My cooperating teacher handed over the new Social Studies unit and I began teaching the first lesson on Monday. The lesson began with a preview activity that allowed students to build background knowledge on directions. Students were given a simple activity to stress the importance of directions and knowing how to locate something, their classroom. We were then able to tie that skill into the importance of being able to locate ourselves within the world. This was the introduction to the Social Studies Unit - Where in The World is Our Community. The objective of the unit is that students relate to the importance of understanding geography and how the study of geography can help us to understand the world around us. As I was planning the third lesson in this unit I felt it was necessary to provide students with some additional hands on learning. The lesson objective for this day was to teach the students that there are seven continents and five oceans in our world. We were going to label a map as a whole group and then students would have the map as a study tool for the end of chapter quiz. I wanted to make the lesson more fun and interactive and I knew that labeling the continents and the oceans, which was part of their assessment would be the most difficult for the students to complete correctly. I decided to spend a little more time on this topic to make sure that the students learned the material beyond the recall basic facts stage of Bloom’s taxonomy. I wanted students to apply the knowledge and create something that would allow them to think more deeply about the material being learned. I spent many hours researching a variety of different activities and I was admittedly nervous about implementing any of them for several reasons, time, effectiveness and interest. After a few discussions with my CT she encouraged me to take a risk. She stated that if I didn’t try things out now while I was student teaching I wouldn’t learn what might or might not work. There was some additional pressure built into this lesson as I was being evaluated by my Drexel Supervisor on this day. I decided to take the risk and went ahead with my lesson plan. As part of the PowerPoint presentation I created, I incorporated a continent video song for the students to help with learning the material. I had observed this group of students in the past really respond to song and new it would be a great tool to reach students who use an auditory learning modality as well as a visual modality. There is a website called safe share.tv that allows students to safely watch YouTube videos without ads and distractions. After we completed labeling the map as a whole group and watching the song video I broke the students into table groups. Each table group was given various colors of play-dough and asked to recreate the continents using the play-dough. They were supplied with a large piece of blue construction paper, labels to correctly identify which continent and which ocean and a picture of each continent for reference. Students manipulated the play-dough to match the continent shape and then were required to place it correctly on the blue construction paper and label it. The students were very engaged and enjoyed working with the materials to recreate the continents. Reflecting upon this lesson I learned several important things. The first thing was to limit the amount of play-dough I gave to each group. I had made homemade play-dough the night before and supplied each group with entirely too much play-dough and didn’t originally state in my directions that they didn’t have to use it all. Some groups were making very large continents thinking they were required to use all the play-dough in that one color. In addition, since I made the play-dough at home some of it was sticky the day the students used it. This caused some slight excitement as students were holding up their hands with gobs of sticky play-dough on them. I remained calm and quickly ran around the room gathering up any of the sticky play-dough and asked those students to wash their hands and got them back on task as soon as possible. I think the most important aspect of this lesson is that I took a risk with something that wasn’t practiced and I was unsure of its success. It allowed students to create and although there were some glitches, that were easily fixable, I would never have learned them if I hadn’t been encouraged by my CT to take the risk. Another benefit of this lesson was the ability for me to showcase student learning for the parents. The photographs took during the lesson were shared with parents using Seesaw and they could immediately see what their children were working on that day in social studies class. Teaching isn’t always going to be perfect but I know that this activity allowed students to learn the continents and oceans in a way that went beyond pen and paper and kept students fully engaged. My goal is to continue to take risks and explore ways to make learning engaging and meaningful for the students.
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AuthorMy name is Karen Moeser and I recently graduated from Drexel University completing the Post Bachelor Teaching Certification program. I am certified to teach Pre-K to Grade 4. Archives
March 2018
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