great summer!

Scientific Revolution

Whenever a lesson is taught in any subject, it is benefical to integrate it with other subjects in the curriculum. Allowing yourself to make connections across various content areas will benefit your teaching strategies and your students ability to learn the material being taught. The activities we did regarding the Scientific Revolution were a great example on how to integrate science with social studies. A great example of combining these two content areas would be studying the sun, stars and solar system and how some cultures used these elements of science to create clocks and a full year calendar. The possibilites are endless, this is just a small example of how to integrate science with studying various cultures. After having students do the sink and float lesson, you could possible connect that with some famous voyages across the oceans and how these voyages led to changes that forever affected how we live.

Finally Finished

I have finally finished all of my units, my last one was social studies. I thought it went really well, our unit was economics. I had the students create their own candy. I set the activity up as if it were a contest for a new candy for Peretti-Van Mel. For encouragement I was able to get a box of Airheads, so next Wed at the end of the competition when the CT and I decide on a winner we will hand-out the Airheads to the students. My partner is concluding the activity this coming week. We are very excited about the contest between the students and so are they. They have really enjoyed the unit so far.

No more units!

I have taught all of my units! I finished teaching dinosaurs this past Tuesday and the kindergartners loved our activities we did. With teaching dinosaurs we also discussed the history of dinosaurs and everything along the line of dinos you typically would learn in kindergarten. Even though I have no more units to teach I still am teaching lessons in the classroom from my CT. Now it is time to focus on finalizing all the stuff we need to have by the end of the semester. The end is near!!!

Sci. rev.

There are lots of ways to connect social studies to science. Our in class activity was a great! We were introduced to the activity as if it were going to learn a history lesson about the great scientist of the Scientific Revolution. However, we actually got in there after learning sabot the times and conducted some investigations. (I'm kinda bummed I missed out in the balloon thing!) For example, if you wanted to teach your students about medieval architecture, you could have them experiment with similar building materials and have them create their own fortress. I think history is much more interesting and engaging if you can make it come alive, much like we did in class.
Overall- I was mucho impressed with this tactic!

Scientific Revolution

It was fun to have a class of hands-on activities, the kids love being a part of activities and getting a chance to experience different activities. Relating social studies to science was also neat especially discussing the finger and learning about why the finger was preserved (history). I also think though that you, the teacher, needs to look at all activities and not just "think social studies," but to think about how you can relate one activity across the curriculum and across the levels.