Tundra vs. Desert vs. Michigan

Field 10
April 3, 2008

Today I taught my social studies lesson instead of doing science. My lesson did tie into science because although it was a geography lesson, we talked about the different animals and weather than could be found in the desert, tundra, and Michigan as well as where the regions were found in the United States and what kinds of activities people did there. Overall, it was a compare and contrast of these regions. I thought that this lesson went very well, and my CT thought so too! She gave us very positive feedback after the lesson and really liked how we fed off one another with our lessons, and how we tied them together. My partner taught the first part of the lesson, on the desert, and then I continued the lesson immediately after to teach about the tundra (or basically Alaska since that is the only place in the United States with this type of region.) After reading them a book on each of these places, we had a discussion of what types of things they remember about the tundra from the book. I recorded these on a white board. The students loved to focus on the types of animals found there, so I had to also steer them in the direction of “what kinds of activities do people do there?” or “well you mentioned that it was very cold there, then what kinds of clothes do you think you would have to wear in the tundra?” (Just to keep the social studies focus a little.) I think that the students did learn a lot from my lesson in both a science and social studies way. Thinking back, this lesson could have really been an integrative lesson, where science, social studies, and language arts were integrated into one lesson, since we I read them a book and we had a discussion (language arts), talked about where the tundra is located in the United States and how people live there (social studies), and also the climate and animals found in the regions (science). Overall, I enjoyed teaching both my science lesson last week and my social studies lesson this week. I can’t wait to teach more of them next year to get even more practice. For right now, I am very relieved to have both of them finished, and right now, I am counting down the days until the end of the semester! Only 2 more weeks in the field!!