It's always a busy time of year when the trimester ends because it's also deep in the throws of student-parent-teacher conferences. Since I've really invested in student lead conferences I've grown to love them. Celebrating the growth of the year, or 2 years for my 6th graders is always amazing. To pause and reflect is such a powerful thing. Students don't do it enough and me and this blog are my intentional attempt to do that professionally.
Students wrapped up the first part of our economics unit by completing their individual country research and partnering up and comparing and contrasting their countries and the economic markets. I had them fill out this graphic organizer to show their learning. We then watched a PBS show about American manufacturing to get them thinking about the next part of our unit.
One of my classes was super fortunate to have a parent come in as a guest presenter. She lived in the Soviet Union as a business liaison at the tail of end of the Soviet Union's run as a Communist state. She shared stories of rationing, government planning, and the difference between Communism as a philosophy and Communism in practice. I learned a lot and I know the students really enjoyed it. She brought in great artifacts to show as well.
It was a great week and though it was a 4 day week (today is reserved for parent conferences) I was just as tired last night as if it were a 5 day week. I'll take the long weekend (I've done my conferences outside of today- trying to fit 11 hours of conferences into a 7 hour day never seems to work for me) to breathe, recharge and get ready to welcoming my awesome students on Monday. They'll start their research on an item "Made in the USA" and track the individual components around the globe to see where it all comes from!
Friday, March 22, 2019
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Global economy lesson leads to conversation about Christchurch
The week was going great. Students were heavily invested in their research. They could pick any country in the world to study. Describe it using the 5 themes of geography and extend our economic vocabulary to analyze the resources of that country (land, labor, capital and management). Every student seemed excited to get know their country better, some picking truly remote places they had never heard of (they weren’t allowed to pick the USA- we did that as our public record).
Direct instruction happened around the Learning Target for the unit (Economics). Most students were at 2- understanding Supply & Demand. We had updated the deadline for the research as a group, allowing for some democracy in the classroom. I wanted it due Friday, they wanted more time, so next Tuesday it is!
Then the incident of Christchurch took place, Friday morning our time. I couldn’t ignore it. It was the neighbor country to many students’ research countries in Oceania. It was an act of terrorism, an act of out fear and lack of understanding. With all the work we’ve done around empathy it was a teachable moment now on many fronts.
So we began Friday’s lesson with some deep breathing. I reminded them about putting themselves in an empathetic place. We talked about the 3 ways to show empathy: 1- putting oneself in an empathetic mindset. Focus on how they feel rather than yourself. 2- active listening. 3- asking “you questions” rather than making “I statements”. Students were given the option to not participate as well. From there we began the discussion. Let’s find New Zealand on the map, let’s look a the political map and understand that the bigger the font, the bigger the city. So Christchurch is one of, if not the, largest city on the South Island. We talked about what a mosque is. I stated facts, being careful to only cite information that came from official press releases from the New Zealand police or. Government. I was transparent with the students about that too. We talked about the why behind it, the historical aspect that many religions have been attacked based on fear of them over history. We ended by talking through what our response could be. Reach out to a Muslim friend or family member, just to offer words of support and let them know you’re thinking about them. Pause before passing judgement, you never know who is impacted by events like this, be them Muslim or not. Look at the news to see how locals are responding. Be aware that there are mosques in our area, notice how people may go there just to say kind words and support our neighbors. My hope was that I continued to teach these students to be globally aware, but use empathy to impact the community in a positive way locally. It wasn’t the lesson I had planned for the day, but as I’m finding in my first year teaching Social Studies, the news around us is often more powerful a lesson framework than anything I would design in a vacuum.
Direct instruction happened around the Learning Target for the unit (Economics). Most students were at 2- understanding Supply & Demand. We had updated the deadline for the research as a group, allowing for some democracy in the classroom. I wanted it due Friday, they wanted more time, so next Tuesday it is!
Then the incident of Christchurch took place, Friday morning our time. I couldn’t ignore it. It was the neighbor country to many students’ research countries in Oceania. It was an act of terrorism, an act of out fear and lack of understanding. With all the work we’ve done around empathy it was a teachable moment now on many fronts.
So we began Friday’s lesson with some deep breathing. I reminded them about putting themselves in an empathetic place. We talked about the 3 ways to show empathy: 1- putting oneself in an empathetic mindset. Focus on how they feel rather than yourself. 2- active listening. 3- asking “you questions” rather than making “I statements”. Students were given the option to not participate as well. From there we began the discussion. Let’s find New Zealand on the map, let’s look a the political map and understand that the bigger the font, the bigger the city. So Christchurch is one of, if not the, largest city on the South Island. We talked about what a mosque is. I stated facts, being careful to only cite information that came from official press releases from the New Zealand police or. Government. I was transparent with the students about that too. We talked about the why behind it, the historical aspect that many religions have been attacked based on fear of them over history. We ended by talking through what our response could be. Reach out to a Muslim friend or family member, just to offer words of support and let them know you’re thinking about them. Pause before passing judgement, you never know who is impacted by events like this, be them Muslim or not. Look at the news to see how locals are responding. Be aware that there are mosques in our area, notice how people may go there just to say kind words and support our neighbors. My hope was that I continued to teach these students to be globally aware, but use empathy to impact the community in a positive way locally. It wasn’t the lesson I had planned for the day, but as I’m finding in my first year teaching Social Studies, the news around us is often more powerful a lesson framework than anything I would design in a vacuum.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Friends vs Friendly, Free Markets and Five Day Weeks
The first day back from a vacation can be a challenge. Waking up to an alarm, refocusing attention and being aware of others all come back into play. And the same is probably true for students! This year I've been using those first days back to work on light-lifting, low stress but teachable lessons on empathy, kindness and reestablishing relationships. We did our improv work after summer vacation to work on our listening skills, after the holiday break we worked on the kindness pledge and this time around we did some direct instruction on empathy. I used a lesson from Tolerance.org to help. I explained to my students that you can be friendly to anyone and that doesn't mean you have to be friends. Before we got to the role-playing part we focused on the 3 keys to developing empathy- 1) Put yourself in an empathetic mindset. 2) Be an active listener. 3) When following up, ask "you questions" rather than making "I statements". Students role-played different situations and worked on their empathy skills. We closed with a whole group circle exit task where we shared out big takeaways and things we could go out into the day practicing that show empathetic thinking.
From there we started our unit on economics. Economics is tricky because there are so many unit specific vocabulary words. I gave kids a handout that we used some literacy strategies to read aloud, take notes on and then answer some comprehension questions around. I explained that the goal wasn't vocab mastery but starting to familiarize with terms like producer, consumer, market economy, supply & demand, etc. Friday we read a Newsela article on the different types of economies in the world. Newsela is great because it allows students to adjust the reading level of the article, highlight words, and take a check-in at the end to make sure they understand what they just read. From the teacher dashboard I can see what reading level each student selected and what words they highlighted. I asked them in particular this time to highlight words in red that they still didn't know so I can build a vocab wall in the room. The big piece of understanding students needed was to learn what resources are being talked about when describing the market of a certain country. Starting tomorrow, students will pick a country from anywhere in the world and research their markets with the goal being to make a claim as to whether they are capitalist, communist or socialist markets by the end of the week.
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