Intern Experience Week #10

This past week at my PDS I was able to integrate creative arts into a lot of my lessons. This worked well because I was able to see my students work with regular textbook assignments vs. creative assignments on the same content. The week really focused on the Civil War and I introduced students to the first battles and important figures or people in the war. These important people were both Union and Confederate as well as citizens. I tried to switch up my instruction by having students use their book for a source of information and then watch videos about the same content in order for them to have a visual to go along with the information in the text.
First we worked on the election of 1860 and the students were introduced to Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. We read about a lot of their differences in political views as well as their physical differences. The students also used a Venn Diagram to organize the information about their similarities and differences. Then they used this information to create a political cartoon. I was able to show students examples of political cartoons and we discussed why they were important because at this time newspapers were the only way to get information. Newspapers were also a popular form of entertainment. Then we watched and read about the Battle at Fort Sumpter. The students were then given guidelines to create a front page of a newspaper to inform people on the battle. We held a discussion on appropriate names for a paper and eye catching headlines.
Lastly I created an activity where I used digital photos that I had taken from the field trip the week before. I explained to my students that I saw a lot of them using their own cameras on the field trip so I used the photos I took as a way for them to see that they could use their photos in an educational way. I made several hard copies of the photos and numbered them. The each student picked a photo and had to write about the photo plus three sentences about the field trip. My teacher also played a slide show of his own photos for the students to watch as they worked on their own photo. I think that the students really enjoyed this activity. A lot of them wrote more then what was asked of them.
Overall, pretty good week. I am getting more comfortable in my teaching of social studies so I am starting to enjoy it a lot more.