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Field Notes 9- 4/12 and 4/16. Interdisciplinary Lessons and Projects
4/12/13
- Today at my field placement I had first and second graders.
- Since PSSA’s had just ended, the students were happy to be finished
- My mentor teacher decided we would do a low key lesson.
- I read students a fun and interesting book about Butterflies
- The students all seemed to really enjoy the book and remained engaged
- One section of the book talked about the biggest and smallest butterflies, and told what countries they come from.
- I used this as a chance to make the lesson interdisciplinary.
- The students and I looked at a globe and found the countries where these butterflies were from
- We then found each of their home countries, or the country their family comes from, on the globe as well.
- We compared the location of these countries to both the US and the countries where the butterflies came from.
- I learned that it could be easy to make a lesson cover multiple disciplines.
- I also saw how engaged the students became when I directly related a lesson to them, and they got to participate in a hands on way.
- At school on this day, most of the teachers were wearing shirts to support Autism Awareness
- One student asked a question- “What’s Autism?”
- My mentor teacher and I found that it was difficult to describe, especially to a child with a language barrier
- Between classes we talked to the Special Education Teacher, and she talked to us about a good way to tell the children about it. She also suggested a good book to read to students about Autism.
- This was positive collaboration amongst teachers. My mentor teacher made an effort to speak to one of her colleagues, knowing that her colleague would be able to help.
4/16/13
- I started the afternoon with fifth graders, who had been working on a reading comprehension activity in class, and their teacher wanted them to continue working on it in ELL
- They had to read a kid’s news magazine and then answer questions about it
- The students told me they do this activity every week.
- This was surprising to me- I didn’t think the students were getting very much from it.
- I understand the importance of reading comprehension skills and also keeping up with current events but it seems repetitive to me.
- Today (Tuesday), I continued my Butterfly lesson from Friday with the first and second graders.
- Each student received an outlined picture of a butterfly
- Below the butterfly, the first graders had to write a sentence using a “movement word,” the verbs they have been learning about
- Examples: A butterfly soars, Butterflies can fly, etc.
- The students told me they do this activity every week.
- The second graders wrote a more advanced sentence.
- The students also translated (from memory or using a dictionary) the word butterfly into their second language and wrote it under the English word butterfly.
- Good way to incorporate their other language/culture, while still teaching English
- The students then colored the butterflies using bright markers
- The students were very proud of their projects
- My mentor teacher is going to hang them around the classroom
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