Planning, Planning, and more Planning

The pressure is on and the clock is ticking. My time in the classroom today was much different than usual. I actually spent very little time with students because it was a shortened day and my class met at a different time than usual. A happy consequence of this, though, is that I got to spend an hour with Mr. Scott during a planning session - something we haven't had since I first met him before the school year started!

When we met, he was interested in seeing the unit plan I'm developing for my own course purposes. It was really exciting to get to show him my work and explain some of the breakthroughs that happened for me today. What's better is that he liked the direction I was taking and is interested in having me develop lessons under this unit plan to come in and teach. This gives me even more motivation to work through my issues in the unit plan that way I get it right for students. It makes it much more real for me knowing that I'll actually be using this.

Over the first week in October, we're discussing me actually teaching two different lessons. One would be related to my unit plan around elections and taught during "skinny blocks" which are shortened periods they have in the afternoons. The other lesson would take place during the morning sessions that I take part in typically and would actually get to relate to my idea of media bias. I'm really excited about the plan that we're developing; it will be about the Salem Witch Trials and their "media" (which was really just town gossip in a sense). We'll analyze a study that says that bread poisoning may have been causing individuals in Salem to hallucinate and may have caused a lot of the symptoms that led to their absolute insanity. In that study, there's mention of primary source documents (which they have been working on). Then we'll talk about who their primary sources came from - typically older men - and how that affected the message they were sending - bias against women. I'm figuring out the direction still, but we're both really excited about this lesson.

The other really great component of my day was getting new resources from Mr. Scott. He taught me about HSI - Historical Scene Investigation (hsionline.org) as a good source. He also showed me how to use the site Quizizz as an alternative to Kahoot or Quizlet. Then he showed me Nearpod, which only would work with iPads but it looks absolutely incredible.

Like I said, this day was much different than usual but it was a great day. I'm optimistic about the next few weeks because a lot will be happening for me in the classroom. I'm starting to really learn from this and I'm feeling prepared. There will be SO much planning over the next week and a half but I'm excited to get started.