Well, I'll admit... The best part of teaching fourth grade is the Virginia Studies curriculum. Anyone that is a history buff would love teaching fourth grade in a Virginia Public School System. As a teacher, time is my enemy... I have my reading groups.... I have my math groups.... I have my writing groups... I have my lunch groups.... I have my recess groups... No, just kiddin... Enough is enough with groups!!! But.... If there was one subject that really gets put on the backend in my classroom.... It's Science!
Now, I love teaching Science. When I taught 3rd grade - there was nothing better than covering all the many SOL standards. In many ways, the fourth grade Science SOLs are a review of third grade. Really, the only difference is teaching about WEATHER!
Many of my co-workers taught weather back in the fall. I did not. I saved it for this time of year. Think about it?!?!? This is when we care about weather. This is also when the kids care too! They want time off just as we do. Well, why not take their excitment and build it around what SOLs I need to teach...
With this so called "HUGE POSSIBLE STORM"... it made it into a science lesson. We watched video clips, looked at different sites, looked at maps, talked about key vocabulary... we made predictions... it was about 10 different lessons wrapped up into one hour!
After the lesson, I thought... Wow. A blog could really be useful. I'm excited about this... The kids are as well. It would be great to build on tomorrow. Oh darn! Tomorrow is Saturday... By Monday, the "moment" is gone. There HW over the weekend was to watch the weather patterns, view the websites, and keep a journal log of the changes from Friday to Monday.... Man, a blog could of made this fun!
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Blogging about what they learned and what questions they had floowing the lesson while at home would have definitely would have kept there enthusiasm going. You could have posted more information or had a assignment that needed to be complted and posted during the weekend on the blog. Coming back today they might not have the same enthusiasm and anticipation especially since the STORM in looking not as big as thought. You will have to let me know there response today.
ReplyDeleteA blog would have been a great way to keep the students interested over the weekend. Questions could have been posted, links could have been shared...excellent idea. Definitely something to keep in mind and think about. Science is a great subject for all of those questions that the kiddies seem to have every day.
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