Morning 8:45 am
Today in the morning I came in and sat at the back table and had groups of 4 students come and work with me on their sentences. Following is a list of reasons why sentences needed to be worked on more:
- Lots of nouns, but needs descriptive words
- Need clarification of meaning in sentences
- Needs one more sentence (only 4)
I spent 2 hours working with the students on their sentences. I actually thought that this process would go by more quickly, but the students really needed that one on one attention and it took me longer than I expected to get to each one individually. I worked with about 10 students during this period of time, which works out to about 12 minutes with each student talking writing and sometimes rewriting. Makes me think about how critical time management is and if I was just one teacher in that room, would I have enough time to give every child every day the attention that they need to succeed. Maybe the fact that I did not give the students discussion time amongst themselves is the difference. Maybe I did not break the lesson up into enough steps. I am not sure, but I can say that I did not include a small group discussion time like Mrs. K. usually does. Maybe that is the key.
After spending this time with the students, they all pulled through and finally got the whole writing with descriptive words thing and they were happy with their work. I finished around 10:45 am
Afternoon 2:15 pm
This afternoon I worked on the maps with the students. I had the students take out their maps and we discussed some of the things that they drew on their maps. We also discussed labeling the maps with the 4 directions and the latitude and longitude of the location of the map and a map title. After this I had the students gather around the smart board and I pulled up a satellite website that we plugged the address of the school into and searched for the latitude and longitude of the playground. Using this tool we were able to pull up a satellite image of their exact location. You could see an aerial view of the school playground and yard. We zoomed in look closely at the space right outside the classroom. The students were very excited and kept asking if one of them could run outside the classroom to see if they could see themselves on the satellite feed. I informed them that the satellite image was just a photograph and not video feed in real time. I told them that if they ran outside they would not see themselves on the satellite picture. I asked them if from the information on the satellite if they could tell me the lat and long of the playground, they were able to quickly find the information on the screen.
After we found the lat and long, I asked the students to return to their seats so that we could finish out maps by labeling them with the correct lat and long, directions, and title.
The students were still really excited about the satellite image and a few who did not understand that the image was just a picture kept asking if they could go outside the door to see if they could see themselves on the screen. Mrs. K. said no and repeated the reason why. Then the students returned to their seats and began to work on their maps. I gave instruction on the three descriptive components that the students needed to add to their maps and then walked around the room to make sure that they were all doing it correctly and to answer any questions. This time though I told the students who were done quickly that they could silent read when they were done with their maps.
When all the students finished their maps around 2:55 pm I collected their work and then wrapped up the lesson with a discussion about how they liked the assignment and gave them a heads up about the next and final part of the lesson, which would again focus on writing and specifically on their own personal reflection about the playground that they wrote about in their field notes.
Latitude/Longitude Website
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