The Importance of Artifacts

In elementary school, I remember looking at various types of artifacts. Well, what exactly is an artifact? An artifact is an item made by a human being that is typically an item of cultural or historical interest. Having artifacts is like having a piece of history in the palm of your hands. It takes you back in time and makes you see certain pieces of the past. 

For another one of our projects, we had to create our own artifact bags using artifacts from the middle ages. Being that this time period occurred many years ago, it was hard to find "real" artifacts pertaining to the middle ages. I did a little research and discovered the kinds of coins used in the markets, the keys used in the castles and the paintings that were made. Once we found our artifacts, we had to find a book and a website pertaining to the artifacts. 

In class, we all brought in our artifacts and shared what we found and why. I really enjoyed getting to see and touch the artifacts while I listened to the reasoning behind the artifacts. 

This was a learning experience for me because it made me realize how important artifacts really are and how helpful they are to the lessons. 

Planning Forever

We are the last group to go, but we wanted to get a super head start on the lessons. In total, we planned for six long weeks for these lessons. We met in the library late in the evening and planned. In the beginning, it was a lot of brainstorming, but as it got closer, we became focused and determined to finish the lessons. We made edits after edits until everything slowly started to come together. Once it came to the end, we rehearsed until we felt confident enough to teach it to the students. We used lots of technology and made lots of activities for the students to do. Even though we spent too much time planning, we were all happy in the end with our lessons. 

Batter Up!

Today, the first group stepped up to the plate (teach) and taught their direct lesson in a fifty minute time frame. The first group taught all about merchants and markets during the medieval times. Being that this lesson was taught to a fourth grade class at Saint Joseph's, my colleagues had to accommodate their lesson to the fourth grade standards.

I found that the whole group taught well together as a whole. Each teacher candidate walked around making sure all the students were on track and paying attention. This lesson was definitely interactive and engaging for the students. Being that this was the  first lesson, the students were a little hard to control because this was the first time the rules had to be established. 

While my colleagues were teaching. the rest of the class sat in the back of the room and observed everything that they were doing. We took notes on how they engaged the students and how they opened and closed the lesson, for example. I learned a lot from observing in the back of the classroom.

All in all, the first group did a phenomenal job! It's not easy going first!

Are pre-tests really that important?

The purpose of a pre-test is to test students knowledge on a particular topic in schools. Pre-tests are designed to pinpoint where the teacher should focus more on the lesson based on the results of the tests. If all the students get question 1 right, then the teacher knows not to review any of the concepts related to question 1. However, if half the class does not get question 6 right, then the teacher knows to review the concepts from that particular question. 

The process of creating a pre-test involves making a variety of questions that test what the students do and do not know. These questions may include: multiple choice, true/false, short answer and fill in the blank. The questions should be general and specific and geared towards what the students have learned previously. It also should be a fair variety of questions so the teacher can collect accurate data. 

For the social studies pre-test, each of the groups came up with 3-4 questions about their lesson topic. For example, my group is teaching law and order, so we came up with 4 questions pertaining to law and order in the middle ages. Then, we added the questions to Google Forms so one of my colleagues can put it together for the students. Once we received the results, we were able to figure out what we should focus on for our lesson.