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. 



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