Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Amelia Earhart Lesson

Amelia Earhart Lesson Plan

Today I was able to teach my first lesson with the second grade class here at Carroll Academy. My teacher asked me to teach about Amelia Earhart. I spent all Saturday looking for things I could do with her and came up completely empty. Finally, I asked the woman I live with (Rosemary) how she taught it when she was in second grade. She couldn't really suggest anything, but said the words 'paper airplane'. My struggle was that I knew my objective, but could not find an assessment to match it. With her suggestion however, I was able to find an assessment that matched what I was teaching (namely, write facts about Amelia on the paper airplane.)

Applause
  • I really made sure that I was in control of the classroom.
  • The projector idea Did Not work, so I kicked it out and did something different.
  • I made sure that I changed the pitch of my voice
  • I was excited about the subject and teaching it.
  • I was completely prepared to teach the subject. The note cards were under their desks.
  • I elaborated slightly on every fact to give the kids a feel for the woman.
  • I made sure everyone was able to contribue to the classroom.

Suggestions
  • I should have tested the projector first.
  • Those stupid behavior expectations- I did not set them.
  • I need to work on my timing. That lesson should not have lasted that long. These are second graders for Pete's sake!
  • Be more fair when partitioning out work.


After the lesson we watched a short animated clip from Discovery Streaming (The Time Warp Trio), and I asked them to write a story about what they think happened when Amelia Earhart disappeared. A handful of them were able to do it, but most of them it was like pulling teeth to get them to engage their creative minds. Aa. had /good/ ideas, but REFUSED to share them in front of the class. Jac. did the same thing. Mayl. seems to struggle with vocalization of her thoughts all around, and it makes me wonder about her. I am going to keep an eye on her and see if I can't get her to start vocalizing more. To give them an example of the kind of story I wanted I did a short shared writing experience with them where I wrote and they gave me the ideas. I'm not sure if it helped because we ran out of time... but I can only hope. I want them to come back to this, because there are SEVERAL lessons that we can teach from this one piece of writing.

I think I am going to email Dr. Wilcox and Dr. Morrisson to see what they suggest to get these kids writing. Some of them love it. I was surprised out of my socks by Edw. He really wrote a good start to a story with lots of details. Some of the other kids though complained that they were 'bad' writers or 'couldn't' think of anything. All of these kids can write, but somewhere they were told they were bad. I intend to find out where this came from and do my best to erase it!

Randomly- The kids enjoyed talking about their answers in groups. They really did. Alex even asked if they could do some more of that. I'm going to incorporate that into my future lesson plans.

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