Finally... Our Turn!

Before my group and I even realized, it was our turn to teach fifth grade!

We were given the task of teaching about The Young United States. After working for so long and so hard on our lessons, we were ready to teach.

We tried to be as relatable as we could to the fifth graders, so we incorporated swag into our lesson!! The students' rules were shown as an acrostic puzzle using the word 'swag' and explained how we expected them to act. We then moved onto our swag dollars! Each group began with $10 and depending on their behavior, they could gain more swag dollars or lose some. If they earned at least $25 for all three lessons, then they earned a prize on the last day! I really thought this was a cool way of monitoring behavior and I think they liked it too!

After all the nights reciting my information to my parents, and my boyfriend, and all the car rides with me repeatedly saying the information I had to say, I was still nervous, but I really was ready to say it to the people it was meant for, the fifth graders! Finally, all of that time spent memorizing, I did it and I was so proud!!! ... Until I looked down at my watch and noticed the time. It was already past 12 and we still had so much stuff to do!

For our guided practice we created a vocabulary game. Each student wore either a vocabulary word or definition around their neck and they had to find their match. The twist to it: they weren't allowed to talk! We anticipated that this would take at least two rounds of three minutes each, but we were wrong. The students all found their matches in about two minutes! We then reviewed each term and definition, but with time running short, we weren't able to finish all of them.

From there on out, the rest of the lesson was rushed. The student's lost focus and a lot of them didn't take their independent practice seriously. This was disappointing because I was really excited for it! They were instructed to create a tweet as George Washington. They could talk about anything they learned during the class time, but they had to incorporate 5 vocabulary words. While some created really great tweets, my favorite was the student who wrote "I learned nothing" -___-

There were some really great aspects of our lesson that we had to cut out because we didn't have time, such as our emoji exit ticket and a short vocabulary match. Due to our poor time management, we walked out of the classroom a little disappointed. That changed when Dr. Smirnova told us that she was impressed with our lesson!!!!!! That was all we needed to hear to know that we did a great job, but we also know that there is always room for improvement.