Geocaching!

This week in class we learned about geocaching.  This is a website that tracks where people place items in random places. You can find all of these places by using GPS.  This is a great tool for a classroom to show how to use latitude and longitude.  It is amazing to learn how many different locations this cache is located in. We located one on ETSU campus and found it difficult to find. It was really well hidden! I can see how so many people find this addicitng.  I plan to do some geocaching myself this summer when I finally have some free time.  You can check it out at http://www.geocaching.com/.

Fall Break

I am a little behind so it's time to catch up with the past few weeks.  This week has been pretty crazy.  A storm raged through town and made a mess. School was closed for a while and pretty much everyone did not come to class on Monday. OOps. Etsu had a hard time letting people know when classes resumed. This storm made me realize how lucky we are to live in this region of the country.  We typically don't get tornadoes, hurricanes or any kind of natural disasters. The mountains seem to protect us from the enviroment.

This week during social studies we built a city.  Not just any city, a box city.  This activity was a lot of fun.  We started of by deciding what buildings were needed and what are city and roads would be named. Then we all chose a building and built them from random boxes.  This activity will work for any grade level.  You can add more detail for older grades and simplify it for younger grades. This lesson is perfect for geography but can easily be used in all other subject areas.  Definitly try it some time!

Learning through acting

This past week in our social studies class we talked about the Boston masacre and the Boston Tea Party.  We did not read over chapter pages or listen to a lecture on power point.  We seperated our class into two groups and each group got a script for one of the two events.  This was a blast!!  I was able to see how acting out history can be such a great way to learn in the classroom.  Everyone had a great time and we were able to understand how people felt in the situation by acting out.  I certainly feel that I was able to learn more in that one class than I did reading my history book in school.   I hope to be able to incorporate this form of learning in my classroom next year. I want my students to learn and have fun at the same time. :)

Critical Voice

For our social studies class this week we read an article about having a critical voice.  If you are in a postion of an educator you must have your own critical voice.  This article talked about how many new teachers go into a school and simply do as they are told.  I did not go to school for this many years to simply do as I am told.  I went to school because I want to be a part of the change.  I am not going to sit back and allow my students to not recieve the best available education because certain things are not in the curriculum. I hope that anyone thinking about going into the education field make sure that they are aware of their own critical voice before stepping foot in a classroom.