Social Studies Lesson 1

The first Social Studies lesson I taught had students up out of their chair and moving from the start.

As the students came into the room, I greeted them at the door and acted as though I was a flight attendant. I said, “Welcome to Flight 451. Please find your seats, we will be taking off shortly.” Being greeted like that instantly intrigued the kids, which has never happened before. It was important to get the kids attention right from the beginning, especially since there are about 40 students in the class. If we hadn’t been able to catch them in an exciting and unique way, the lesson would have gone downhill from there. Also setting the classroom up in a different manner than they are used to would have typically thrown them off, but with the exciting introduction and really setting the scene up for us going on an airplane together, it all worked great.

To enhance the learning environment we could have done this: Pinterest

If I had to do it all over again, I would have allowed more time for the entire experience to grow further. As stated before, due to the allotted class time we had to cut the development of their country short, but I wish I had a chance to see where it would have gone.

I learned that our students are not used to a relaxed learning environment; they are used to a very structured place to learn about social studies. I also learned who the leaders of the class are. Some of the students knew right away what was important when developing a new country and voiced their opinions and thoughts, while others just sat back for the experience and voiced their opinion only when they needed to. The students in this particular class can handle this lack of structure in their classroom even though they are used to structure, and they learned a lot of information from this lesson. You know you taught a great lesson when the students continue to talk about it and come up with ideas way after the class has ended and it’s time to go home!