Science Pick-Up

     I picked up science to go along with social studies and reading, starting today. It was a pretty interesting situation because I am using the other fifth grade teacher’s plans for this week. The way it is set up here is that my teacher plans for social studies, and the other teacher plans for science, and then each teacher makes any needed differentiation based on their own student’s needs. I thought about going ahead and making my own plans, but I thought it would be a interesting experience to see how that system works. So, I suggested that we do the normal system for a week of this unit, and I would take over planning for the second week so I get planning practice as well. It was certainly quite a different experience. The plans and the activities are good, but I sometimes found myself at a loss for words for just a couple seconds every-now-and-then. When reviewing the plans, I would think, Okay, this is the point that she is meaning to get across, but a couple times during the lesson, it would occur to me that something else may have been intended as I see things playing out. It’s good practice for adjusting on the fly.

     We started our activity for learning about the abolitionist cause of the Civil War today. I have separated the class into five groups. Each group will learn about their topic (John Brown, Nat Turner, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abraham Lincoln’s election, and The Dred Scott case) from resources I have found for them, and they will present what they have learned to the class, essentially becoming the teachers, in any way they choose. They are going to have a couple of days to research and prepare presentations on their own, involving the teacher and me only when they feel necessary. I was a little wary of this activity since they have been showing their immature sides for the past couple of weeks, but I must say, they really stepped up and became diligent researchers during their work period today. They were going to town with their highlighters (a little too heavily in some cases, of course) and telling their group members about important things they were discovering. I was impressed with their level of maturity and the interest many of them were taking in their topics. I’ll be honest, I knew this would be a pretty tough task to make the connections by themselves when I planned this, but they are showing very positive signs of being able to put it all together on their own. Tomorrow is always another day, though. I’ll just keep the faith anyway.