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.