Exploration - Students and Myself



We are reaching the end of our first unit in Mr. Scott's class. Students are currently wrapping up a short project where they researched two or more explorers from the Colonial Era. They were instructed to find information such as where they were from, when they took their voyage, who sponsored their journey, where they landed and explored, and what they found, among other criteria.

 

Upon completion of their research, they created identification cards with some of this information, photographs, and other graphics through Piccollage, where they then would upload them to Schoology to be assessed. As a class, they created this Exploration Timeline (pictured below) on the window. They created QR codes that linked to their Piccollage creation so they can be scanned and brought directly to their identification card.

 

 

 

My classroom time has been a bit limited lately because of time changes for my class to spend more time unit planning. It has been valuable to have that extra time, but I'm seeing a little less of the students in my classroom as a result. Part of my time in my classroom on Wednesday was spent preparing for a lesson I will be teaching next week. I am excited, but nervous to teach. I think the big juggling act is figuring out how to frame my lesson (on the Salem Witch Trials) within the larger unit as it is coming to an end, while also keeping it in line with some of the main themes of the unit. I'm currently finding primary source documents for students to analyze. I am also toying with the idea of having students look at a couple different theories for the causes of the behavior of individuals in Salem during that year and at the end of the lesson, express their thoughts on what they think is the most significant cause of the odd behavior.

 

My thoughts have been a bit jumbled for the last few days as I think about my practicum and where I'm going next. A lot of this will straighten out as I get my lesson plan a little more solid in the next 24 hours. We'll see what happens next!