Me: "How might the American Indians who lived in the area have felt about this settlement?"
Student #1: They might feel disappointed because the English settlers came to the marsh and took their Friday afternoon hangout spot.
Student #2: Yeah. That's where they eat lasagna.
Anyone wanna guess which students?
Once a week, my 5th graders go to the Computer Lab for an hour. I'm so very lucky to have a Tech Facilitator that is super cooperative, flexible and willing to let me direct some of my kids' weekly computer time.
At this point in the year, there are a few things that my class is required to do when they get to the lab:
- A Fasttmath lesson
- Any outstanding AR tests (at their own motivation)
- Check their blogs to approve and reply to comments (to maintain good PR with their visitors)
Occasionally they may have an additional assignment from myself or the tech facilitator, but often they are isolated tasks simply directed at practicing skills in keyboarding, word processing, etc. It is rare (and exciting) when I'm able to extend a few classroom units/projects into the lab, which the students can independently complete.
Yesterday was one of those instances where my Social Studies Unit had a built-in extension with a website, where information on the excavation of the Jamestown settlement is available. I posted the assignment on my blog, and prepped my kids for two minutes about their task.
They were to visit my blog to find the assignment, follow the directions, and submit what they learned. They had two options to turn in their work: leave a comment or share a Google Doc.
- Fifteen students left comments on the blog post
- Eight students worked through Google Docs and shared them with me
- One student was emailed the assignment since he was sick (still waiting for him to complete)
- All students in class completed the task without me there
- Variety of responses from students
- Students who chose to respond with a comment were able to instantly view their classmates' responses on the blog
- Do I want conversation between students in the comment section of the blog post?
- Students who submitted their learning through Google Docs received an embedded feedback from me in their Google Docs
- Do I want to provide individual feedback to all students? Is it necessary for this activity?
I'd love to do something like this again. Luckily, the website was provided to me by my resources and it was completely student appropriate. Finding the right site to direct students to, and also have it pertain to our classroom learning will most likely be the obstacle that would prevent me from doing this type of computer lab activity soon.
Today I think I successfully integrated my district reading resources with my own social studies ones, without my kids noticing what I was doing. First time EVER!
Identifying and understanding text features is covered in our building reading program and it was time to review this concept, but I still wanted to press on with my social studies program since we've had so many days off in the past two weeks. Two snow/cold days. A conference day. A waiver day. A holiday. it's taken forEVER to finish this chapter, which should have only taken six days.
Instead of using the suggested model non-fiction text from the reading program, I used our Social Studies Alive! textbooks as a whole-group model. We made a list of the text features we could name off from memory and talked through them before turning the kids loose to find more in their books with a partner.
I pulled some of the reading program tips and encouraged the kids to make mental lists while thumbing through the chapter we are currently studying in Social Studies, then sharing their thoughts with their partner and then finally writing their ideas down on paper.
They worked pretty well for about ten minutes, and then we shared together as a group. We added to our class list and pointed out examples in the text so everyone could find them and spent a little while explaining what kind of information each feature provides. Some of the tricky ones were map scale and map legend/key, but I'm glad we covered those.
Later in the day, I pulled small groups to do guided readings through our Weekly Readers, continuing to point out the text features and important information that each provides. A lot of the kids noticed the maps this time around.
Then in the afternoon we wrapped up our Social Studies with some map skills, which they were required to study the map scale to answer some of the questions. Everything just seemed to work well together, and the kids didn't need to be reminded what a map scale was.
Looking back on it, I was able to cover the reading skills I wanted to review, while continuing to finish up our social studies chapters and incorporating our Weekly Readers, which I tend to fall behind on.
If only every week started off with a day off so that I could have enough time to plan thoroughly, every day could be as smooth.