Our First Day As Social Studies Teachers!
February 22, George Washington's birthday, my group of Social Studies Super Star began to teach the 5th-grade class about the United States as a Young Nation. In 1789 Washington became the first president of the USA by a unanimous vote in the electoral college. Practically every person in the US wanted Washington to lead us as our first president except for Washington himself. As we taught the class these interesting facts, we implemented several strategies to help the students remember key vocabulary. I made sure that everytime a vocabulary word came up, I would either have the students say it with me or repeat it after me in a choral response. This was a great way to get the students to start internalizing this new vocabulary. After every two slides, we asked the students to answer check for understanding questions that were based on the information they had just learned. Our group also made sure to get an answer from each group around the room to ensure that everyone was engaged. To manage our classroom, we implemented two techniques to ensure that they were listening and following directions. First, we used a method called "give me five" to get the students' attention. When someone in our group said this the students would hold up five fingers as the teachers counter backwards to one. Using the "give me five" method to get the students attention worked pretty well. I wish it got the students' attention a bit faster, like if the student had to respond right when the teacher said even me five instead of a count down. I feel like the count down took a while for them to become quiet and I wish it had a more imediate respones, like the hands on top everybody stop. The second technique we used for behavior management, was the use of SWAG dollars. These were 5 dollar notes that the students could earn in their table groups if they did something positive such as answering a question, copying down notes on their note sheet, or were quiet while others were talking. The student would have to give us back SWAG dollars if they did something negative, such as, talking over others or not following directions. Each group started off with 10 SWAG dollars and had the goal of earning 25 before the end of each lesson. On our first day, all five groups earned 30 SWAG dollars. Overall the students were very well behaved and only lost a dollar when they had to return to their seats after the vocabulary game because they were taking far too long to quite back down. The vocabulary game was the most unsucessful part of our lesson. The game itslef ran pretty smoothly and all of the students found thier matches in the first round, but the time management of the game was our down fall. We began having each pair stand up and read thier tags. It was taking far too long to get through everybody and the time was getting to be 11:30. To ensure that the students had the opportunity to complete thier independent practice, I made the call to wrap up the game early. We only had four pairs left, but there was no way to get through all four and thier independent practice. I felt like in the moment that my group members were not happy with my decision, but I would not have changed what I did. In the end, we got some very well written responeses and some that were very dissaponitng to recive. One student wrote "I learned nothing" on his Tweet, which I was very unhappy that he did not even try to put effort in his response. I believe that that student was one of the children that came in late to our session, so he may have missed a lot of the lesson, but I was still dissapointed with is response. Another student in the class wrote "Hey guys it's me George Washington! I just wanted to thank the Electoral College for voting me in. I don't want the citizens of America setting up political parties. My Inaguration is in a few days and everyone is welcome! If your interested in being part of my cabinet of advisors tweet back @itsGeorgeW." His message was simple, but it covered everything we asked of him and he even went ahead to create a handle. Over all, the day went very well and aside from better time management, I wouldn't want to change anything that happened that day.
February 22, George Washington's birthday, my group of Social Studies Super Star began to teach the 5th-grade class about the United States as a Young Nation. In 1789 Washington became the first president of the USA by a unanimous vote in the electoral college. Practically every person in the US wanted Washington to lead us as our first president except for Washington himself. As we taught the class these interesting facts, we implemented several strategies to help the students remember key vocabulary. I made sure that everytime a vocabulary word came up, I would either have the students say it with me or repeat it after me in a choral response. This was a great way to get the students to start internalizing this new vocabulary. After every two slides, we asked the students to answer check for understanding questions that were based on the information they had just learned. Our group also made sure to get an answer from each group around the room to ensure that everyone was engaged. To manage our classroom, we implemented two techniques to ensure that they were listening and following directions. First, we used a method called "give me five" to get the students' attention. When someone in our group said this the students would hold up five fingers as the teachers counter backwards to one. Using the "give me five" method to get the students attention worked pretty well. I wish it got the students' attention a bit faster, like if the student had to respond right when the teacher said even me five instead of a count down. I feel like the count down took a while for them to become quiet and I wish it had a more imediate respones, like the hands on top everybody stop. The second technique we used for behavior management, was the use of SWAG dollars. These were 5 dollar notes that the students could earn in their table groups if they did something positive such as answering a question, copying down notes on their note sheet, or were quiet while others were talking. The student would have to give us back SWAG dollars if they did something negative, such as, talking over others or not following directions. Each group started off with 10 SWAG dollars and had the goal of earning 25 before the end of each lesson. On our first day, all five groups earned 30 SWAG dollars. Overall the students were very well behaved and only lost a dollar when they had to return to their seats after the vocabulary game because they were taking far too long to quite back down. The vocabulary game was the most unsucessful part of our lesson. The game itslef ran pretty smoothly and all of the students found thier matches in the first round, but the time management of the game was our down fall. We began having each pair stand up and read thier tags. It was taking far too long to get through everybody and the time was getting to be 11:30. To ensure that the students had the opportunity to complete thier independent practice, I made the call to wrap up the game early. We only had four pairs left, but there was no way to get through all four and thier independent practice. I felt like in the moment that my group members were not happy with my decision, but I would not have changed what I did. In the end, we got some very well written responeses and some that were very dissaponitng to recive. One student wrote "I learned nothing" on his Tweet, which I was very unhappy that he did not even try to put effort in his response. I believe that that student was one of the children that came in late to our session, so he may have missed a lot of the lesson, but I was still dissapointed with is response. Another student in the class wrote "Hey guys it's me George Washington! I just wanted to thank the Electoral College for voting me in. I don't want the citizens of America setting up political parties. My Inaguration is in a few days and everyone is welcome! If your interested in being part of my cabinet of advisors tweet back @itsGeorgeW." His message was simple, but it covered everything we asked of him and he even went ahead to create a handle. Over all, the day went very well and aside from better time management, I wouldn't want to change anything that happened that day.
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