One Happy Globe Teaching!

One Happy Globe

For a week straight my group has been meeting in the library twice a day from 3-5 and then from 7-12 am to prepare for our Direct Instruction lesson we taught today. All this preparation leading up to one hour of teaching. I was so nervous before the lesson today because I thought I would forget to teach some important information! Luckily, from my point of view, the lesson went smoothly and great. I am so proud of myself and my group members #OneHappyGlobe.I truly know what teamwork is after experiencing lesson planning with these ladies. Teaching today came so naturally. I love how we taught the day after Columbus Day! It was so suiting! I believe the 5th-grade class enjoyed our lesson today. We taught the students about Christopher Columbus, The Columbian Exchange, and other explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci.We created a Christopher Columbus web with the students, and a Columbian Exchange interactive activity on a poster board. Towards the end of the lesson, we passed out an exit ticket. This was our independent practice. We were able to see what the students understood and learned by the results of the exit ticket. Some students didn't pay attention to us. We know that because they wrote the wrong answers on their independent practice. I am not sure if the 5th grade sees us as  "real teachers". During the Columbian Exchange, the students came up and placed the items where they thought they belonged. I think we should have done that faster and made sure every student had a turn. For the Columbus web, I think we should have had the students discuss with their tables, and send one member from up to write an answer down. From the video of my group teaching, I noticed that I say "so" a lot. For the future, I will work on not starting every sentence with "so". My group members need to work on not saying "guys". That is something major that stuck out to me while watching us teaching. Overall, the 5th grade was engaged, participating, and active during our lesson. The students were very helpful when teaching our lesson. They excelled with answering our questions when we asked to make sure they understood the content we were teaching. I think the students enjoyed the video, it was a little cheesy but still educational and informational. Something that stuck out to me and that my colleagues told me, was that they loved the rules poster. We came up with the idea of rules and having a rules poster. We stated the rules to the 5th grade & hoped that they would follow to stay in boundaries and stay focused. I thought it was important that we told the students rules because from the first lesson it seemed as if they had rules they would have had less trouble controlling the students. There were a few things we could have done differently now that the lesson has been taught. I am excited to teach Cooperative Learning & the Inquiry lesson on Thursday!