Intern Experience Week #7

This past week was my first week of full time teaching in my new placement in the 5th grade. The week started off with a review of immigration and different immigrant ethnic groups which focused on content that was in their social studies textbook. The students had been working with the topic of immigration in their reading class and had worked a lot with Ellis Island, therefore they had a good idea of the topic and a lot of recent knowledge that went a long with our weeks activities.
On Monday I did a quick review of important concepts and key terms and then turned the class over to watch a great overall video about immigration. This video touched on a lot of the different areas that I felt were necessary for the students to know in order to understand immigration. It covered different ethnic groups, reasons for immigrating, their journey, experiences once in the America, living conditions, and jobs. The students really took to why different immigrant groups came to the United States, such as the Irish Potato Famine, or war in their home country.
After this I had them explore their text so that they could see that we can get information on the same topic from a wide variety of sources, discussion, videos, texts, and in other subject classes. I think it was extremely beneficial for the students to get to use all of these different sources in one class period. It is also nice because they are hour blocks and I feel like I am able to get a lot done in that period of time. Working with older students has also showed me that they can and like to work independently. Thats sometimes independent work is more beneficial to them instead of me sitting and lecturing about a topic. They seem to retain more when they are responsible for looking up the information and completing the assignment.
On Tuesday I was able to get the mobile computer lab and bring it into the classroom so that the students would be able to complete a research/creative writing activity that I had developed. I created 4 guiding questions to aid in their research of a specific ethnic group. The students were then given time to look up information on their specific ethnic group and that information would help them in a writing activity that I would have them do on thursday. On Wednesday we went back to working on the computers and they were given time to finish their research and then do a worksheet that went a long with an interactive tour of Ellis Island.
The on friday they were given a writing prompt where they were asked to write as if they were an immigrant, of the specific ethnic groups they research, coming to the United States. I gave them guidelines of what I was looking for in their writing and that they needed to draw a picture to go with their writing. Once the students were actually done I read a few of them and I was extremely impressed at home well they did. I thought they would have a hard time writing in the first person and being able to express their feelings while going through the experience that an immigrant did. Overall I was pretty happy with the week teaching wise and how my students were able to retain the information. I also plan on using the creative writing activity in my action research inquiry.