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.

Social Studies Connections from science day

We have learned many different ways to cross-reference the curriculum for a particular lesson plan or unit during our Professional 1 & 2 semesters here at Northern Kentucky University. As we learn the real life facts that we will have a very limited amount of time in our classrooms to teach a vast amount of content for multiple subjects, we see just how crucial it is to combine as many subjects in one lesson as we can that will make a difference for our students. I was really surprised that we had a science day in social studies class. Growing up, I was always taught to think of the two subjects as separate. I saw many social studies connections to the science experiments that we did, as well as connections to other subjects, such as math and reading. All of the experiments can easily be connected to math by graphing the results, finding averages, measurements, etc… One way to connect social studies to the science experiments would be to include an economics connection about marketing. Students could think about the materials used for each experiment and how much they cost, how prices are set for each and the profit made from each material, etc… A second social studies connection would be the history of the materials, students could do a small research project on the different types of materials and how they have been used throughout history in different ways. They could also research how that specific material has been improved over time. Student could study what technologies are used to create or improve the materials. It would be really easy to connect all of this to literature, since there are so many great books about the science, social studies, and any topic in the world. I am glad we took the time to think about this since it will be so vital when we are student teaching and teaching in our own classroom some day.

Scientific Revolution

The science experiments were very interesting. I thought using the power point was good, and displaying the dead man's finger is a great way to get the class's attention. Being in collaborative groups and working together was great and very meaningful.