Telecommunications and 7 year olds

I am really struggling coming up with a lesson to use telecommunications with my 2nd graders. Very difficult figuring out a way to use telecommunications as the learning tool for such young students. I am kind of not really sold on telecommunications being at all effective with any elementary aged students. I guess time will tell.

Well a week after my lesson and it went very well. Eight year olds needed much assistance with the website as they have little experience with websites, but they were able to come up with accurate lists and made some choices for a new infielder for the Nationals. I enjoyed the interaction the kids had with the site and their enthusiasm with the end result.

Lesson 1

Well, I did my Washington Nationals lesson last week. It went pretty well. The kids could not believe I knew someone that worked with the Nationals. They had so many questions. I felt terrible stretching my tall tale with them. The lesson went great. We did not finish it as it extends over a few days, but the kids were so pumped and excited to get to work on it. I am anxious to see how they respond over the next couple of days with the lesson. I am waiting for the parents to start asking me to get autographs for them.

Google Earth

Keeping with the whole authentic problem thing, I couldn't really think of anything authentic to introduce the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains to my class with. I had some ideas, but really nothing I could use as few of my students have really ever been out of the immediate area. The only thing I could think of was using Google Earth for them to adventure through the two mountain regions. Using the smart board we were able to really get a great perspective of the two ranges. Students were able to interact with the site by zooming in and out as well as traveling in all directions within the mountains. There were several pictures linked to areas on Google Earth that provided images of the actual mountains. Students were easily able to compare the two ranges. Not only were we able to identify the location of both ranges, but students were able to gain an appreciation for the terrain. I may now be able to incorporate some authentic problems to go along with these mountain ranges for different curricular area.

Authentic problems

I have been trying to incorporate more authentic problems as I am introducing and carrying out my lessons. I have found students to be more responsive and motivated to what the lesson was all about, I am yet to see results in assessments, but it should all come to light very soon. Stay tuned.

Making it real

I designed a lesson today for a large group of my lower math students involving place value. The past few days I have found a group of students that were just not comprehending the place value blocks. While continuing the lesson the next day (today), I used familiar objects like pennies and dimes to represent tens and ones. I also used small noodles and large noodles as well. Students were able to associate the the differentiated materials with the standard materials used for identifying and associating tens and ones. By the end of the lesson my lower the majority of my lower achieving students were able to positively use tens and ones blocks to assist them with place value. More differentiating will be needed to help those not getting it. Live what you learn, learn what you live.

witnessing others approach to design

As a result of mandatory LEARN model in planning team lessons, It has been interesting to see how my colleagues approach their designing of their plans. As a team we are required to keep a collection of LEARN plans. We write them as we make plans for our classroom lessons. We then share the plans during our weekly collaboration meetings. It is kind of interesting to see what is important to the different teachers and their style of teaching in their LEARN lessons.