MissSwansonsBlog

  This was the final lesson that Grace and I taught together for this unit. In this lesson, we focused on advocacy. Before introducing the topic, the students played a Blooket review game that covered all of the topics we learned throughout the unit. After the game, we introduced the key terms for the week: advocacy, activism, social justice, biography, and empathy. Students learned these words by reading the terms and definitions aloud and pasting corresponding pictures into their notebooks. Our next activity was introducing our celebrity for the lesson: Shohei Ohtani. We presented him through a read-aloud biography. Since the biography was a chapter book, I selected a few chapters and read the first paragraph of each. Afterward, the students participated in a cause-and-effect activity. I had several causes written on the board, and the students had to determine the effects. All of the causes and effects were centered around Shohei Ohtani. Once we finished the cause-and-effect act...

This was the fifth lesson that Grace and I taught together. This week, we focused on Japanese culture. We began the lesson with a Blooket review, which the students responded to very well—they were highly engaged throughout the activity. After finishing the Blooket questions, we transitioned into introducing new vocabulary words related to the topic of culture. We handed out the vocabulary cards for students to add to their key rings. Each student took a turn reading a term and its definition aloud. Next, we read a folktale titled The Star Festival by Moni Ritchie Hadley and Mizuho Fujisawa, taking turns as readers. To continue exploring the theme of culture, we had the students watch a short video on their Chromebooks with headphones. If any students finished early, they were instructed to take notes on anything new they learned from the video. Afterward, we moved into our “Needs, Wants, and Culture” picture sort activity. For this, I held up pictures representing elements of Japanes...

This was the fourth lesson Grace and I taught about Japan, and this week we taught economics. We started this lesson by having the students partake in another blooket review. The students really enjoy this activity because of how interactive the website is. The students were able to review the previous week's key terms to refresh their memory. After the students reviewed the previous week's key terms, we taught them twelve new vocabulary words. We taught these words by giving them another key term sheet that they could add to their key ring, and doing a matching game. After the students took some time to arrange the words, definitions, and corresponding pictures to each other, we moved on to the picture sort activity. The picture sort activity was extremely interactive and all of the students were engaged. We instructed all of the students to go to the rug before we started the activity. For this picture sort activity, we had the students perform a movement game to make it more...