Today I began the unit on Europe. I began with an introduction about what we knew. I wanted to start with a story about how Europe got its name, but that turned out to be a very bad idea since the story is inappropriate in Greek mythology. The what do we know about Europe actually went pretty well. I thought it was a little bit dry and not much of a hook, so I want to be more creative than that.
I passed out the maps so that the students could color them
- I did not tell them where to find the information in their books, so that could have been done differently, but it is an easy fix.
- I did make a model of the map, but I should have scanned it and shown it from above for a better feeling for this
- I told the students that they could finish it as homework and that probably made them relax a little bit more which was not necessarily a good thing. It took about 45 mins for only 2 girls to finish so I need to put a bit more pressure on the kids to finish. The russia map will have to be a little bit different.
- I thought that the environment was a little bit dry for what we were doing, and I'm personally uncomfortable with silence so Mike suggested that I play classical music during that time and perhaps give them the time for listen to their own music as well if they like
- I do not like to flip over my own papers back and forth when making these things so I probably could have made a few more since the extras that I gave out ran out rather quickly even in such a small class.
The students asked for the air guitar competition when we were done, and I did not want to take that away from them so I killed about 6-7 minutes watching that, but the kids do seem to enjoy it. I think we might need something else though soon, it seems to have lost its novelty with everyone except for Dillon
As the competition was finishing up I passed out their note guides and we began to talk about Europe. I tried to make the information concise and emphasize what they needed to know. They have a type of brochure that they're using to take the notes and I hope it went well. It was a lot easier for me to talk about the countries and capitals than it was for me to talk about physical feature. I am not nearly as comfortable with actual geography so I guess that is to be expected.
We ran out of time about half way through the noteguide which I knew was going to happen when I started. We will finish the information on Monday, but I don't know if it will actually stick through the weekend for their quiz. After this lesson I am supposed to start the Protestant Reformation, and I will really need to time myself with that lesson, and I would really not like to push it into the second half of the next class, so we will try to fit all of the rest of Europe and maybe the quiz in on Monday.
Report with the students is still going well, they are starting to talk more and more everyday, and I'm getting better about taking whatever comment they happen to make and turning it into a connection to the lesson, so I hope I can continue that when we get into the more history oriented things in the lesson.
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