Field #8
March 18, 2008
Today was my first day back in the field since before spring break. It seemed like I haven't been there in forever!
I did not observe any science today due to the fact that the classes did not switch, since one of the kindergarten teachers had a substitute. Christina still did her science lesson today, but instead of doing it to my class as we had planned, she did it to her class. Next week, Carly and I are doing our lessons to our class. Both Carly’s and my lessons build upon Christina’s lesson, since Christina taught parts of a plant. Carly will be teaching “what plants need,” and I will be teaching about “how plants change as they grow.” I am wondering how this will affect the effectiveness of our lessons now. I guess students do not need to know the parts of a plant in order to learn what it needs, but they will need to understand the parts of a plant to learn about how they change. Should I do a brief lesson on the parts of a plant before I go about talking how they change as they grow, or should I just incorporate the parts into my lesson and introduce them as they are formed in the life cycle? I am still working on how I should put my lesson together, but I am thinking I should go with the latter.
During the time that my class usually experiences science, my CT did a short social studies lesson on water landforms. This is geography, but I also feel like it has to do with science as well. For this lesson, my CT used her social studies big book, and showed the students pictures of rivers, lakes, oceans, and ponds to explain the difference between them. The students sat on the carpet in front of her as she explained and asked students questions such as “How do you think a lake and a river are different?” It was a really short lesson that only lasted about 15 minutes. This was the first time I observed social studies in my kindergarten classroom, and I know that it might not always be like this, but I was bored watching it. I am very interested to see what other kinds of social studies lessons are implemented, other than using the Houghton Mifflin big book and just talking about it. No wonder a lot of students think social studies is boring. I think that there needs to be more student involvement and inquiry, rather than just talking and lecturing. This is something we have spent the semester talking about in TE 402 Science.
