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Getting to Know the Settlers!

What were the takeaways of the getting to know you activity?

Each time you start a new class, it is important to get to know the people who will be your colleagues for the next few months. Getting to know them will make you more comfortable with them and will allow you to have a sense of comunity in the classroom. The Getting to Know You activity we did in our Social Studies class was a special version of this comuity building exercise. It was special in the fact that it was digital. Being digital, everyone in the class was not only able to learn a little bit more about eachother, but we were all able to learn about differnt tools that could help us improve our lesson plans in the future. I learned about so many resources I have never heard of before from this activity, like podomatic, a site that allows you to create a voice memo, and tiki toki, a site that lets you create a 3D time line. In my own project I used two sites called QR Code Monkey and Straw Poll. These were very helpful websites to make quick and colorful QR codes and quizes that can have real time results. I am excited to use these tools in my lesson plans.
Our Getting to Know You activity was also special because it helped us prepare for teaching our lessons. We had to remember to have an introduction, body, and closure to our lessons about ourselves. For my lesson I had a pretest, the body where I introduced myself to the class, and a post test to see how much my collegues had learned. Each of the test were made with Straw Poll so we were able to go over the answers and how many people got them right. As people presented, we were able to give feedback. The ablity to give eachother feedback allows us to really perpare for our feildwork. We were able to see who needs to speak louder and make more eyecontact with the class and who needs to say "um" less. As always, the imfamous "guys" came up several times during our Getting to Know You activity. I know it will be a hard habit to overcome, but we will break it one day. Overall, I feel like this experience will make us stronger and more confident when we teach infront of our fifth graders in about a week.  

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