Daily Outcomes

I am trying to be a strategic teacher this year. So far it is REALLY helping me stay focused!

We have a daily outcome for each lesson. It tells us what we hope to learn and be able to do by the end of the lesson. I refer to it during the lesson, and it helps us come full circle and wrap up the lesson. I AM LOVING IT! (Sorry McDonalds-had to borrow!) 🙂

I decide what the daily outcome should be based on the standard we are trying to master. For the past 3 weeks in our history class we have used “chunks” of the textbook to help us meet the daily outcome and standard. We are NOT reading each page of the textbook this year. If we tried to do this I think our brains would become so overwhelmed with ALL of the information that we would not end up mastering the standard. I’m hoping for an understanding of the big ideas-not just the memorization of facts, dates, and names that don’t make sense. 🙂

 

 

What are your thoughts on having a daily outcome to try to meet with each lesson?

Social Studies Updates

My panic meter has risen to an alarming all time high. 🙂 I don’t feel as prepared as I would like to feel for this upcoming year with my social studies that I will be teaching for the first time. Which means I have got to GET WITH IT!!

This is what I did about it last night. Till 3am. (Of course, that was AFTER I got back from the movies!)

I researched (and I do mean R E S E A R C H E D) online until I made a decision on what read aloud novels I would use for 5th and 6th. I picked 2 concepts/themes that I want them to understand and connect with. This is what I came up with:

5th grade- American Revolution and Immigration

Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Letters From Rifka by Karen Hesse

6th Grade-Holocaust and Civil Rights

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis

Whew! That’s done! 🙂

Here are some links that I will be using all year.

Alabama Course of Study Standards for Social Studies

5th Grade Social Studies Pacing Guide (Courtesy of Morgan County)

6th Grade Social Studies Pacing Guide (Courtesy of Morgan County)

Alabama High School Graduation Exam Standards

I also made a list of the BIG IDEAS or CONCEPTS that we will cover and wrote them on chart paper and taped to the wall in my little office at my house. I have several columns to check off as I figure out the following:

1. Reading over the material

2. Resources to add to my livebinders page (REALLY loving livebinders!!)

3. Coming up with some kind of introduction presentation/hook

4. Attempting to write out a plan 🙂

I will summarize this post by saying once again-

My panic meter has risen to an alarming all time high. 🙂 I don’t feel as prepared as I would like to feel for this upcoming year with my social studies that I will be teaching for the first time. Which means I have got to GET WITH IT!!

That’s it. 🙂

Standards

I created 2 new pages-one has the link to the ARMT Reading Standards, and the other one has the link to the AL COS Reading/Langauge Standards. Hope this was useful for some of you-a central place to be able to pull up the standards that we teach! 🙂