Week 7: Snowball Fight Mania! Social Studies Lesson Plan

•  By Amnah Hzaiyen
• Thursday, March 5, 2020

Today, I taught my social studies lesson plan on Cultural holidays in the United States. My goal for this week was to begin creating more fun and engaging lessons for my students. It was brought to my attention how I can create my lessons to assess what I am expecting of the students, but in a way that is more fun for the students and doesn’t seem so “boring” for them. My lesson was focusing on differences and similarities between different cultural holidays that we see in the United States. I was going to have the students do a Venn diagram for their independent practice, but had the students do a “snowball fight” activity instead. They threw paper snowballs with different sentences or words that describe both or one of two holidays then had to walk over to a designated sign for those two holidays. The students had a lot more fun with this activity than I had anticipated. At the end of the activity, the students had asked me multiple times to do it again, but unfortunately we had not time. I had a handful of students tell me how much fun my lesson was and that they would love to do it again. After teaching this lesson, it made me understand how important it is to create fun and engaging lessons. All the students were involved and participating, which is quite rare compared to what I usually see. I now understand the importance of creating these fun lessons, and understand that there are many websites out there with lots of different ideas I can use to create these lessons.

Week 7: Germs

Week 7
By Elizabeth Gonzalez



I started off my day feeling great, after being sick for almost three weeks. I greeted every student with a “good morning” and a smile. During the student's morning routine, the CT made an announcement on learning about germs. The CT said, “All day long, your hands touch things that have lots of tiny germs all over them. Today, we’re going to learn what we can do to keep our hands clean.” The class watched a short video on washing your hands. The video demonstrated knowledge of germs and what they can do to the body. There are many students who are out due to flu or cold. Students are not aware of when they sneeze or cough. Students are always touching one another and aren’t aware of the germs they might pass around. Therefore, it is important for young children to understand the basic concept of germs. A student had an accident during power math, he cut his finger with the paper and started to bleed. I took him to the sink to rinse his hands and after we put a bandaged. I reassured him that he is okay and to leave the bandaged alone. He responded, “We need to wash my hands because if I don’t I will pass my germs.” This made me smile because the students did observe the information that their teacher provided in the morning. Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr6GQN-z_2s

week 7 - anchor chart

This was my first week teaching, and I taught a science lesson about the sun. This was some of the

first exposure that the student had to this topic although they have been in this unit since January. Science is a subject that often gets overlooked, as the teacher puts a heavier focus on math, reading and writing. The lesson went well, but I want to focus on one activity of the lesson. I used a KWL chart with the class, filling in the K and W sections before learning anything and the L section at the very end of the lesson.

The class had never used this type of chart before, but they understood it when I explained it. In the K section, there were a lot of misconceptions about the topic - which I was excited to hear because I knew that we could correct these misconceptions in the lesson. It also helped me to decide what to emphasize as I was teaching. The student asked some great questions, some of which I wasn't even planning to teach but added in last minute because they were curious about it (specifically, what the sun is made of). By the end of the lesson when we filled in the last section of the chart, the students had changed a lot of their thinking and were able to give me much more detailed facts and ideas about the sun. I have attached a picture of the chart, I was amazed by their learning.

My CT was excited that I was making a chart with them because they do not have many science related things around the classroom. I asked if she preferred I did the chart on the Smart Board so that it was easier for the students to see, but she expressed that she wanted to hang the paper chart in the room. Anchor charts are a great tool for seeing what student know or have learned. It is also something that they can reference and use to make connections to as they learn more about the sun.

week 7

Kiley Rolder

March 5th, 2020

This week was my first week teaching and I was a little nervous considering the students have had a sub for a week now. I wasn't sure how they were going to act because they haven't had their normal class schedule since the CT wasn't there. I started my lesson and right away the students were all engaged. It was great to see them all focused and learning. The students were all participating and excited about my lesson. During my lesson I had them read passages and hold up the answer they thought it was this seemed to work really well instead of having one student come to the board and the rest of them sit there everyone was able to participate. I even taught the rest of the day considering my CT wasn't there. It feels like each week i'm becoming more comfortable and taking on more responsibility which I love. The experience I am gaining this semester has been so helpful thus far. I am learning what ways work best for me for regaining students attention and how to approach different topics. I am also becoming more aware of how to handle certain situations such as a student misbehaving and trying to understand why they are acting out if it's a bad day, if something is going on at home, or if they are just having a bad attitude. Forming relationships with the students where they know they can trust me and come talk to me if something is wrong is very important and something we are taught to always be welcoming and try to understand what is going on in your students lives. 

Week 6 -last minute changes

This was a busy Thursday for my class  since they had a long weekend coming up. The plan for the day was to follow the regular schedule in the morning which includes reading, writing and technology followed by lunch. After lunch The students had a silent party, but 4 students in my class did not go because they didn’t pay, so all of the first graders who didn’t attend went into one first grade room. The silent party was only supposed to go until 1:30, then my CT had plans to do a project for the upcoming parent day. During the party, someone decided to extend it to last until the end of the day. My CT was very concerned about getting the project done, but didn’t want to pull her class from the party. Around the last half hour of the school day my CT went to the students left behind to start them on their projects, and I offered to go help them. Those four students got their projects done. When the rest of the students came back, we rushed for the 20 minutes of dismissal time to at least get students started on their projects. The extension of the silent party really messed with my CTs plans, but we managed to help the students get a lot done in the little time that we had and this was something I was really able to be helpful with. This showed me how even with planning and a schedule things can come up that can’t be controlled and teachers need to be ready to change their plan even if it’s not ideal. I’m excited to see the finished projects next Thursday!

week 6- teaching

This week I taught my whole group 1 for literacy. There was many strengths and weaknesses that happened through my lesson on Thursday. For being my first lesson taught, I thought it went well. The students were very engaged in the lesson and enjoyed discussing compare and contrast through the two book and daytime and nighttime. Although it went fairly well, there was some areas of improvement. For any carpet procedures that happen in the classroom, it is important to address classroom behavior and carpet behavior. For my lesson, I had students gathered on the carpet for part of my lesson and had students bring something to write with and write on.  I did not think this over well and all the students were confused on what to bring to wrote on. For future lessons and my future class, I will have materials at the carpet ready for the students to write on to keep the lesson going. Overall, I am excited to teach more lessons this semester.

2/27/2020

These past couple of weeks, my CT has been addressing student behavior through a classroom app, called Class Dojo. This app allows the teacher and the guardians of each student to be in contact throughout the day. While this app can be used for messaging parents, my CT mainly uses it for behavior. Each day that I am present, I continue to see how this app works. The students really strive to get green points and are disappointed when they receive red, or negative points. I believe that this behavior strategy really works for some classrooms, this classroom specifically. Since each classroom is made up of different students, they may not all benefit from the same behavioral system.