for some odd reason I put up two videos in one of my blogs and it don't show on my end. hopefully they do on your end

October 23, 2012. This was my second lesson. This was about the geography of land such as lakes,rivers,oceans, deserts, mountains, valleys and plains. This was my lesson where I was being evaluated by my professor.

I started out by playing the geography song from a CD. My students followed along with a handout I gave them.After the song was played I began asking my students if they knew what some of these items were. Most of them knew the big items like Mountains and rivers, but most of them did not know what a valley was or a plain. I brought in some outside knowledge that was not from the lesson guide. I explained how the St Joe river flowed from Ohio, through Indiana, then into Michigan and how it dumps into Lake Michigan. I then gave an example of a desert in South America of how it is so hot and how it never rains.

I also asked students how lakes, rivers, and mountains are formed and I had varying answers. I explained how these items were formed over long periods of time such as continents colliding with each other to form mountains, how lakes were formed by melted glaciers and how rivers are formed from melting ice flowing down mountain sides. One of my questions was "how do rivers form"? And the most perfect answer I got was "however they want". When my student said that I told him he is absolutely correct. It is the most basic in answers and absolutely correct. Think about it. Water flows in the path of least resistance and where ever water wants to go it's going to go. So if water goes where it wants then rivers form how ever they want. It was such an unexpected answer that I couldn't think of anything to say but, "you are absolutely correct".

To keep the lesson going I had the students play a spinner game. What ever land feature the spinner landed on my students had to put a chip on that feature on a map.

I closed the lesson by reviewing each of the vocabulary words, explaining how land features were formed and having the students give me examples of what they learned.

Thanks "S" for such a great answer.

November 6, 2012. My third lesson for Social Studies and this dealt with our environment, natural resources and pollution. My lead teacher told me to do this lesson how ever I wanted. He said edit out from the lesson guide and add what you want and have fun with it. This is exactly what I did. After reading over the chapter and looking through the lesson guide I knew what I wanted to do. The lesson guide for this chapter was weak at best so I decided to add my own design and provide a little bit of a shock factor for my students.

I began the lesson with asking my students if they knew what environment meant and what natural resources are. Some had an idea, but for most of the class they were unsure. I gave examples such as the inside of our classroom is our environment; everything around us. Then I said if we were outside that would be our environment. Basically everything around us is our environment. I then asked for examples of natural resources and also gave examples. Examples include trees, stone, water, air, plants and animals etc. After my mini lesson I had the students work on a worksheet to where they had to look at a picture and decide if it came from a plant or an animal.

I then moved on to the meat of my lesson. POLLUTION. We read from the textbook and we talked a bit about the different types of pollution and the effects it has on the earth and people. I then used the "Elmo" to show my students a PowerPoint presentation I put together. With this presentation I focused on land, air and water pollution. I wanted to give a little shock factor to my students and I got what I wanted. A lot of ooohs, and ahhhs.

Land Pollution

Air Pollution

Water Pollution

After this presentation I transitioned to the back of the class and read Just a Dream to my students. This is a book about a boy who litters and does not take the time to recycle. The boy dreams of a future that does not look so good because of all the pollution. After he woke up he decided he did not like the look of the future so the boy decided to change his ways and start acting more responsible about recycling. After I finished reading the book I had the students write a couple sentences on what they could do now so their future does not look like the one from the book.

This was my favorite lesson because I wanted to add some shock factor and show my students the effects of pollution and how we as people can do little things here and there to help reduce it.

November 12, 2012. This was my final lesson for my semester here in M500. This chapter was on Who Provides Services in a Community. I started out my lesson explaining to my students that over the past few weeks we have been talking about geography, maps, environment, pollution and natural resources. I told my students everything we been talking about has been about earth type stuff. Mountains, rivers, oceans, plains, valleys, deserts, plants and animals. I told my students we are going to now talk about people and how people are also considered a natural resource. A natural resource for other people to use for services. I gave examples of firefighters, police, doctors, etc. I then asked my students to give me examples of people who provide services and what type of service it is and the hands started raising. I went from student to student and they were providing me examples. I even had students raising their hands just to raise their hands. I would pick on them and they had nothing to say. I guess the just like raising their hands for the fun of it. I used the school building as an example of all the different people it took to build the school and all the different services that were used to complete the building. Brick layers, plumbers, electricians, carpet layers and painters to name a few.

I had my students work on a worksheet then I used the "Elmo" to show the class a youtube video.The class liked the video so much they asked me to play it again. After the video I had the class work on another worksheet where they had to match the name of the service to the definition. The students did a nice job on this worksheet. After this worksheet was finished I played another video to show the pride people get when they provide services to the community above and beyond their job.

After the last video I explained to my students how I use to be a Firefighter years ago and how the Fire Department does a lot of community service. I told them about fund raisers, food and coat drives every December so we could provide a nice Christmas and meals for those who are a little less off than the rest of us. The video may have been a little above their understanding, but I feel they got the idea.

During my M500 experience here at this school I have been using this Social Studies book to do my lessons. My first lesson was done on October 16, 2012 and it was on Geography and maps and grid maps. We as a class discussed how people can use maps to find places in their community, in the state, or the whole US.

To find places people use a key map to locate certain items in a certain area. I also explained to the students how people can find certain items or areas by using a grid map. For example B4, D3, A2, etc, etc. My students picked up on this pretty easy. We also had a large 9X9 grid taped on the floor. I placed pictures of certain places located throughout the community and then I gave my students a co-ordinate and they had to step in that spot. I made sure all students were able to participate and they all had fun. The whole lesson went well and my lead teacher said I did a real good job.