Emergent+Curriculum+at+Park+Street+Intermediate+School

4/4/09 Here are the lesson plans that emerged from this discussion:



Here are the pictures from this experience:







3/4/09 Here are the notes from our discussion: · 6th grade interests ideas o Biome puzzle pieces o Revolutionary War idea § two teams § facts o Make the classroom into a biome § arctic classroom § rainforest classroom · Use sports o Soccer habitat § necessities for a soccer game § expand to animal that lives in arctic: what do they need? o Divide into groups and each group creates the assigned habitat § Students can travel to each habitat § Creating a “zoo” o Show pictures of different spots places § Describe different sports environments § “You can’t play soccer on a basketball court” o Make shoe box dioramas o Have different habitats to choose from § Tropical forest § Desert § Arctic § Deciduous forest § Antarctic § Wetlands § Prairie

3/2/09

Part Two: Please look at the possibilities here and also familiarize yourself with the standards in science and social studies for grades 5-7. We will be working with 6th graders, but it is good to know the standards around the year you are planning to teach. We will be having a class discussion around your ideas.

SCROLL DOWN FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS (IN FAMILY BOOKS, SO THEY ARE EASY TO DEAL WITH) We have been asked to teach a lesson to a group of sixth grade students.

Here are the students' interests:

Completed a quick open-ended interest survey w/ students today: What are your 3 favorite intereste or hobbies outsied of school?1. 2. 3. Top responses:13 basketball10 football8 soccer6 ea. - bike riding, playing w/ friends5 ea. - baseball, gymnastice, cheerleading4 ea. - swimming, sports, volleyball3 ea. - video games, jumping rope2 ea. - board games, reading, writing, running, drawing, working out, church, Girl Scouts, dogs, talking1 ea. - playing games, collecting: baseball cards, rocks, stuffed animals, helping people, TV, talking on the phone, computer, texting, singing, listening to music, toys, pool, ride scooter, teaching neighbors, hang out w/ friends, karate, art, origami, doing work, 4-wheeling, cooking, 4 square

Here are standards they want to meet: __**Social Studies**__ ****__**Science**__ **American Revolution** **habitats** **-Consitiution** **---biomes** **slavery** **---landforms** **Civil War ** **light and sound** **Westward Expansion** **---earth space (not outerspace)**  We have a choice of social studies OR science--the hyphens in this table mean that the wiki wouldn't keep my tabs between the columns. If you can think of a clever way of doing more than one of these topics in about an hour with kids, great. Our challenge: come up with a way to incorporate students' interests in a social studies or science lesson. We also want the lesson to be engaging and interesting to students.

Possible Applicable Standards

    What has been uploaded are five grades' worth of standards. The idea here is to have plenty of resources to look at when dealing with standards. We want to primarily deal with sixth grade standards, but it would be workh looking at grades 7 and 8 to see where standards are going in the future--if our lesson can set the groundwork for that, it would be wonderful.

Casey's idea: After reading this my intial thought was to incorporate sports with habitats. You could use each sport that the kids listed, basketball, soccer, and football and discuss the "habitats" of each of these. So for example, you could say soccer ( I am using this as an example because I used to play) and ask the children what is need for a soccer player to "live", what do they use? So naturally the answers would be grass field, goals, ball, etc. You could this for every sport and even talk about how each team has a different habitat/home as in different arenas. I am not sure how "suprising" this is but it was the first thing that came to mind and I wanted to send it before I forgot. I will definitely think about it some more and think of some more ideas.

http://www.crayola.com/lesson-plans/detail/a-special-place-lesson-plan/Just found a habitat art lesson that maybe could be adapted (Carolyn)

Allison's Idea:

I had recently heard about a lesson plan about the planets. I know it isn't listed above, but I thought it was so creative I wanted to share it on the wiki. The lesson plan is for grades 2 or 3 and they learn about each of the planets. Including the descriptions of each planet and such. After learning about the planets, they are given an index card and told to choose their favorite planet. They then can write a post card to whomever they please, as if they had visited that planet and tell them all about it. They can make up their own creativity and use their imagination. They can also draw a picture of the planet on the postcard. For Social Studies, the children could role play the civil war to see both points of view in the war, like blacks and whites, or northerners and southerners.

Ryan's Idea:

The idea that I came up with is to pick four National soccer teams through out the world and divide the class in to four teams and each team gets to be one of the National teams. The class will first talk about what they know about each country that each team is from and then when the class is done talking we as teachers tell what else we know about those countries. After our class discussion on the countries the class gets to play a game of soccer with four teams.

Carolyn's comments:We are doing great on creativity. We gotta keep focused on the topics the teachers need to have covered (above in bold)--we can't just do any topic.

Sarah's Idea:

My idea is to incorporate sports into a lesson about habitats. You can divide the class into groups of four students (depending on how big the class is). Each group can pick either a country or state and research its’ habitat. Then, they can research what sport is the most popular in that state or country. After that, they can then figure out how the habitat effects how the sport is played. When they are done gathering all of their information, each group can write their own story that includes the information they found out on their country’s/state’s habitat as well as their country’s/state’s sport. They can use construction paper and markers or any other materials available. After the book is written, each group can read it to the class and if they want to, they can act out a scene from their story.

Anne's Idea: It seems the students are really interested in anything active and competitive. We need to come up with something that gets them moving. I was thinking biomes could be really interesting to do an activity on (rainforest, desert. . .). There are lots of good games to test their knowledge, but that's not really teaching the subject to them. A good game is to read T/F statements and have the students move to one side of the room or the other if they think it is true of false. Those who are wrong sit down. (ex. Alligators live in the rainforest T/F?). Maybe we could write out statements about biomes on a huge piece of cardboard. Then cut it into puzzle pieces. The kids then have to assemble the puzzle and then read the statements. Maybe there could be more than one puzzle and teams could compete against each other to finish first. Maybe then do a trivia game to see what they remember? . ..

Ashley's Idea: I also agree as I was reading through the list of the students interests and also the standards that the teachers want met I feel as though teaching a sports related lesson through habitats would be very fun and rewarding for the children. Taking the different sports and treating them as different habitats in the world would help the students be able to look at them as not just a part of science that they "have" to learn but as something that they are interested in. Getting the kids active to be is also very important. Maybe if weather permitting we could go outside and let the kids play around with some of the different sports, but at the same time tell them to be thinking of things that sports need, have etc.. like habitats what do they need to work, survive, prosper etc... Then after the students have gotten to play for awhile, they could break up into different groups, each group a different sport and work on some sort of chart, etc... to show how this sport is like a habitat.

Molly's idea Here is my first idea w/ regards to a lesson for the kids. The standard I focused on is the Revolutionary War. The idea I came up with is to introduce the Revolutionary War to the students by showing a short video. I would then go more in depth with a discussion about the War and explain what each side was fighting for. I would then split the class into two groups, the British and the American Patriots. Each group would then briefly research their “side”. They could look at their culture, attire, recreation, conditions of the war, food, etc. Based on their research, I would then have them create and reenact a scene from the War. This way they can interactively apply their knowledge about the War. This doesn’t involve specific sports listed, however, it will get the kids active. Ideally this lesson would span over a couple days, however, it should be able to fit in an hour, if resources are made available to the kids.

Aaron's idea: It's obvious that most of the young kids love sports and things of that sort. I was thinking that we could incorporate a game into a very nice learning activity. I was thinking that we could take a game that all kids seem to love, football, and turn it into an educational civil war game. The Teacher could have the kids line up, as if they were in the Civil War, and take turns throwing the ball to the individual Students. Before the ball is throw the Teacher can ask a question regarding the Civil War. If the student catches the ball and correctly answers the question, then the Student is still alive and it goes to the next student. But, if the student incorrectly answers the question and/or drops the pass, then the student is dead and must lie down as if they had been killed at war.