Exploring With Our Second Grade Classroom

                        

          Today was the first day I EVER taught a class. My colleagues and myself taught a lesson to our second graders by introducing Native Americans, Explorers, and Colonies. We began our lesson by activating and questioning students prior knowledge to see what they knew about the Native Americans and the way in which they lived. We introduced four new vocabulary words that we wanted the students to learn and familiarize themselves with: Colony, Colonist, Explorer, Exploring.

Defining explorers we introduced Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and Henry Hudson. As for colonist we introduced John Smith. The colonies that we introduced were Jamestown and Plymouth. After introducing this great deal of information to the students we showed them two videos to help them understand all that we were teaching them. We provided two videos one was a cartoon about Plymouth Rock and the explorers who founded the land. The second video was a documentary video that was realistic. The first video truly engaged the students and caught their attention, not so much the second one. I realized we began to lose the students attention; therefore I stopped the video and began to ask them a few questions to regain their attention and check for understanding.

Asking the students different questions we used different techniques to hold their attention. We asked students true or false questions to check their understanding. We told students to put their hands on their head if they think the answer was true or their finger on their nose if the answer was false. I felt as though the students truly enjoyed these directions.

As guided practice we decided to do a virtual soccer game. We were hoping to have students interact and come up to the smart board to play the game. We were unable to connect to the smart board but we still played the game. Instead we had the students raise their hand and take turns to play. The game we created happened to be to easy for this bright second grade class. To sum up our lesson we asked students numerous questions about what they learned today.We also gave them a worksheet that they independently worked on. I felt as though this lesson went well.

Attached is our Prezi Powerpoint for this lesson! The First People Come To America 

 I understand there are a great deal of things I can work on and improve. One being TRANSITION! I never realized how difficult it could truly be to make specific transitions and help students comprehend what is going on and WHY. I also realized the importance of informing students WHY they are learning the information they are learning. I will be sure to work on this and to try and make it better in my following lessons!!!