103 Ways to Teach Geography

I found this presentation to be very interesting; I gained a lot of new, creative ways to teach geography that I can't wait to implement in my own classroom. One of the idea that I really liked was "Go Local" where the students can walk around their neighborhood and take pictures to bring in and share with the class. I think that would be a fun assignment and the students would be able to explore the area around their homes a little bit more. I also like the concept of having students create a 60 second film because little kids love doing things like that where they can be creative and pretend like they're making their own movie. It also develops their ability to summarize a topic because they only have 60 seconds to mention everything that they think is important. The Bingo game seems like a lot of fun too; I remember doing similar activities throughout my elementary school years. The definition would be read by the teacher and the students have to cover the word that goes with that definition. There are numerous other activities in the presentation that I would definitely incorporate within my classroom, but those are 3 of my favorites that I would personally love to do if a teacher assigned these tasks. We also discussed some of our favorite ideas from the presentation with the class and passed around a little Earth while we shared our thoughts.

Reflection Part 2

   I really cannot emphasize enough how much I learned from the fieldwork experience in this class. There were so many little details that I didn't realize were so crucial. My group had a timeline as one of our guided practice activities and I didn't realize that it was important to introduce the timeline during the actual lesson and create one for them to refer to when they make it later on. We created a note sheet for the students to use to follow along while we taught the direct lesson and we added a timeline on to the bottom of the page for students to write down the important events that we wrote on the board, then we had the students refer to that timeline while we filled out the one for the guided practice activity. That was such a minor detail that I didn't think would effect the lesson, but it ended up being extremely useful to have that.
   My group also should've broken up our direct instruction more because there was way too much time spent on lecturing, so the students were getting bored and had a hard time focusing. Overall, our three lessons went pretty well; it's impossible to be perfect, but we did a great job. I think that every group did well, including the first group even though they did make a lot of minor mistakes that all of the other groups were able to learn from and make sure to prevent. There were also good parts to every lessons which helped the group that followed. For example, the first group did artifact bags, but they helped the students too much, gave everyone the same bag, and didn't model the process, so when my group went, we didn't provide as much guidance, gave each student different items, and modeled with another bag. Then group two went and they used different ways to check for understanding and incorporated a note sheet, so my group also took those things into consideration. This fieldwork experience was very informative and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to partake in this experience.

Reflection Time

   I enjoyed our whole fieldwork experience; I learned a lot throughout this process. I've never had to design an inquiry-based or cooperative lesson before, so both of those alone were entirely new experiences that have taught me so much. I learned that inquiry lessons follow a process that's similar to the scientific method. I like this lesson plan because it allows students to really think about the information they just learned in a way that helps them apply it to their task, instead of having them just memorize facts. I find inquiry lessons fun because the students have to solve some sort of puzzle and I've always loved puzzles. I also like cooperative lessons because it allows the students to work together, which they typically find to be a lot more fun. It teaches students how to work as a team and take responsibility for at least one part of the activity. Both of these lessons are also very engaging and student-centered, which is another thing that I really like about them.
   I've learned so much more from our fieldwork experience that I couldn't possibly list everything. I've learned a lot about teaching in general, especially because this was my first time teaching in front of a whole class. One thing that I didn't realize was such a big deal was to always have some way to check that every student knows the answer to a question. For example, when you call on one student, thereat of the class should have to give a thumbs up or thumbs down if they agree or disagree. My teachers never did that when I was in elementary school, so it didn't occur to me that it was such a crucial part of the lesson. I think all of the groups did a great job teaching their lessons, particularly when you take into consideration that very few of us have ever done anything like this before. It was definitely a great learning experience for everyone and I think we all gained a lot of useful information from it.

Group 4

   I genuinely enjoyed group four's lesson; I think that it was extremely engaging and fun for all of the students. They used the same technique that group two used in their direct lesson where the had symbols appear on the board when the students had to write something down. It's a good way to let the students know, as well as a good reminder for the teachers to remember when the students had to write something down. I think that my group should have done that since a couple of the group members kept forgetting to refer to our notes sheet. I also like that the teachers used a booklet instead of just a note sheet because it just makes it look like more fun. The students had many opportunities to participate in the lesson and the teachers had the students actually vote on which ice cream flavor they like better, so they can see how voting works. I think that it was a great way to show the students how what they're learning could be applied to their everyday lives. I also liked their use of vokis to demonstrate what an active and inactive citizen is, but the inactive citizen's dialogue seemed a little too obvious and unnecessary. The vokis should've also been open and ready to go before the students show up since they had a little trouble getting it started. Some of the checks for understanding were a little too much too; at one point, they had the students spin if they agreed with what was being said and some students fell.
   The inquiry lesson started out a little rocky; the students weren't understanding what the teacher was asking, so I think the questions could've been asked differently or the teacher should've figured out a way to make it clearer once she saw that the students weren't understanding it. Besides that, I loved the inquiry lesson! Having the students vote on who would be the best principal and actually ask the candidates questions that they found important was excellent! It showed them how a real election works, especially because they had to go in a voting booth. Some students actually asked who their friends voted for and they wouldn't tell each other because they understood how voting works. One recommendation that I have is that the teachers should have had the candidates' answers typed into the chart, so the students didn't have to spend so much time writing it.
   The cooperative lesson was very short; the students had to create a poster for the candidate that they thought was the best. I think that this wasn't the best idea since not everyone in the group voted for the same person, so there were arguments over who the poster should be based on. There was also no modeling of what was expected of the students. The students seemed to have fun and create great posters though, so I guess the lesson ended up having a good outcome.

Wrapping Up

   We had to create a post-test for the students, which was the same as the pre-test, but we were asked to change two of the questions. I left three questions that I found to be crucial to the information that my group taught. Then I added a multiple choice question about who wrote the Declaration of Independence and a true/false question that asked if Patriots were the people who wanted freedom. I added those two questions because we focused a lot of those two concepts, so I'm hoping those are things that they remembered and took away from our lesson. Pre and post-tests are extremely important to units because you need to assess what students knew before you started teaching, so you can figure out which items you need to spend more time on during the direct lesson. The post-test is a great way to check whether or not the students fully comprehended everything that was taught or if they still only know what they knew before the lesson. I met up with some of my group members and we created our pre-test questions together. I did the post-test questions on my own since we just had to slightly alter it and I asked the other members to look over it and make sure that they approved of the questions. The hardest part about choosing these questions was just figuring out what the most important parts are since we couldn't ask questions about every little thing we taught. It's also tricky sometimes to find the perfect wording for each question in order to avoid any confusion when the students have to take the tests. I used the results of the assessments and lessons to edit my lesson plans in a way that I thought would improve it in the future.

Third Times the Charm

   This week was finally my group's turn to go! Our direct lesson went pretty smoothly, but we ended up running out of time for our independent practice. When we practiced our lesson the night before, we ended up having so much extra time each time we practices, so we tried to go through everything slower when we were actually teaching and I guess we went too slow! Our powerpoint definitely lasted too long and started to bore some of the kids because we were just talking to them for 30-40 minutes. We had checks for understanding after every couple of slides, so the students would have time to participate, but it wasn't enough. We also should have circulated the room more to make sure that the students were staying on track. Some of the teachers also kept forgetting to have the students write words down on their note sheets, so we had to keep going back which wasted some time and made the lesson seem a little disorganized. I think our direct lesson was successful overall, even though we had a few minor mistakes.
   We were the first group to successfully get through both lessons including our independent practices!! Time management is definitely one of the hardest parts about teaching the 2 lessons in one day, but we did it! We also modeled both of the activities well, which was evident when the students clearly understood what they had to do. I think some of our artifact bags were too easy, while some of them may have been too hard. My students guessed the correct event just by looking at the picture on the outside. We originally planned for the timeline to be up on the board while the students were looking through their bags so they could see the different options to help them pick the event on the timeline that their bag went with. My group finished about 2 minutes early and for the cooperative activity, my group finished in about 5 minutes so we had too much extra time. All of the groups seemed to finish early, so we should've moved onto the independent practice sooner. It's so great to finally say that I'm done and all of the long hours I put into working on these lesson plans had actually paid off!

Round Two

   The second group's lessons kept getting post-pined due to the school's 2-hour delays. Despite all of the confusion with the delays, group 2 did an amazing job! They really kept the theme going about the students being explorers. They did a great job keeping all of the students engaged throughout the entire lesson by circling the room and having them put on their "explorer hats." The symbols the teachers put on the board to warn them that they'll have to write something down or put their explorer hats back on was creative and effective. Overall, there weren't really any parts of the lesson that I think I would change. There was one part towards the end where the teacher told the students to fill out an exit ticket in order to "get off the boat," which didn't really make sense because they never mentioned a boat prior to that. It was a cute idea, but it wasn't executed properly!
   The group's second day also went really well! The teachers gave a lot of rules and instructions for the students to follow throughout the inquiry lesson, which was a web quest that the students seemed to like. The introduction was definitely way too long for the inquiry lesson; I think some of the information could've either been left out or pushed over to the cooperative introduction. Their inquiry and cooperative lessons were linked; the students were required to create a poster about what they learned from their web quest. I think it was a great way to make the lessons seem like they were blended together and really only one, so the students weren't being asked to do two unrelated tasks. It's definitely tricky to teach two separate lessons within the one hour timeframe we have, but I think that group 2 did a good job getting the important parts of the lesson done, even though they didn't get to independent practice either!