Teachable Moments

What a week of learning!

Language Support Student Historians continually surprise me with their "all in" attitude regarding learning! They never miss an opportunity to take advantage of learning something new. It is exciting and heartwarming.

I am challenging all of us in Language Support-History by creating modified National History Day projects this quarter. It's going to be a fantastic learning experience for every one of us. I have absolutely no idea how things will progress but we are taking it one step at a time, together.

Students learned about this year's theme, "Breaking Barriers in History" by constructing barriers with lego-style bricks. (None of the students had ever heard the word in English before.) We then created a word study of the word barrier, including examples of synonyms and antonyms.

Word study completed, we began to search US History topics that might interest us, then took Cloze notes of the six examples of breaking barriers in history. 

These notes took so much longer than I thought they would because these adolescents dive into learning and maximize teachable moments. One example of this is when the Americans with Disabilities Act was given as an example of breaking barriers. We spent 10-15 minutes exploring this topic alone. I put my drawing skills to the test, drawing signs they might see and giving examples of how handicap parking spaces, for example, are daily reminders of this important legislation. When the students realized their new school was, of course, ADA compliant they excitedly asked for another example. I pointed out that each of the classroom signs were written in Braille and several students rushed outside of our door to see (and feel) the sign. A few more students went in the hall with their iPads and searched for a Braille alphabet to decode the numbers for us. These moments make our learning so special.

Students decided on their top three research choices today and used Media Center databases to make these big topics smaller. Tomorrow, after researching after all three topics, we will narrow down our choices and start to learn research skills. I'm thinking we will also give Noodle Tools a try. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical Perspective and Peel the Fruit Thinking Routine

Image
Practicing historical perspective is an essential social studies skill. Historical perspective is being able to step into a historic situation and examine the motivations, biases, and beliefs of a person or group of people. Students have to revert to the beliefs of a group of people even if those beliefs completely contradict the views we have today. They must weigh decisions based on the situation of the time, not necessarily how situations are viewed today. The C3 Framework for Social Studies states that "Historical understanding requires recognizing this multiplicity of points of view in the past, which makes it important to seek out a range of sources on any historical question rather than simply use those that are easiest to find. It also requires recognizing that perspectives change over time, so that historical understanding requires developing a sense of empathy with people in the past whose perspectives might be very different from those of today." http://www.so
Read more

Name That Executive Role!

Image
Students today learned about the many roles of the head of the Executive Branch, the President of the United States. I found several images of former Presidents in these roles--can you guess which is which? Post your answers below or email them to me. Choices: Commander-In-Chief Chief Executive Political Party Head Chief Diplomat 1.  President Eisenhower 2. President George HW Bush (on the right side of the picture) 3. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  4. President Reagan meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (this one's a bit of a giveaway!)
Read more

Industrial Revolution Haiku

Students have been learning about the Industrial Revolution in the mid1800s and how it changed life in New England. Today students processed their learning by creating haiku poems on the subject. They were challenged to think about and evaluate this topic within the structure of a haiku, a 3 line poem with 17 total syllables--5 in the 1st and 3rd lines and 7 in the second line. The poems have been impressive and some will be posted here soon.
Read more