Travel the World From Your Classroom!

I actually created this powerpoint for my Geology class, but I thought it could work for here also. As teacher, especially with today's current economic state, I believe we need to introduce students to places far away and much different than what we're used to. Many students will not travel or know the world beyond Indiana, or better yet, beyond their immediate hometown until they are adults themselves. Because of this, I think teachers need to introduce students to world beyond their own. Just small powerpoint or video clips on different, unique, and interesting parts of the world. For the PowerPoint I created, I chose the location called "Giant's Causeway." It is located in Northern Ireland. I found it by searching "geological phenomenas." Here is what my powerpoint looks like (now keep in mind this was for a college class and some information would not be necessary to add for an elementary class.)

Giant's Causeway PPT

January's Sparrow Lesson Plan

This is the last lesson I will be teaching in my placement school this semester. My 4th grade placement classroom is currently starting a unit on the Underground Railroad and I was asked to do a lesson to further introduce students to the topic. After discussing the lesson with two professors (Thanks Syd and Diane!) I decided to have the children do an editorial writing on a excerpt from the book "January's Sparrow" written by Patricia Polacco. This book presents the injustices that slaves were forced to live with and reasons why they decided to travel on the dangerous Underground Railroad. Furthermore, having the students write an editorial on this topic is a great way to engage their interest. The definition of an editorial is "a piece of writing in which someone gives an opinion." I want the children to have an opinion on the topic, and explain themselves fully. So to make them feel connected, I chose an emotionally gripping scene where a runaway is drug back to the plantation and whipped for his "wrongdoings." He is an example and all the other slaves are forced to watch.

As I stated earlier, this is an integrated unit. It has both social studies and writing. But the writing is not simply a one-and-done. For this assignment, the students will be working through the steps of the writing process. In this lesson, students will do their prewriting (taking notes on the event/excerpt) and their drafting. Lessons to follow would cover editing, revising, and publishing.

Here are the document I created & used to teach this lesson (feel free to use!):

Lesson Plan

Notes Sheet

Editorial Guidelines

Overall the lesson went very well. I had students begging me to read the rest of the book to them. They were so interested in the topic and had so much to write. Though I am no longer in my placement, my supervising teacher has decided to continue the steps of the writing process. The students will be revising their work, editing, and then finally publishing it as typed document via the classroom computers. I would recommend during the whole writing process for this assignment. Letting the students publish their opinions shows them that they have a voice.

Thanks and Enjoy!

Which Decade was the Best to Live in?

The other day we did an amazing project on campus. We were to persuade out peers that the decade we chose, researched, and demonstrated- was the best to live in. This activity included students learning how to and completing research for a specific reason, had them using technology and creating other presentation media, and had them working with their persuasive talents trying to spark interest in their decade. For our presentations we were trying to persuade our peers to vote for our decade. Our professor was in charge of collecting votes. Overall, the experiences was fun and educational! I really did learn a lot of about the different decades in history.

The decade my partner and I chose was the 1940's. This was a difficult era to persuade our peers about (considering it was a decade of war, the Holocaust etc.) But, in researching I found out so much more about this era. This was an era of amazing inventions, ones which have a direct impact upon our lives. During this era inventions include: the microwave oven, cake mix, the cellular phone, ballpoint pen, and tupperware. This era is also responsible for more amusing inventions such as scrabble, the slinky, the Frisbee and the Bikini.

Other things we found out about this era was the fashion, important events, popular music/dance/movie, popular books, people, inventions and even the scandals and disasters of the era. Now in our class we were given guidelines and left to create our projects, but remember in a classroom you should demonstrate how students should break their research up into more manageable pieces. For example, give them rubrics! Students needs guidelines for their projects, and need to be aware of what they will be graded on. So decide before hand what you want them to gain from this experience. Secondly, give them graphic organizers. A simple chart for them to record their findings so that they can have it all in one place when they start creating their presentation. Our professor created a requirements sheet and a Research graphic organizer which I based my two documents off of. Here they are:

Requirements Checklist

Research Chart

Also, above are some of the pictures from our own "Decades Project Presentations." We showed a powerpoint while playing three songs via iTunes. Our three songs were "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy: by The Andrew's Sister, "I'll be Seeing You" by Billie Holliday and "I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo" by Glenn Miller.

Enjoy! It is an amazing project that I feel would prompt a lot of response from students.

Five Themes Of Geography

Geography is not just Geography anymore! For our class, we created a photo story covering the Five Themes of Geography. What is that may you ask? Well when teaching geography we learned that there are five themes that must be covered. These themes are 1) location, 2) place, 3) region, 4) movement, and 5) human-environment interaction. The place I chose to document is Ocean Isle, NC (very close to Myrtle Beach). I went to Ocean Isle last summer (2010) for a family vacation. So I promise all of the photos in this book are all authentic photos taken by yours truly. Enjoy!

Five Themes of Geography- Ocean Isle, NC

P.s. This is a large file so it may take a few moments to load! Have patience, it's worth looking at.

Family Recipe's

An activity that we did at the beginning of the year that I thought was interested and that really helped to integrate geography into the classroom along with helping to creating a open and accepting classroom environment was the family recipe cook book we created. This activity lets the child share something about their life, their culture, their background, their heritage, their family, and their beliefs. Being allowed to share such ideas and feelings for children is important. Why? Just think about how children choose their friends. They pick someone that is like them, someone they can connect to, possible someone interested in the same activities etc. So why not open up the year by showing the children how they are all alike (they all have a favorite food) while teaching them about how they are all different. But remember, don't just have the child bring in a recipe- they have to be able to explain why the recipe was chosen, it's importance, and it's story. Keep in mind activity can open up to many other areas of geography. Just for fun, I have listed my recipe below.

Zucchini Bread- Mom's Famous Recipe

Ingredients:

3 Eggs, 1 cup Vegetable Oil, 2 cups Sugar, 3 tsp. Vanilla Extract, 2 cups Zucchini (about 2 large or three small), 3 cups flour, 1 tsp Salt, 1 tsp. Baking Soda, 1 tsp. Baking Powder, 1 tsp Cinnamon, ¾ cups chopped walnut- or any baking nut (optional) and lastly ¾ cups raisins (optional)

Directions

Beat together with hand mixer eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla extract. Blend zucchini, adding a pinch of water to help start the process. Add 2 cups of the blended zucchini and stir into egg, oil, sugar and vanilla mixture. Add flour, salt, soda, baking powder, baking soda and stir into zucchini mixture.Once mixture is all combined, stir in raisins and nuts (optional).Coat two loaf pans (muffins tins) with nonstick cooking spray and flour lightly to ensure bread doesn't stick. Pour mixture evenly into the two pans and bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.Stick a toothpick in center; if it comes out clean, it is done!Remove immediately from pans and rest on cooling racks.

Story Behind The Bread

This is a recipe that I have enjoyed since I was a little kid. Someone gave it to my grandmother (may have been her mother) and she’s passed it on. With this recipe, everyone is my family has their own variations (I like mine with extra raisins and no walnuts, my brother likes walnuts and no raisins). This is a recipe that we make all summer long once our garden starts producing zucchini. We probably make 20 loaves throughout the summer and between the four of us we can devour it all!

Amelia Earhart Lesson Plan

I got my first real experience creating a lesson plan to work along with a Basal Reader. Luckily, this semester I did my group midterm project over the Pearson Scott Foresman Reading Street program and became relatively familiar with it before creating my lesson. I created this lesson in particular to work for small groups (more specifically the students who are "below-level" readers). For this lesson I used the leveled reader provided by the basal program along with a sequencing activity they suggested. I did make an adjustment to the activity (changing it from a worksheet to a tangible puzzle they could manipulate. Listed below are the resources I created for this lesson:

Amelia Earhart Lesson Plan

Sequencing Activity

In the lesson plan link you will be able to see the step by step of how I taught the lesson and use the materials. Furthermore, when looking at the sequencing activity keep in mind, if you want your puzzle pieces to last use good paper (such as card-stock) and take the time to laminate them!

Current Events Lesson Plan

Here is a lesson that I co-created with a peer of mine, Hope. She and I were requested to create a lesson on current events happening around the world. In our lesson, we had to cover six current even issues do discuss with our students. Some of the documents we created would not upload so I will upload what I can and explain the rest. Just so you know our lesson was based on the "Newscurrents" program that the placement school has uses. We took much of the informational text verbatim (with proper citations of course!). Here are the documents we created:

Lesson Plan

I Can Sheet

Fact Packet/Notes Sheet

Assessment/Quiz

In the lesson plan link you will be able to see the step by step of how I taught the lesson and used the materials. The other six documents I were unable to attach were the news articles the students read to complete their notes sheet. These are simple articles for the children to read, comprehend, and pull vital information from. Copies of local newspaper articles would work fine.

Note: Is is important to remind students that when taking notes, they do not have to write in full sentences (unless you want them to for a specific reason)!