Recently, I taught a lesson that I wanted to share. I first heard about We Do Listen Foundation (www.wedolisten.org) a few years ago at a counselor's meeting that I had with my district. We were sharing resources that we loved, and I thought I would check it out. I am very happy that I did. Our character word for November is "Courage, " and I was very excited that We Do Listen had a book to correlate with the term. I love using this website with my younger student, so I had my kindergarten, first, and second-grade students participate. One thing that I love about We Do Listen is that they already have a lesson plan for you to use. I try to use it as a guide, but they have some excellent discussion guides available. I started our lesson with a discussion about courage and what it means to have courage. The students then watched the video about Howard B. Wigglebottom and how he learns about courage. In the story, a bird helps his overcome his fears. We learn in the story that Howard has "real" and "make-believe" fears. After the story, I had the students participate in the Yes/No lesson to check for understanding. We then discussed our "real" and "make-believe" fears. I then had the students decorate their bird with a fear of their own. I cut these out and placed them on "Our Courage Tree" to serve as a reminder to the students that they do not have to be afraid and that they can have courage. I enjoyed this lesson, and I hope the students did too.
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It is an exciting time in our country right now. We are deciding our next president! As a kid, I remember getting to vote at school for Bill Clinton or Bob Dole in 1996 and being so excited to cast my ballot and get that "I Voted" sticker. I had no idea how important the presidential election was or what it would mean for our country.
During my practicum, I got to be a part of the 2012 election voting at school and seeing the excitement on their faces reminded me of when I was a child. I knew that I wanted to do the same when I worked at my school. I collaborated with the science and social studies teachers to develop a plan to have our whole school vote in our mock election. I designed the ballots and distributed them to the teachers. Our third-grade science and social studies teacher is friends with a former teacher who works the polls and she was able to get us "I Voted" stickers for the students. We gave each homeroom their ballots and stickers and let them cast their votes this morning. After all the votes had been cast and tallied, the results were in. Trump had 66 votes, and Clinton had 312. It was quite a landslide. I am pretty excited to see if our election is representative of the country's votes. I guess we will just have to wait and see! |
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