Chandra Ely --- My First almost full week of teaching

This past week I taught every day we had school (4 days). I am teaching all of my teaching supervisors social studies classes. This allows me to get all of my hours in and it helps him out as well. This week we began talking about WWI. I began with a lecture (which included a power point) on Monday. I provided the students with a note taking based on my power point with areas for them to fill in. I was advised that I needed to do this because the students would not take notes on their own or pay attention with out it.

On Tuesday we began with a partner journal activity. They had to put themselves in WWI and tell me what and who they were, what was going on, the supplies they had, and their reactions and interactions. I told them to pretend that they were writing a movie script of their experiences in WWI. I asked them to be creative while at the same time staying true to WWI. Some of my students were very creative and really go into it. This took the whole class period but was well recieved by the students and got them to put think about WWI from the perspective of someone who was there. On Wednesday we began by getting into our journal groups for the second half of the activity. What I did was to give them a "New Scenario" after which they had to write a reaction together. The new scenario I gave them was: it rained for a week and there was flooding and mud slides. Based on who/what they were and where they were, the groups had to describe what was happening to them and their reaction(s) in detail. They had about 10 minutes to complete this before we moved on to a map. I plan to have them complete one to two more WWI journal activities and then have them present their best one (the one that they decide is their best) to the class. I think that it will be fun and interesting to see what they have come up with.

I gave the students a blank world map and together (guided practice) using colored pencils, we colored in the Allied Powers, the Central Powers, and the Neutral Countries from WWI. This allowed the students to see the locations of those countries involved as well as size and strength. It also helps them to make inferences about the outcome of the war as well as other things. We did not get finished with the maps and so we decided to finish them on the next day. On thursday (the day before spring break) I decided that I wouldn't start any new material. So we finished the maps and I asked some open questions about the maps and had them turn them in for points and because I plan to have them do a similar map for WWII and then have the students compare and contrast the two maps and write down what they can tell from the two maps about changes, differences, and similarities from WWI and WWII. We also had a discussion of the bell ringers from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; each of which built upon the other (about the jobs of women, men, and minorities during WWI). I printed off the three slides I had from my power point and put them up on the ELMO to help generate discussion. This went very well.

When we come back from Spring Break we will be finishing up WWI on Monday and Tuesday, using the power point and lecture, and the note guide. We will also be doing a photograph analysis of pictures from WWI. We will do one in class on Tuesday and then they will do one on their own for homework. I haven't assigned homework yet, so this will be the first time that they will have gotten homework from me. On wednesday we will be having a 10 question quiz on WWI. The questions come straight from the note taking guide that I provided, so they will already have a study guide.

After the quiz on Wednesday, we will wrap-up WWI and move on to WWII. I'll spend about a week to week and half on WWII and then move on to the Cold War. I will spend about the same amount of time on the cold war as on WWI and WWII. At the end of the Cold War the students will present a project on the Cold War and have a Unit test on Conflict. I will not provide a study guide because they will have one if they have filled out all of the note taking guides provided. But I do plan to review with them the day before by playing jeopardy with an interactive power point. That's all for now. I know it's a lot but I wanted to put it all down.