Oh, the Places We'll Go!

This week, I got very crafty and thought outside the box. First, I have a major assignment for school in which I had to teach a particular unit and present the content to the class besides using the textbook. In this case, I decided to teach the class about light and sound energy. Because I learned from my science professor and reflected on the way he completely changed my lesson plans last semester, I spent hours reasearching ways to present the content while keeping my class engaged and goofing off. Finally, I was successful. One of the lessons talked about the differences between reflection and refraction so I created stations for the students to participate in so that they can see the difference. The morning of the lesson, I set up the following stations:

In the "Rising Coin" experiment, students had to place a coin in the bottom of a bowl and draw their observation. Then, they would need to back away until they could no longer see the coin as one student slowly filled the bowl up with water. The students standing back would see that the coin would appear that it is rising.

In the "Turning Arrow" experiment, students would draw an arrow on an index card and place it behind of a cup of water. The students would find that when placed behind the cup of water, the arrow would turn in the opposite direction. After drawing their obsevation, the students were asked to draw something else on the index card and repeat the same steps.

In the "Bending Pencil" experiment, students had to place a pencil in the empty plastic cup and record their observation. Then, they would place the pencil into the plastic cup full of water and record what they saw. They would see that when placed into the cup of water, the pencil would appear that it bends.

Mrs. H. took some pictures to help build my portfolio when I go in for interviews and she took a lot. Below, one group of students is performing the "Rising Coin" experiment.

Wednesday was a very special day for readers of all ages. March 2nd is known as Dr. Suess's birthday and Mrs. H. and I put our heads together two weeks prior to figure out something special to do with the class to celebrate. Mrs. H. had some ideas in her filing cabinet, but this is actually her first year teaching fourth grade; in the past, she taught kindergarten and first grade, so everything she had was too primary. Instead, I had an idea to have a writing lesson related to the story Oh, the Places You'll Go! The ideas came flowly naturally, so I typed everything out that I needed and printed out the necessary materials needed for my writing unit. I started out reading the story to the class and asked the class to write about their future. These components included writing about what they were going to do over the summer or where they were going, what they were going to do when they graduated high school, what they will do when they become adults such as a career they were wanting to pursue, and where they found themselves ten years in the future. Students were also asked to mention the places they wanted to visit when they got older and famous people they wanted to meet.

Once students wrote about their future, they were asked to transfer one to two key features from each component and write it on an arrow. These arrows were then decorated to however they pleased and attached to their writing.

More than half of the class presented their work on Friday and they expressed how excited they were to tell the class about all of the different places they were going in their life. Mrs. H. also expressed how much she enjoyed watching the students writing. I was so proud of my students that I stayed late on Friday putting together a bulletin board because they worked so hard on this project and it makes my heart happy to know how much they really enjoyed writing about their future.

There are seven weeks left of my student teaching and I know it's going to fly so fast. So, I'm going to make it count and make sure my students have fun learning, just like I did when I was their age.

Until next time,

Sarah