And Boom Goes the Projector Bulb

     Today had some interesting twists and turns. To start with, the kids were a bit wired today. At the end of the day, the behavior pocket chart looked like a legitimate rainbow. Most of the problem was transitions and talking at inappropriate times. It was a total group effort. It wasn’t just a concentrated area, or a few lone talkers. With that being said, it was a pretty valuable thing when we did our science lesson today. We made spines out of pipe cleaners, white Life Saver mints, and gummy Life Savers. We first created a spine without intervertebral disks, and made observations with a partner of how it feels, moves, sounds, etc. We then made a spine with intervertebral disks, and once again made observations. After we made a class observation chart, we compared our spines to the model with intervertebral disks. We got up and moved around plenty of times to test if the observations students made held true. Going back to the topic of the students being chatty, it was a good thing because everyone was talking to their partners about observations and wanting to share their observations with the whole class when that came.

      Overall, I think the lesson went well and students made the connection between the model and the function of an actual spine. However, the lesson didn’t happen without any glitches. About half way through the lesson, the bulb in the smartboard projector blew. For one, it’s not an easy distraction to avoid because it’s a bit loud. I will give the students credit for moving on from it pretty quickly, however. The main problem lay within my mind. It happened during the student work period, and I knew I had about a minute long video that shows how a human spine works, and we weren’t going to be able to use that to stimulate our summary discussion. Luckily, I was able to transfer into an alternative summary where I highlighted the main functions of the spine, and how our models are relative examples. I also remembered some information that I would have totally left out had we been able to watch the video.

     The greatest worry I had about the smartboard blowing was for social studies. We are going to spend a few days on Gettysburg, and today I was going to show about a twenty minute intro video…yeah, that wasn’t happening. Luckily, I have brought in a text set, and I have a book that is especially about Gettysburg that I had ready to read. However, even more luckily, my mentor teacher’s first degree is in history, and he was able to give a great introductory lecture to lead us into Gettysburg. Even though he didn’t mean to, where he left off today will be a great lead into our outdoor reenactment that will take place tomorrow.