Week 7:

I can't believe next week is our last class, time has flown by. I have really enjoyed this class and everyone in it. :) I have already turned in all of my lesson plans, so I do not have one to share tonight. What I did want to touch on was how great blogging is. Now don't get me wrong, the one thing I totally dislike about blogging compared to doing our regular discussion posts is that I have to go to each and every person's blog and respond that way...it's totally time consuming. What I like about this format is that we are able to access it...well forever! LOL Unless the person that creates the blog deletes their page, we will have access to all the awesome lesson plans that everyone has shared here. So, that makes it worth the time to me. :)

Tonight's class was pretty interesting as well...we were split into two groups. My group was assigned chapters 9 and 10 in our Ruddell book and we were to create 2 lesson plans in any content area, any grade and focus on creating DOK questions for the assessment part of our lesson plans and the other one was to create DOK questions for the struggling and accelerated learners. I really enjoyed seeing how to create DOK questions for each and every part of our lesson plans. I usually put all of the DOK questions in the pre-assessment/hook areas and some in the teacher's action part. I have not put them further into the lessons at all, so it was nice to see how it worked out and that it really is possible to include DOK questions anywhere in our lessons. We ended our class by listening to our peers teach us a lesson that they created. It is always fascinating to see which lessons we choose to share.

I wish everyone good luck in their future endeavors and hope I hear only great things about each and every one of you during your teaching careers!

Week 6: Hooks

     Tonight we listened to our peers give a lesson and provided them with feedback. Everyone did so great and had some really awesome ideas for lesson plans. After everyone scheduled to share their lesson was over, we turned our attention to hooks. Hooks are what gets ours students excited for the lesson or helps prepare them for what we will be discussing for the class. I always try and think of something really fun, but the more and more lesson plans I create, the more I realize that it cannot always be something different and I might repeat some of the same strategies over and over. As long as my students are interested, that is all that matters. I want them to be drawn in and not bored, so I will try not to use the same hook every single time.

     One of my lessons I decided to do about organ systems in the body and how they work together. This lesson will probably take more than one day, but keep them busy with mini-activities for each and every organ system. For instance, to show the digestive system (stomach part), I will use crackers and orange juice and have them squish it around together in a baggy to show how the digestive juices mix and churn together.   My hook for this lesson will be a mind mapping activity to see what body systems are and then I will also read a magic school bus book, “Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body” to get them into thinking more clearly about the different systems. I will put them into groups and give them butcher paper to trace around the body of one of their classmates so that they are able to correctly label all the body systems on the paper large enough to see them. This lesson is full of activities and will keep my students busy learning! :)

Week 5: Tonight's Class

Tonight was a pretty good class. We went in detail about what our DOK questions should like in our lesson plans and I got to share a lesson plan with the class. I chose to share a lesson plan I had not shared already on my blog because I wanted to get additional feedback on a different lesson. :) I think this lesson was the best one I had created yet in terms of having all the components our lessons needed. I absolutely love getting to do lesson plans for any subject and grade level that we want to. It really helps me not stress as much about fitting it all together into one unit plan. I know others really like doing one thematic unit, but I like that this will help us to plan for when we are teaching our own classes. Some of us will be teaching all subjects everyday, so getting in this practice is very nice! :) Picking a grade level is nice as well because at the school I currently work at we have combined grade levels at all levels and currently only have 2 teachers to split up K-5th grade students. Our 6-12 graders are currently split up together into 3 classrooms. It's not the best set-up but we make it work with what we have. So again, this is just helping me to be able to prepare for what I really want to do.

5th Grade Science Lesson Idea

Ok, so I'm trying to come up with ideas for a lesson on physical properties vs. chemical properties. I love using water/ice/steam to explain the difference in physical properties and then some ideas I have seen on chemical change would be something that has been caught on fire, or something rusted, or the good ol' bake a cake to help show that once it has gone through these changes it cannot go back to the way it was and that is what makes the difference. All could be really fun to do, but some would take longer than others to show or be dangerous (fire). I'm considering the Hook to be something other than a video because I use videos a lot for my hook...Maybe a brainstorming activity to see what prior knowledge they have? Or maybe just a question on the board that they answer in their journals and then we begin class with what they were thinking? Maybe using one of the strategies here like Knowledge Mapping? I could have both terms, Physical changes and Chemical changes, listed on the board and tell them to brainstorm key terms or ideas they have about these two phrases. This would help me know how much more detail I need to go into for these two terms.

The bulk of the lesson will be showing them the different physical changes water goes through and how no matter what stage water is in, it can always go back to water. For the chemical side I might be able to have something already baked and all the ingredients beside it to show that no matter what I do to the cake, it will never be able to go back to the ingredients it started as? Or maybe I give a group of students each a cupcake and have them tell me the different parts they "see" in the cake and what I could do to get it back to the original ingredients and see what they come up with?

I'm thinking for the exit slip/closure part of class they would be shown either videos or pictures of different objects and then they have to tell me if it went through a chemical or a physical change and how they know?

I still need to think about what I could do for those struggling and those that are excelling, but I think this could be a really fun lesson!

Lesson Planning

I always tend to overthink my lesson plans...I want to be able to use them later if I need them, so I want everything to be perfect...or at least close to perfect. :) I started in class on Monday creating a lesson plan for 5th grade math. I do not really enjoy math per say, but I need to know how to teach the various skills and techniques for math so that I am able to help my students. The thing I struggled with was the strategy to use for my math lesson...I decided to create a round robin sort of activity where the kids rotate activities after a certain amount of time. I have not decided how many days this activity should last or how long would be beneficial at each station? I want it to be long enough that everyone gets to participate, but not so long that it would become boring. The activities I was thinking of deal with volume. The "hook" would be a video on volume found here that is set to the song of "Happy", I thought it was catchy and would be a fun starter! :) The activities I thought about using would be creating our own cubic units with paper that I found here, a station where they read the book "Perimeter, Area, and Volume A Monster book of Dimensions" by David A. Adler, and finally a station where they measure the length width and height of sample household items found here. I wasn't sure if it would be best to do all three or focus on the first two so we could spend more time on them and then do the last one, the measuring one as a closure activity or homework? The strategies I was considering using are either the I-say chart on page 65, the knowledge map or knowledge ladder on page 72-74, the Frayer model for math on page 86, or the KWL Chart on page 136. Anyone use any of these strategies for a math lesson or have a better idea?

#1 Non rhyming Poem

Carrie

Patient, Kind, Caring, Loving

Wife of Shawn, Mother of Macy

Lover of my family, friends, and order!

Who feels loved, cherished, and needed.

Who fears being alone, snakes, and pain.

Accomplishments include my daughter, going back to college, and being married to the same man for 13 years!

Who would like to see a woman president, a cure for cancer, and world peace. 

Resident of Columbia, MO.

Shackelford