November 21, 2010

This past week in class was great!  We incorporated art into our lesson and we ended up using it for a few lesson plans (a few days).  Mine and my partners assignment was to teach social studies for 5 lesson plans and incorporating art in social studies can be difficult, but we made it happen, and made it so all of the students LOVED it.  

The American Revolution is what we've been teaching the kids for the last couple weeks, and something that we really wanted to find was a Reader's Theater about the American Revolution.  Well, since the Internet has everything anyone could ask for, we were able to find to one that went along perfectly with what we had been teaching.  When we told the students we would be doing a Reader's Theater they became so excited and really got into character.  We practiced everyday for 5 days and then performed the play on Friday for 2 classes and any parents who wanted to come.  The boys wore colonial hats and the girls wore aprons.  It was amazing.  

I truly believe that these students learned 100 times more by doing the Reader's Theater than if we would have just stood up at the front of the class and lectured.  It was something that they could get excited about and look forward to.  

Reflection #11

This past week has been another really great week in field.  My partner (Aubrey) and I have started teaching and have already taught 3 times.  The subject we have been given is the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party, and then everything in between as well.  I've never been a huge Social Studies fan, but teaching 5th graders is really fun.  They don't care to know every detail, and the information is explained very basically.  I think if high school students were taught the same way as elementary students (in Social Studies) then our high school graduating classes would know more about our countries history (and other countries histories).  

One of our lessons that we did was we gave each student 15 tootsie rolls. Then we told them that they were the colonists and we were the British Parliament-we would be taxing them on certain things.  We taxed them on what color hair they had, what they were wearing, what gender they were, etc.  The students got really into this lesson and got very upset.  We explained to them that this is what the colonists felt like.  They were being taxed on things that they didn't feel were right.  They were being treated unfairly and poorly.  

I've really enjoyed teaching the 5th graders in my class and have learned so much from them and from teaching them.  They're a great bunch of kids and they behave wonderfully.  I can't wait until next week!

Reflection #10

Since we're in field now I'm just going to blog without the what, so what, and now what. I've been in field for 4 days now, and it's great. There's so much information to take in and so many things to learn from my field teacher, Mrs. Bishop. Mrs. Bishop is a 5th grade teacher and this is her 16th year teaching. She's enthusiastic about teaching and loves her students to death. She really enjoys being in the classroom and being around kids all day, which takes a lot of patience, which she definitely has.
Something I have noticed, however, about the class, is that there isn't a ton of art. They focus a lot on math (an hour to an hour and a half every day) and on language arts. I have only been there from 8 am until noon so they may do more art after lunch. They also have one day a week where they go to an "art" class with an actual art teacher. They went today and they were really excited when it was time to go to art, which is a great thing. It's too bad that it's only once a week, but I guess that's better than never.
I look forward to learning more about Mrs. Bishop's class and learning ways that I feel comfortable teaching.