Second Day of Teaching!

Today my group and I taught our inquiry lesson and cooperative learning! Between planning cooperative learning, and inquiry lessons, and creating activities, to say the least, this has been the most stressful week in my life. I am aware that being a teacher is going to put me in a challenge sometimes, but trying to juggle creating lessons, along with 5 other courses wasn't easy. Let's just say I fell behind in a few of my other classes. My group and I worked on these lessons for a week straight after we were finished working on direct instruction. We worked together in the library from 7pm- 12/1am. I am so happy with the work my group and I put into these lessons. We work so well together, between sharing ideas and putting those ideas to the lessons. I wouldn't have wanted to spend that much time with anyone else. Thursday came along and we taught inquiry and cooperative learning lessons. Both of our lessons were lengthy. Before we began we were nervous that we weren't going to have enough time to complete cooperative learning. 

We began our lesson by reviewing what we taught in our direct instruction lesson. After that, we began our inquiry lesson. The inquiry lesson was interesting. The inquiry lesson method is different than direct instruction. It involves the students using the information they learned in the previous lesson and conduct an investigation. This promotes independence and the use of the scientific method. The lesson was like a story. The students had to help Columbus fund his "5th voyage". We told the students to come up with a hypothesis for a statement given to help persuade the king and queen to fund Columbus again. I wish we would have done this differently because some of the students didn't take the hypothesis seriously, and they created a silly one. We split the students into 4 different groups. The inquiry lesson was more like a "treasure" hunt. We began by telling the students to check under their desks for a map and letter from Christopher Columbus asking them to help him fund his 5th voyage to the America's. The students were excited when we told them to look under their desk. After they found the map and note the students had to work on the first task given by Columbus. The first task was to find the countries that Columbus gave the coordinates to. The 2 important countries found was Spain and America. The students seemed to enjoy this part of the lesson. The lesson continued and the students continued to receive letters from Columbus if they got the previous answer correct. The inquiry lesson ended with the students having to decode a thank you letter from Columbus using key terms. 

After the inquiry lesson we transitioned into cooperative learning... keep in mind we only had 13 minutes to teach and have the students present our cooperative learning lesson. Cooperative learning is when students work together to and create a group project that they will present and reflect on. Collaboration in the classroom is extremely important. It allows students to build on social skills and engages students. Each student had their own role in our cooperative learning lesson. They assigned to be a scribe, illustrator, volume controller, facilitator, grammar checker, and keeping your group members on task. Each teacher was assigned a group and our job was to watch over the group and make sure they were doing the right thing and keeping on task. The cooperative learning lesson consisted of the students creating a poem based off the topic given. Each group had a different topic from the direction instruction information taught in the previous lesson. I felt as if we were rushing the students to complete the task, but that was because was only had 5 minutes to have the students share what they worked on. I don't think that we should have planned differently because there was just not enough time for cooperative learning and inquiry in one hour. It was impossible. We were on such a tight time limit. My group and I were so stressed because we worked so hard on the lessons and they didn't go as planned because of time. I understand that no teacher, lesson, or class is perfect but this was upsetting to us because we put our all into these 2 lessons.

I am forever greatful to have been placed in the group One Happy Globe. We worked so well together and I think we came up with 3 wonderful lessons. We've became so close from spending so many hours in the library together for 2 weeks straight. I wouldn't have wanted to learn, and teach without any of these girls! I am excited to watch the last two groups teach next week & the week after!