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! :)