Amber Jordan Lesson Four Reflection 1

Lesson Four Reflection Lesson Four: Where We Live Lesson four was taught on November 12, 2013. This lesson was a social studies based lesson that focused on where the students lived. The objective of the lesson was for students to identify on a map the location of their local community, state, nation, and continent. The lesson started by looking at a picture of a community. This was a picture of my community in Belton, South Carolina. We compared this community to Greenwood, South Carolina and the students picked out familiar places like the bank or a restaurant. We then talked about different places in their community, Greenwood, South Carolina. We then moved on to learn about our state, South Carolina. We discussed different places in the state and students partner talked to brainstorm different places that were familiar to them in our state. I then introduced the term nation to them. We defined nation as a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. We then looked at a map with all the continents on it and identified our continent that we live on as North America. For the activity for this lesson, we made a circle flip book that detailed the community, state, nation, and continent. These circles represented each of these. For example, the smallest circle had a picture of South Carolina on it with Greenwood colored in. The next circle was the state, with a picture of South Carolina, and the nation circle had a picture with the world with people holding hands. The largest circle had the continent on it to represent that the continent is the largest. Students kept these to help them study for their test. Whole Class

Amber Jordan Lesson Four Reflection 2

My instructional implications impacted my lesson in a positive way. When planning the lesson, I wanted students to have a visual to look at so that they would understand it better. I used my community picture so that they could see communities are not all the same. I wanted students to compare the two and use the turn and talk method with their partners to share ideas about their community that each of them had. During the lesson, I had to repeat myself several times because the students were off track and did not know exactly what to do. If I had to do this lesson again, I would have the different pictures separated one by one and we would do the activity one step at a time to keep students focused and on task. There were four different pictures and the students got a little confused on which picture went where and if they were supposed to color all the parts of the picture. The lesson as a whole was a success to help them understand where they lived. This lesson was one of the first lessons about this topic, so if students did not completely understand they had other lessons with their teacher to help them with this topic before being assessed on the topic. Individual Students Addison was my most successful student in this lesson. In the pre-assessment she knew how to identify familiar areas using the legend on the map. During the lesson she would talk out and I would have to remind her we raise our hands during lessons and while the teacher is talking. Addisons circle flip book was also very neat and organized. She colored the correct places and wrote the names of each on the flip book. On her review sheet, she only missed one, so I thought she did very good. Her success in this lesson was based off of her paying attention and wanting to make sure she did everything correctly. In the future I would use the map in the

Amber Jordan Lesson Four Reflection 3

classroom to show all of these places. The map would have been more beneficial to the students because it was much bigger and in color. Jaedyn, was the average performing student. Jaedyn performed well in this lesson. He completed the pre-assessment well and even did his circle flip book well. He scored average on his review sheet, receiving three points out of six points which was fairly well. Jaedyn does perform well in the classroom, he just makes careless mistakes. Jaedyns success on his review sheet was from using his circle flip book. I believe he could have did a better job on the review sheet but I think he got confused on some of the definitions. Jaedyn did listen, so he did an overall good job with the entire lesson. To make the lesson better in the future, I would change nation to country. I do not think the students really grasped the concept of nation. I know they would have grasped country much better because my teacher did change the word nation to country in her lesson plans. I do believe students should know the word nation, but in this standard I believe country would teach the students in a better manner. The least successful student in this lesson was Denarii. Denarii performed well in his preassessment but not in his post-assessment. His circle flip book was created with few mistakes. On his review sheet, he struggled with the information. He only received one point out of six points. I think this lack of success was mainly behavioral and not listening to directions. To help in creating their circle flip books in the future, I believe having several different models placed around the room would be beneficial to the students. This way they could observe how they are supposed to be made and can look to see which picture goes where to eliminate any confusion.

Amber Jordan Lesson Four Reflection 4

I believe the students were actively involved in all areas of the lesson. I think they enjoyed creating the circle flip books to help them understand their community. I believe that the information presented was presented clearly and understandable because I showed pictures of all the information. We even said the different names of the community, state, nation, and continent out loud together. The materials for the lesson were pre-made by me. I pre-made the circle flip books, because I knew that having students cut circles and pictures out would be too much for the students to handle. This lesson definitely related to the lives of the students. All the students need to understand where they live and the locations around them. If I taught this lesson again, I think I would use Google Earth to help show them the different places we discussed. I think this would be an engaging activity to get them thinking about their surroundings. The students had ample time to complete the lesson, and for those that were not completely finished were able to finish them after lunch. The lesson went smoothly, with minor problems that were fixed when they happened.