Artifact Bags

Artifact Bag

Today In class we did an artifact bag activity based on our unit plan topics. My topic was on the thirteen colonies. For the activity we had to pick a specific pace or person and then come up with three artifacts that would help the students figure out that place. I chose the colony of Rhode Island. In order to make more authentic artifacts I went to Michael's and got textured paper. I printed out the religious freedom document on this paper and a picture of Roger Williams. I also included a picture of people building ships with lumber. These artifacts went inside a bag that was decorated with the 13 colonies. 

During class we were split into groups to teach our artifact bags too. This is the power point that I used to teach: PPT. In the power point it contains the directions for the activity and a place to record the information they found on the artifact. If I were to use this in a real classroom I would have had my students use their textbooks and the internet to figure out which colony they had. 

I really liked some on my peers artifacts. One of the people in my group used a tea bag to make the paper look distressed and old fashioned. Other people burned the sides of the paper which I thought was really cool. This activity allowed for everyone in the class to be creative and it had great results.

In my future classroom I would really like to use this idea. I think this could be a great get to know you activity in the beginning of the year. Students could create the artifact bag based on themselves. In upper elementary school class this could also be used when teaching about certain topics in history. I think that students would really enjoy this project. 

Current Event Project

Today we presented our current event presentation to the class. I think that it went really well. My partner and I chose to do our current event on changes taking place in elementary school's cafeterias. We had our class read the article we picked and then watch a brief video on how to create a healthy food plate. Afterward we modeled a dinner plate that we made in order to show what the students would be doing in their groups. Then we gave them time to create their own healthy lunches on the power point. The class seemed really engaged and enjoyed the activity. One group even made their lunch a vegetarian lunch because one of the members in their group was a vegetarian! Afterwards we had the students present their plates to the class. 

Here is the link to our power point! 

Reflection: 

Current events are very important to use incorporate in the classroom! There are so many different tools to use when talking about current events. We used this website to help us! I think it is really important for students to know things that are going on in the world and especially things that could effect them. We used Newsela to find the current events for out project. Newsela is a great tool because you can highlight the article, change the reading level and even create quizzes right on the website. What I didn't like about using the website was that it confined us to using just their articles and it was hard to find one that we liked for using the "Create a menu" activity. I felt that our activity went really well. The class all had really nice comments to say about our activity and all of the "wishes" mostly had to do with having more time. We were confined to just ten minutes (we went over a couple minutes). I think the time constraint effected out activity negatively because they didn't have enough time to watch the full video and had to rush in the activity. When doing this a real class I would change the amount of time we had for this activity to be more around 20 minutes to give the students ample time to complete. 

In The Classroom: 

In my future classroom I would love to include current events. Depending on what grade I have the way I teach current events would differ. If I was teaching this to a first grade class I would choose articles that they would understand. Maybe something that was interesting happening in the area. The article would have to be something light and fun because the students are so young. The students could also find their own current events and discuss them in class. If the students are older I could teach using more worldly articles. Things that involve something deeper than I could address in a lower grade classroom. They would be able to have more of discussion about articles including having debates about different opinions. Students could pick a current event and teach that event to the class like we did in class. The articles can be used for other things like sequencing, word hunts, the five w's etc.

 

Inquiry Design Model

I was really interested the see the c3 teachers inquiry design model. I think it was a great template that teachers can follow when design an inquiry lesson. I felt that that when I planned the inquiry lesson it was one of the hardest to come up with and plan for. This was a very explicit design model that states exactly what you need. 

I really liked how the model helped build on the student knowledge. The supporting questions was a great idea to help scaffold the children into understand the bigger question that the lesson is addressing. 

It is also set up in a way that each supporting questions comes with a task that comes with a source. In this model everything is linked together and goes hand in hand. This is something that I can definitely use when I have to plan my inquiry lessons

Fun Ways to Teach Geography!

When I was in school learning about geography, it was pretty boring, Not a lot of teachers tried to make it overly fun or engaging for the students so below I listed some ways that when I am a teacher I would like to use in my classroom!

Adopt a Rock

This idea includes bringing a rock into class and having the students identify where it may have came from, how it was shaped and things like that. Then students can take turns taking the rock home and creating a scrapbook of the rocks adventures! 

Bingo

Everyone knows bingo. I think it could be really fun and great way to review vocabulary by putting down terms on their bingo cards and reading out the definitions! The students will have to listen to the definition and read their terms and match the definition to their terms until someone gets bingo!

Creating Models

I really liked the idea of using the plasticine to create physical features. It can be used to create mountains, valleys, canyons or many other things. It is a more hands on way to learning these features that we see everyday!

Stop Disasters!

I really thought the online stop disasters games was really interesting. I think this was a very fun and captivating way to teach about the effects of natural disasters. I particularly liked how it teaches the students how they can help prevent the disasters and gives them facts to help them.It really is a great learning tool. 

Landscape in a box!

I thought this idea was really interesting and creative. The students can be assigned an area and can create a landscape in a burger box based on the area. This involves students doing a hands on project while doing research on their area. These would be great to display around the classroom!

Before and After pictures!

In this activity students are shown a picture of something and have to make prediction on what happened before the picture and what could have happened after the picture. Students will need to infer from the picture. This works on many different skills

Model your Place on a Paper Plate

This is similar to the burger box one but its more of building on a paper plate. Students can remodel the play ground outside and add more features to how they would like it to be. Or they can change their backyard around and add ponds or trees or anything they can think of 

Shanty Town Game

In this game students have to build a shack in order to protect their children from the rains. Students will be given materials to start to build with and then can "work" in order to get other materials at the teachers discretion. This "work" could be short informational activities. After about a half hour the rain will come and whoever's child remains the most dry wins!

Where is that game?

Before this game the teacher goes around the school and takes pictures at weird angles, close ups, or anything else the teachers can think of to challenge the students observational skills. The students will be given these pictures and have to identify where these pictures were taken. The group who gets the most right wins.

Atlas Race

I like the idea of the atlas race because it exposes the class to places they have never heard of before while teaching them atlas skills. They can also right a brief response on that place once it is found in order to gain more knowledge! 

Pre and Post tests!

During our fieldwork we have to create a pre-test to see what our students already knew! Creating this pretest was more challenging because every group had to contribute questions from their topics. It was also kind of hard to decide what questions we wanted to asked them before we had really fully developed our lesson plans. We weren't sure what aspects we were going to put emphasis on. 

After our fieldwork was over we had to contribute to the post test. We used two questions from the pre-test and two new questions. I thought this was easier because we knew what the goal of our lessons were and what the students should have come away with. I am very curious to find out how the students do on this test because it will show how well we taught our lessons!