Student Teaching- Week #8: "Thanksgiving - Giving Thanks"
This is just a short glimpse into what I did on Monday for my second observed lesson. My advisor came to observed me and basically grade me on the way I teach, interact with the children and how I work with the class management.
On Monday, I introduce the children to the Thanksgiving week, by teaching them five "tier 3" sight words related to the topic. The vocabulary words used were : Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Native Americans, Feast, and Harvest. The chosen words were part of the book I read, Thanksgiving Day Thanks by Laura Malone Elliot and Lynn Munsinger.
Before I read the book, I asked the kids what they thought Thanksgiving meant and what were they thankful for. Their responses varied throughout both morning(green) and afternoon(red) class.
( It was so funny, how one of the boys in the afternoon class was thankful for "girls". I found it both cute and funny ).
As I read along, the children learned the different vocabulary words, which were represented using pictures of the words. The picture I used for this poster, were found on Pinterest and Google Image.
During the pre-assessment, I was able to learn about the students' previous knowledge of Thanksgiving and implement educational objectives for which the children had to recall information from experience or familiar topic to answer the questions and speak audibly to express their thoughts, feeling and ideas about the topic. Some children were aware of words such as; Thanksgiving and Harvest, but most didn't know about the other words. These vocabulary words were explained during the read aloud by showing pictures. The sight words were reviewed and read aloud at the end of the lesson for a summative assessment and better comprehension.
At the end of the lesson, we talked about what we do on Thanksgiving and how we celebrate Thanksgiving. The children then worked on a turkey paper bag, which I forgot to take picture of the beautifully and unique puppet that the children created.
I hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving festivity like I did with my family. If you don't mind, please share how you taught the history of Thanksgiving for those who are teachers or how you celebrate it.