Experience Social Studies

I am all about variety in the classroom!  Here are various ways to make social studies come alive for students:

*primary sources
*re-enacting
*current events (newspaper, magazines, etc)
*guest speakers
*field trips
*movies
*music
*art
*props/costumes
*timeline
*map
*children's literature (especially ones from various cultures so children have various perspectives on the same event)

What Do You Think Of....

I like the introductory activity that goes something like this:

What do you think of when I say...penguin?!

Or what do you think of when I say...Greece?

Whatever the topic is for that day, you use the word instead and write their answers on the board, overhead, Smart Board, etc...

It gets your students thinking about the topic and you can assess them on what they already know and what connections they have already with the topic.  Not bad, eh?  Easy, fun, AND useful! :)

Vocab Fun and Plus

Here's a few activities to learn vocab!

Cubing:  making paper cubes with questions such as:  1.  What does it look like?  2.  Where does it live?  3.  What does it feel like?  Etc.  Can be used as activity in the beginning to assess what students know already, in the middle to expand their knowledge, or at the end to assess what they have learned.  You can even use this for math problems as shown below!

Connect To:  giving students words or having them come up with 2 lists of words, and then have students connect one word from one list to another word in the other list.  They can be a stretch but it really makes them think.  The activity can show you if students have any misconceptions about any of the words and the level of comprehension the students are at. 

Manipulative Graphic Organizers:  give your students words that can be put into categories and straws and let them take it away!  This can be used for vocab in any subject:  math (real numbers, non real numbers, integers, etc); science (warm-blooded, cold-blooded, mammals, birds, etc) social studies (Northeastern states, Southern states, etc); word study (nouns, adjectives, etc)...you get idea!  I like that it's a hands-on graphic organizer!

Ron Clark

So I have been reading a book called The Essential 55 by Ron Clark, and it is SUCH a fabulous book!  I recommend everyone to check it out!  Ron Clark just inspires you to be a passionate teacher like no other!  Check out the website:  http://www.ronclarkacademy.com/!

Koool Subjects

Math.  Science.  Social Studies.  Reading.  Writing.  Sound familiar?  Uh duh!

Well, why spin those names into something fun and creative?!  Writing can be Author Time!  Who says it can't?! Kids will be more excited about going to Author Time rather than to...Writing.

I'll be honest, I totally stole this idea from Educating Esme:  A Diary of a Teacher's First Year.  But then again, teachers don't steal ever...they borrow! :)

So be creative and come up with your own cool names for subjects!  If anything, you can always purchase the book.  When our professor read it to us, I absolutely loved it!  It's definitely worth having this in your library!

Spelling on the Ceiling

Want your students to know all the spelling words?!  Put them on the ceiling!  Even before the end of the year, they'll know all the words already without a problem!

Yes, they can obviously cheat during tests but they'll know them so well by the end that it'll be worth it.  Since that's what matters in the end, right?!

Where Are You?

So in curriculum, my professor modeled a very awesome lesson for us today about latitude!

Before we went outside, she passed out two note cards randomly to each student with the vocabulary and their degrees latitude on a separate card:

North/South Pole
Arctic Circle /Antarctic Circle
Equator
Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn
Southern/Northern Hemisphere

Outside, in chalk, she drew an "earth" with the mentioned above words but unlabeled of course.  She placed a student at the North Pole with a scarf on and another student at the South Pole with ear muffs on indicating cold.  At the equator she had a student on each side sitting on beach chairs with sunglasses and hats indicating lots of sun.  That  was really cool because it was such a great visual!

Then, she placed a boat in the middle of the ocean and said it was lost.  How were we to find it?  This is where the importance of latitude and longitude came in!  That day we only focused on latitude but you can introduce longitude and its importance or save it for the next day.  This was a really great way to relate to students because at some point, they have probably got lost somewhere before.

After everything was in place, we started putting our note cards on the corresponding lines on latitude.  While we're doing this, we had a worksheet with a circle on it to place what we had on our "earth" already.  Having a sheet to fill out as we go makes it less possible for students to stop paying attention once they were done placing the cards they had in their hands.

It was so hands-on and even though I obviously knew all these concepts, I think from a child's point of view, I would've remembered it a lot better than just sitting in class and doing a worksheet!

Hands On...All the Way!

While doing my astronomy homework, I realized just how important hands-on/real life experiences are because if I didn't have my astronomy lab today, I would've had no idea how to do this homework.  Eventually, I would've figured it out, but it would probably take up hours to do so.

Therefore, the idea of hands-on activities was reinforced even more for me.  That is, once again, what I keep in mind for my lessons.  Yes, not absolutely everything is going to be hands-on and interactive BUT it definitely has to be a big part of your students' experiences!  Working collaboratively in groups or with a partner (aka cooperative learning) is so crucial to the classroom!!

"I" Goals

I realize now that my blog has a little of a...I don't know, a problem maybe.  As I have learned in curriculum, it's important to look at the end goals and what students are going to learn.  An activity may be really good, fun, and creative (like I'm all for) but students might not learn much from it.  Nevertheless, I still want to keep writing my blog and it's here for inspiration to you all!  

It's important for students to have personal goals in what they're going to learn.  Therefore, in the beginning of a lesson, students can write "I will learn...".  When students have a goal in mind, they will learn better and be more attentive (hopefully) since they have a goal to achieve here!  They can even share those goals with a partner to be accountable for their goal and to have a sense of community!

Goldfish and Dog Food

Today's post is actually going to be more of a lesson to us teachers rather than just an activity.  Never thought I would learn something blog worthwhile in my astronomy class, but I did.  Amazing!  My professor had a pretty interesting story so I have to share.

The activity is pretty cool I guess.  All kids probably love experiments so either as a class or individually, you can set up this experiment and find out a thing or two maybe. 

The experiment goes like this:

There's 4 different fish bowls. 
One golfish (the control) is in freshwater and eats fishfood.
Another fish is in freshwater but eats dog food.
Another fish is in saltwater and eats fish food.
Another fish is in saltwater and eats dog food.

Which fish is better off?  Well, that's for you and your class to find out.

What was really fun (and really sad at the same time) with my professor's story was the following:

His daughter got points off because she didn't have a control in her experiment (yes, she did have the fish in freshwater that eats fish food).  The moral of the story is:  teachers, know your facts (as obvious as that sounds). 

Have a happy Wendesday :)

Art & Music

What a great way to start the semester...I already learned the importance of incorporating art and music in your classroom.  I never thought about it but it's quite a great idea I would say!

As an introduction to her class, she  turned on "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong and flipped through the colorfully illustrated What a Wonderful World book.  It was awesome!

After that, we used 3 symbols to describe the 3 most important things in our lives (of course mine were my Jesus, my husband, and my baby)!  It was a creative way to introduce ourselves to each other!

Anticipation Guides

Recently, I came across a very good section in a textbook with good ways to teach reading and writing.  Some of them I remember using in my school/college years and some are new that I have never seen before.

The first activity mentioned was an anticipation guide.  I remember doing one in my first  year of college and it was pretty interesting finding out the stereotypes I had.  It's amazing how you can change your mind after reading something or after looking closely into why you think the way you think.

An anticipation guide is pretty simple.  Just need to know the facts before giving it out to your students.  Examples of various kinds are shown below:

 

Word Wall

As a classroom or on an individual basis, create a word wall.  For lower elementary, ask your students to cut out (or as assistance from an adult if required) words they recognize...on cereal boxes, in magazines, whatever it may be. 

For older elementary, have them cut out words they like the sound of, that they recently learned, or a word they would like to learn. 

This can even be a bulletin in your room with colorful words out of various places your kids bring!  This bulletin is so easy to make, that it requires your kids to work, not you!

Another option is for you to make your own words to put on this wall that you want your kids to learn, but that doesn't require any contribution from your students, thus, not as engaging.