Friday Flashback...

Sometimes life gets in the way of the aspirations of blog writing.  I aspired to write on a regular basis in the New Year, but alas, life has interrupted that goal.

This week was one of the most amazing weeks in my classroom, but it was also one of the most stressful.  On Monday, I had a group of teachers come to watch an inquiry lesson in order to begin changing the way instruction is being taught in our county's science center.  I was excited, but it was a little overwhelming.  I expected 3 teachers, but 6 showed up in the room.  In the middle of the lesson, I received a new student.  I wasn't able to attend to that because I was in the middle of a lesson.

I'm accustomed to teachers coming in my room, but it was a little daunting to be scripted.  Every question I asked was written down and analyzed after the lesson.

On Wednesday, another group from the same organization came again.  Again, I expected 3, but I had 6 arrive.  Add to that my principal and assistant principal, and our curriculum coordinator.  I had a total of TEN people in the room, and my 24 kids.  My kiddos were amazing!  The learning that was coming out of their exploration was fantastic....but, I wasn't able to take the first picture!  Other people did, but I wasn't able to - disappointed.

But, I'm still linking up with Amanda over at Teaching Maddeness for Flashback Friday!

We've been working with our American Revolution unit this week.  The big event that we studied was the Boston Massacre.  In preparation for Common Core coming our way, I utilized as many primary sources that I could find that showed opposing viewpoints of this event.  We used Paul Revere's etching and 3 other artistic representations that were created to show different aspects of the Boston Massacre.  Then we read 2 eye witness accounts - one Patriot and one British.  Students then highlighted similarities and differences between the two accounts.  Groups then chose one viewpoint to represent in a tableaux.  

Students LOVED this series of lessons.  And, I have to say, my lowest achieving group did the best representation of the event.  I would have loved to utilize costuming for this because they did such a fantastic job of depicting the emotion and events.

This group mixed both viewpoints and decided to include Patriots and Loyalist in their Tableaux.

This group represented the Patriots point of view.

Another representation of both view points.

After this lesson, we began our new novel, Tolliver's Secret. 

So far, the kids are LOVING it.  I have divided my kids into Patriots and Loyalists for the duration of the unit. Points are awarded throughout the day for clean-up, creativity, problem solving, examples of friendship, helping, collaborating, etc.  We will see which side wins the war at the end of the unit.  

Link up with Amanda to share your flashback!