I spent my January winter session student teaching fourth grade. I was very excited to be given the responsibility to teach the students an entire unit in science on Electricity and Magnetism. Using the state standards and the school districts objectives for each lesson I tied in science with other subjects including: math (graphing), language arts, social studies (compass rose, history of magnets), art, and technology.
"Watt" in the world are atoms?
I was also given the opportunity to teach using my own ideas on several occasions. I had such a wonderful time in the fourth grade and am going to miss the class dearly.
I was given many great opportunities in this classroom including offering extra help to students Monday and Tuesday mornings to prepare for both the NYS ELA and math exam. In addition, I was able to bring in hands-on activities to prepare students for the math exam including measurement. Students were given the opportunity to create their own origami frogs. They then measured the distance their frog jumped using a ruler. Also, students learned how to convert measurements and were able to create a “Gallon man” or “Gallon woman.” These hands-on visuals helped students learn concepts in a fun, creative way.
Also, while I spent my time in this classroom, students were working on a unit on Native Americans. Students were assigned groups and a tribe. They were given approximately 45 minutes each day to gather information and were then asked to teach to the class in a creative way. Students came dressed as Native Americans, put on skits, read stories they created, played games, etc. I was involved in this unit as well and was able to teach the students about wampum belts. It also happened to be one of my supervised lessons. Click the picture below to learn more about the lesson.
Wampum Belt Bulletin Board
*updated February 7th 2009
