Today in Social Studies we were talking about the Pilgrims. I found a great short clip on www.history.com . It is called Deconstructing the Mayflower. It was about two and a half minutes long and grabs your attention. Check it out. http://www.history.com/topics/mayflower/videos#deconstructing-history-mayflower
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Well here it is Tuesday evening. I have laundry that need to be done, the dishwasher needs to be emptied, yet here I sit on my computer looking for lesson ideas to incorporate into my lessons. I found a few cute ideas. The first was found on the teachingchannel.com . This is a website with short videos of expert teachers using excellent strategies to teach their students. The idea was called Putting your 2cents in. Basically the gist of the idea is that all the students had two pennies. They were encouraged to talk and participate in the discussion, by throwing their 2 cents in literally. Once they have thrown in their money and have given their thoughts to the discussion, students need to wait until others have had a chance to talk and share. This ensures that all students have a voice in class.
Check out the teaching channel for more great ideas! Today in my 8th grade history class we had an exploration simulation activity. I think that it went very well and the students leaned why there was exploration. The class was divided into four groups and each group was given a packet of natural resources. The resources for each group were different. Using the resources they had to follow directions to make sure they had the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter met. Many groups found out that they had many natural resources, just ones that were not useful to them. The groups quickly learned that they had to trade with other countries for survival. There were some groups that tried to take over the other "counties" and take their supplies. At the end of the simulation the students had to reflect on the activity and make connections to exploration. Many of the students demonstrated a deep understanding through their writing and were able to articulate what happened in the simulation, and draw conclusions about exploration,
The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.- Thomas A. Edison
I am very proud of myself. I have kept up with the paper work and correcting. I have been staying after school for about an hour or so to correct and clean up. i am working on some anchor charts to support my classroom teaching
My goal was to blog at the end of every class this year. My first week of school is over and I have already not met my goal. Well there are 177 days to go. That being said, the school year is off to a great start. I have four great classes. Since I have looped with my eighth graders I really only have two classes of seventh grade to learn names. Hopefully I will know their names before Thanksgiving break! One of my co-workers brought to my attention an interesting website for keeping track of student behaviors both positive and negative. It is called classdojo.com . I signed up for a free account. It is user friendly and very cute. The teacher is able to customize the behaviors that they want to keep track of. Parents and students are able to log on at home and monitor their progress in class. As a teacher you are also able to print reports to bring to student meetings or send home to parents. If you are computer savvy and want an engaging, interactive student management tool to use, classdojo.com is the way to go. Check out the site with the link below. www.classdojo.com |
AuthorI am an empty-nester with two boys, a husband and a passion for writing, creating and teaching. I teach 7th and 8th grade Social Studies in Massachusetts. I am a self proclaimed history geek and proud of it! In my spare time ( Spare time, ha ha that's a joke! ) I enjoy photography, reading and hanging out with my family. Archives
February 2022
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