Thanksgiving

What I did over thanksgiving...well, to start off, I ate a lot of food, which was wonderful. I watched the colts play! Go colts! I took a nap. I actually had two thanksgiving meals on thursday. I was really stuffed that night. On Friday, I went shopping! I got up early, but I had a good time. It is so fun listening to people complain and see the crazy people running to get the deals (no deal is good enough for me to run and push someone out of the way). In Kohl's there was this guy there with his g/f-fiance-wife complaining about the crazy lines to "what, save like maybe $5" he says. The lady behind me and I agreed that she should have left his butt at home and found someone else to come. Poor girl. Like I said, it is so comical! Saturday was another Thanksgiving meal. I did a lot of eating..I told you. Sunday was not very exciting. It was church and then homework. Oh joy. I did go to Fort Wayne for a little while with a friend though, but that was short lasting. Well, I can't wait to hear about everyone else's exciting breaks!

Ch Twelve

Chapter twelve is about technology in social studies. Before reading the chapter I thought about all the ways technology would spice up learning history and social studies. I can remember being in history classes that were strictly lecture or just reading from a textbook. I don’t remember anything from those classes. As I was reading through the chapter I checked out some links I thought might be helpful to students in my class. My favorite website was www.gis.com. I could type in my zip code and it brought up articles about the lifestyle of the people who live there. It also shows numbers and statistics on the population, the population by race, the population by sex, and the households by income. Along with the local numbers it also compares to the national numbers so students can see how their city compares to the whole United States. This would be a helpful website to integrate into a lesson about our city. There are also websites with virtual trips that would help take the students to a certain place or time of current study. The technology that can be incorporated into social studies instruction goes way beyond just watching a video from the history channel.

Ch Eleven

Chapter eleven is about technology in science and math. I felt that a lot of what I was reading for the math pertained to the upper elementary and more for middle and high school math. But what the book did say about elementary math programs, I thought it was helpful. I liked the virtual manipulatives the best because a teacher could project this in her classroom, and show the students how to use the manipulatives. Better yet, the teacher could let students use the computer and show their classmates how to do the problems using the manipulatives. This would work better than an overhead because it shows colors along with the shapes.
My favorite part of the science technology was the exploratorium because I thought this would be a good supplement to a solar system project (space project). The student will be able to use this to explore rather than looking at pictures in a book. Unfortunetly science does not always receive the funding of math and language arts, so attaining some of these materials for integrating technology may be out of school budget after they purchase the other technology such as the microscopes.

Smartboard

I was subbing Friday and a teacher showed me how the smart board worked. It was pretty amazing. I have to say I am impressed.

Lesson Plan 3

I used the Willow web podcast about ants for my lesson plan. I have the students listen to a non-fictional book about ants. They have to come up with facts about ants from the book and record them as a class on a chart. The students then go to the computers a research more about ants from two websites I have supplied and by listening to the podcast about ants. Then the students will add more information to the chart and finally, as assessment, the students will complete a graphic organizer worksheet to show what they learned about ants.