S.S in the school

The school, as a whole gets into the the curriculum as much as possible. If fifth grade is doing one project that the kindergartners can help they do so. When I walked in on Monday there were state flags hanging from the ceilings in the hallway. It was neat to see all of the different flags and on the bottom of the flags there was a note that had when it was made and what state it represented. When walking the kids down to the gym for their "Robotics Dance" the guys were asking me "what flag is that?" every flag we walked past and asked me to tell them what it said on the flags. It was exciting how engaged kindergartners were from just walking in the halls. Another project the school is doing is making their own mail satchels out of brown paper bags from Kroger. We had to cut the bags and prepare them for the students and after awhile it got old and there were over 300 bags that needed to be made, but luckily we didn't have to do them all. Everyone was involved even the parents of the students. It's kind of interesting how excited and how much the parents are involved in this school.
A side note the "Robotics Dance" is an activity the school is doing where every class gets their own decade and dance. Our class is robotics, 1990 and all the kids were laughing and giggling about the dance moves and everything. Can't wait to see the rest of the school's dance.

Teaching Social Studies Unit

Well, I have taught both of my Unit One lessons and things went really well. I was very concerned in how the students would react to my teaching them since that is not what they are used to, but they did well. Amanda and I did our first Unit in Social Studies. We were given the topic of South America and other than that, it was left fairly wide open. I focused on the ideas of map skills on the first day and then applied the first lesson to the second and we look at various things about South America (i.e. landforms, directions, distances, etc.). We are teaching Science next and are still digging through ideas of the direction to go for that, but luckily Spring Break is coming and we can really dive in and get some things done during that time! So far, things are going well and I hope the same is true for others!

Lesson on Wednesday

Wednesday I taught my second science lesson on the water cycle. It was great I was able to do the water cycle game that we did with Rheeda Hart in science. It turned out very nice I thought. The students actually did very good for the activity and greatly enjoyed the lesson. They told me that it was more fun than sitting in class, which who really enjoys that. I also did the dance with the students, most of them liked it, but there were about four boys who didn't enjoy it. After we were finished with the whole lesson, the students were a little rambuctious which is expected after playing a game. But overall I thought that the lesson went smoothly and the students really enjoyed it.

1st of many learning experiences

I was so excited and nervous to teach my first lesson this semester. I taught social studies and the concept of supply and demand. I wasn't able to teach till 2:00 p.m. and by this time the kids were already ready to go home and not paying a bit of attention to their teacher. Which didn't make me the happiest person in the world, becuase I knew it would be extremely difficult to get them to focus on the lesson. Like I have said in the past, there is no classroom management in place in our practicum classroom. So, I took it upon myself to use the "Give me 5" technique since I knew most of the students had expereienced it in other classrooms. I literally had to use it every 5 mins. to keep them focused on the lesson. It did make a small dent in all the chaos. Plus, I had a student who didn't take their medicine and was literally acting like a monkey (climbing things in the classroom). It really challenged me to use the classroom management techniques I had learned in cottingham's class and from previous CT's and apply them effectively. I felt I did a good job and was reassured by my partner Lindsey. I will now be better prepared for when I teach my 2nd lesson this upcoming Wednesday. Even my partner, said she learned alot by watching how the students reacted to the "give me 5" technique and plans to use it when teaching her own lessons. If anyone else has some effective techniques for dealing with a large group of rambucious students, please let me know. Thanks!

I hope everyone else who is teaching first had a great experience and good luck to those teaching 2nd!

S.S.

Today we actually were able to go to our school and teach! We taught our lessons on George Washington and Abe Lincoln and our CT loved what we did. She told us that she would have never of thought of the activities we did and the way we did it. We created a cherry tree to go along with the myth of George Washington and the kids had to write one thing they learned about him and we drew and cut-out a tree to be displayed in the hallway and the "cherries" were actually the cut-out of George Washington's face. We also had a cut out of Abe Lincoln and the kids received one black strip each and they had to write one thing they learned about Abe Lincoln and then the strips were used to create Abe's hat. The students and CT loved them both. She feels bad keeping them, but we don't mind. Pictures will be available if anyone wants a visual. Hope everyone is able to catch up on their lessons as we have today.

Practicum

Well, of course this week, we had a snow day (which I was very grateful for!!!). We didn't really get a chance to see any social studies on Monday though. As I said before, we are going to start going to our class in the morning to be able to see more work (possibly). I am getting ready to begin teaching on Monday morning (our Social Studies Unit). I am looking foward to it, yet somewhat nervous about the way that the students will accept us and react to us being in front of them teaching. They are not used to this method at all!!! It will be interesting though.

Integrating science/math lesson in social studies.

If you are about to teach your Math or Science unit, I was just curious about how you could integrate your science or math lesson into a social studies topic. My science lesson is concerning weather and climate. This can be integrated into a many different social studies topics. We could study different cultures who live in climates that we are not familiar with. We could discuss the weather in that climate and how it affects that particular cultures way of life. What they wear, eat, what kinds of houses do they live in, etc... You could also talk about what a particlular culture imports and exports depending on what climate they live in. The geography of a certain climate region and the landforms associated with it and how these landforms affect the weather.(Rainforest, Tropical grassland, Arctic, etc) Economics can also be addressed when talking about weather and climate, we could use farming as a good example for that. The list could go on and on but unfortunately I can not at this moment.
In my math class they are currently studying coordinate planes and plotting points on a plane. The teacher would ask for another name for the x and y axis and the students refered to them as latitude and longitude. Learning coordinate planes can easily be integrated into a map skill unit.
Post back and tell me how your lesson can be integrated into social studies? If you are teaching social studies first, then how can your lesson be integrated into science or math?

Am i behind?

everyone is already teaching it seems like, Brock and i havent got our unit together yet!!! I guess this means we better get it together.

Snow Day

Hope that everyone is enjoying their snow day, I'm spending it getting caught up on school work. Samantha taught her first lesson Monday and it went very good. I teach next week and am going to teach the water cycle. I am very excited, I am going to do the water cycle activity and song with them that Rheeda Hart did with us in science class. She is making available the game for us to borrow if necessary to Rowley, so I don't have to do anything but put together the lesson plan. Hope everyone else's lessons are going just as good as ours are.

What is your class currently studying in Social Studies?

I was just curious about what topics are being covered in your social studies class. Right now my class is finishing up the Revolutionary War. On my first day of observation they were comparing and contrasting loyalists and patriots. The students did this by creating a T chart and listing important details about both sides. Just recently the students presented their own Revolutionalry War game. The class had to create some type of game(game show or board game) about the revolutionary war. The students were given the choice to work alone or in small groups of two or three. They had the freedom to choose whatever game they wanted as long as it contained 40 questions regarding the revolutionary war. Some of the games I observed were Jeopardy, boardgames using monopoly pieces, and the game of life with a revoultionary war twist. This was a very fun and exciting project. It was obvious that the students had a great time creating and playing these games. I have a copy of the rubric and directions available and will try to post these in the future.Reply back and let me know what grade you are observing and what is going on in your classroom regarding social studies? What topics are your students currently studying? What instrucional activities are being used to teach these topics? How are the students being assessed?

Science Unit

Well, here goes nothin'. I'm a little nervous about teaching my unit. Its on polar bears. I had so much to cover until Eric suggested I slim it down to one, big overall concept, like camouflage. So I did. However, I still feel a little underprepared. Reading was not problem, but science isn't my cup of tea, I'm assuming that why I'm a little timid.
Anyone else feeling a little anxious about their units?

Practicum

So far, our practicum has gone fairly well. The students are great and Stephens Elementary is a wonderful school. We are just somewhat discouraged because we don't feel very useful while we are there, or that we are really gaining much experience that we can use later. The Montessori style of classroom is a very neat concept, but the students spend long periods of time sitting on their individual rugs (because there are no desks) and work on whatever they choose to work on. A lot of times, they work on thier own and therefore there are long periods of time that we cannot do anything other than make copies or sit and observe them. The teacher does not teach in front of the classroom, the students are supposed to teach themselves and learn on their own. We asked our CT on Wednesday if we can start coming in the mornings so that we might be able to see more things happening. We'll see! On Wednesday, we were able to see a couple of the students work a very large world map puzzle. It was very nice to see them working together and being able to have a finished product from team work.

I thought the Library was for reading...

however, I didn't witness this happening during the library special for my first graders. The first graders retunred their books at the cirrculation desk, The students were then directed to a caret where I was expecting them to be read to. This had always been my experience in gradeschool.

I was shocked to see the librarian put on a Big Comfy Couch episode. I thought this was terrible. The librairan, who should be the biggest advocate of reading, totally resorted to a video instead of a book.

The majority of their time, about thirty-five minutes, they watched the video. Then they had to scurry to select books to check out.

I was NOT impressed.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

Hola Fellow Groupies,

Of course there is a snow day today for Campbell County...and of course we have to be at NKU all day today. Figures! I understand now why teachers don't mind snow days every now and then...

Heather and I are getting a little restless in our 5th grade class. This grade is much more independent than the younger ones we've worked with, so we end up sitting. A lot. We told our CT yesterday that we'd really like to interact with the kids more, so we sat with different groups during math. However, the majority of the day was spent doing secretarial duties...copying, cutting, and grading. "These are the duties teachers have to do!" our CT sung to us as if she was revealing some great secret. WE KNOW. But that doesn't mean that WE want to be doing it during our time there! We're supposed to be learning to teach, right? When I have practicum students some day, I vow to not make them spend their time being my secretary. I'll be the queen bee and they can be worker bees...NOT grading bees. :)

We did get to observe a social studies lesson. Or rather, a social studies activity. The students watched a video from United Streaming about the Boston Tea Party and answered questions on a worksheet as they watched it. Not my idea of a great lesson, but at least we finally observed one.

I hope I'm not sounding too bitter. I'm just ready to have my own classroom. This observing thing isn't cutting it anymore. Senioritis has kicked in and I'm ready to be, officially, Mrs. Mullins the teacher. Not Mrs. Mullins the practicum student.

Ta ta for now. Here's wishing for at least one more snow day. Preferably on a Monday or Wednesday ;)

SS in class

I do not see a lot of S. S. in the classroom officially; however our CT did discuss what presidents were on money and had the kids examine and discuss. Our CT also asks questions regarding the students family history and geography, for example one of the pairs of twins in our class their parents are out of town and our teachers asks where so theres a little geography or asks kids which family memeber owns certain companies around KY. Other than that we don't really see official lessons on it or have it thrown right in our face we have to do some thinking and relate it to history.