MS Kindergarten Social Studies Frameworks: 5. Integrate, connect, and apply Social Studies into other subject areas and everyday life. d. Recognize that various cultures enjoy different styles of music, art, dress, food, and languages.
Big Idea: Different people throughout the country live in different ways.
Objective: The students will compare and contrast themselves to the lives of the Iroquois Indians.
Preparation
1. We will review on what it means to compare and contrast objects. I will show the students an apple orange.
2. I will ask them how these two objects are alike and then I will ask them how these two items are different. I will tell the students that today we will be comparing our everyday lives to the lives of the Iroquois Indians.
3. I will read Life In A Longhouse Village by Bobbie Kalman to the students, only reading the pages that contain facts that we will be using to compare and contrast in our activity.
4. As a whole class we will discuss the lives of the Iroquois Indians. I will ask them to start thinking about how they live in comparison to the Indians? Think about the foods they eat in comparison to the foods you eat, think about how they celebrate events in comparison to how you celebrate events, and think about how you do things as a child in comparison to how they live as a child.
5. As a whole class I will demonstrate how to complete a Venn diagram using foods the Iroquois Indians eat compared to the foods that I eat. I will ask them to name some of the foods the Indians eat and as they respond I will write their responses on the board. I will then list some of the foods I eat, making sure that I list at least one of the same foods as the Indians.
6. I will list the things that the Indians eat in the cirle that has the heading Iroquois Indians. Then under the circle titled Ms. Merritt, I will list the foods that I eat. I will ask the students can they tell me something that the Indians and myself have in common. The students should respond by saying corn. I will explain to them when both objects share something alike you list it in the middle circle, then I will write corn in the middle circle and also erase it from under both circles.
7. Tell the students that they will be using a Venn diagram like the one on the board to compare themselves to the Iroquois Indians.
Guidance
1. Students need to brainstorm their foods they eat, the dwellings that they live in, the things they wear, and etc.
2. Walk around the classroom making sure they stay on task and provide feedback when needed.
Application
1. Walk around the room observing the students as they complete their diagrams.
2. Assess their completed Venn diagrams to see how they compared their selves to the Iroquois Indians.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
My View on Sara's(teaacher) blog
I chose this blog because of the description of what the blog was about. Sara, who is a first grade teacher believes that it is important that children should be given activities that build on their prior knowledge. She also had some great resources that others can use to develop meaningful lesson. You should check it out!
here's the link
here's the link
Monday, February 9, 2009
Chapter 5: Understanding and Using Texts
As the world is forever changing especially in technology, classroom instruction should also be changing. I'm not saying that we should totally get rid of textbooks, but we should give students a variety of ways to encounter text. Textbooks are important because they give some of the best concrete knowledge that students need to encounter throughout their school year. This chapter gives a lot of different interesting ways in which teachers can make reading meaningful to students through a various amount of text such as digital texts-photographs, media, movies, and the all-time favorite the Internet. Due to the large amounts of Internet that is available to students outside of school, teachers need to have a lot of opportunities for students to come into contact with all sorts of digital texts. Also teachers can use search engines such as google and yahoo to find out information on different kinds of texts.
Before choosing what the students will read, the teacher first need to ask themselves "what is it that I want my students to learn?" When this is established, they need to find text that will not be to hard nor to easy for their students. A way in which to ease the complexity of the text is by motivating the students and having them to build on their prior knowledge. When students can build things on prior knowledge, it makes learning easier and also meaningful. When students are not able to build on their prior knowledge it is up to the teacher to help them, especially special needs students and also English language learners.
From my experience with monitoring the students at South Forrest, I have found when teachers hand out numerous amounts of worksheets that students are not interested in and contain to much information, they tend not to work as hard or work at all. I feel that we should try to get away from worksheets and find other ways to create learning. As the book states in the summary, "Teachers can play a substantial role in guiding students in their work with texts by carefully assessing and selecting texts that reflect important Big Ideas and skills." If all educators did this in Mississippi, then all the schools could possibly become level 5's.
Before choosing what the students will read, the teacher first need to ask themselves "what is it that I want my students to learn?" When this is established, they need to find text that will not be to hard nor to easy for their students. A way in which to ease the complexity of the text is by motivating the students and having them to build on their prior knowledge. When students can build things on prior knowledge, it makes learning easier and also meaningful. When students are not able to build on their prior knowledge it is up to the teacher to help them, especially special needs students and also English language learners.
From my experience with monitoring the students at South Forrest, I have found when teachers hand out numerous amounts of worksheets that students are not interested in and contain to much information, they tend not to work as hard or work at all. I feel that we should try to get away from worksheets and find other ways to create learning. As the book states in the summary, "Teachers can play a substantial role in guiding students in their work with texts by carefully assessing and selecting texts that reflect important Big Ideas and skills." If all educators did this in Mississippi, then all the schools could possibly become level 5's.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Chapter 4: Ongoing Assessment
Test, test, test! Every time you turn around teachers throughout the country are continuously giving their students test after test. Some test are too hard, some too easy, and some are just useless. After the test the teachers don't take time out to look at the results, instead they just teach a whole different concept. Is that the right thing to do? Of course not. Chapter four talks about how assessments should be used throughout the school year.
In the classroom teachers should be doing ongoing assessments, which are diverse assessments that should be giving throughout the school year. There is another type of assessment that should be used also and this assessment is the classroom assessments. These assessments are mostly overlooked by educators. These assessments are observations, day-to-day conversations with your students, and reviews of classroom test performance and classroom work. Due to no child left behind, their are state test that students must take and classroom assessments can sometimes be beneficial to the teachers, because they might give info about how students might perform on such state tests. Why do educators focus so much on these state tests? These tests are important because they help to see if teachers, students, and schools are meeting the standards given by the state. If such schools are not meeting the standards then schools can shut down, teachers can be fired, and resources can be lost. As an educator it is up to us not to focus all of the classroom time on state tests, but use other assessments as well.
By using personal assessments such as conversations, interviews, and observations help to motivate students, let them make connections between their lives and the content, and help guide them to use their backgrounds to critically read and evaluate academic texts. Classroom conversations are the most readily available for teachers to use to get to know about their students, but some teachers think that interviews are the best ways to learn about their students. After reading this chapter I found that keeping portfolios are the best way to assess students. These are good to use because they get the students involved by letting them put together their own work and look at the progress that they have accomplished. As an educator we should know that not one assessment can be used to see the information we need to know about our students' progress or our progress and that's why we should use a variety of assessments that lets us see the patterns we need to see in our students' performance.
In the classroom teachers should be doing ongoing assessments, which are diverse assessments that should be giving throughout the school year. There is another type of assessment that should be used also and this assessment is the classroom assessments. These assessments are mostly overlooked by educators. These assessments are observations, day-to-day conversations with your students, and reviews of classroom test performance and classroom work. Due to no child left behind, their are state test that students must take and classroom assessments can sometimes be beneficial to the teachers, because they might give info about how students might perform on such state tests. Why do educators focus so much on these state tests? These tests are important because they help to see if teachers, students, and schools are meeting the standards given by the state. If such schools are not meeting the standards then schools can shut down, teachers can be fired, and resources can be lost. As an educator it is up to us not to focus all of the classroom time on state tests, but use other assessments as well.
By using personal assessments such as conversations, interviews, and observations help to motivate students, let them make connections between their lives and the content, and help guide them to use their backgrounds to critically read and evaluate academic texts. Classroom conversations are the most readily available for teachers to use to get to know about their students, but some teachers think that interviews are the best ways to learn about their students. After reading this chapter I found that keeping portfolios are the best way to assess students. These are good to use because they get the students involved by letting them put together their own work and look at the progress that they have accomplished. As an educator we should know that not one assessment can be used to see the information we need to know about our students' progress or our progress and that's why we should use a variety of assessments that lets us see the patterns we need to see in our students' performance.
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