What’s Going on in the classroom

When I return from Thanksgiving Break, I will have the opportunity to teach the second graders Maps and Globes. I am really nervous because I have no idea how to teach that to kids in a fun way. This is a very rambunctious group I am working with and they need to move every once in a while to release some energy. The first day I will be going over the basics of maps and all the different characteristics that make maps the same and different from each other. Then I will teach globes and how they are just the same as maps but show a more real-world application because they are shaped like the earth is. I hope they will be able to grasp the concept that the earth is not flat but we will never fall off the earth. This seems like a concept that is too hard for them at this age so I might not go into that much detail about that because it is not going to be the base of my lesson. I will have to look on the internet and see what there is for ideas. I have some ideas on what I want to do but it is hard because I sometimes get too many ideas and then my lessons are too shallow and not really covering what is going on. I have a tendency to lose focus on what I need to be teaching but that is okay because I have gotten into some great discussion with students on things. It was really great when I did my lesson on Wants because I made it memorable for them. They had to come up with their own store and create a product out of Play Dough. They absolutely loved it and didn’t want to stop. But I guarantee if you walked into that classroom 80% of the class could tell you the difference between wanting something and needing it and they could tell you which one is more important.
The second graders are very active doing various activities. They are in the process of learning about data in math and so I thought it would be cool to incorporate what they have done in math into social studies so I had them collect data on choosing items and making a decision on which one they wanted to “buy” and give up. I then had them make a bar graph of their data. That was difficult because they had not made a bar graph from scratch before so we had to take a little more time than expected out of the afternoon. I felt bad that day because I took up most of the afternoon and my cooperating teacher did not have as much time to complete her stuff. She said it was okay but I still felt bad.
Anyway, I am going to miss teaching second grade so much when we are done in a couple of weeks. Second grade is what I want to teach and I have had so much fun getting to know the students and seeing their smiling faces three days a week.