Chinese New Year

My wonderful lead teacher expressed to me that if I wanted to get the most out of the student teaching experience then I should jump in full force. This may be the reason why starting in my third week in the classroom she handed me a giant folder filled with lessons and ideas for teaching Chinese new year in the social studies block. I was nervous, of coarse, but more so than anything I was excited that she handed me such an engaging topic and let me have the freedom to plan the next five days of social studies.

Below are the five lesson plans I created. As we all know - the plan always takes a detour but my goal for student teaching is to create some sort of lesson plan for everything I do. This way I can look back and generate new ideas from what worked and even what didn't work. To view the entire lesson plan, click on the light green links beside each day. Enjoy!

Day One: "Bringing In The New Year"

Finished dragons were hung on our makeshift bulletin board just outside our classroom door. The yellow sentence strip displays the NV standard. (Please excuse the fire hydrant!)

Day Two: "Comparing New Year's Traditions"
(Stay tuned for student examples!)

Day Three: "Fortune Cookies"

Recipe that the class read and followed together. My lead teacher tries to do one recipe a month so by the end of the year each student will have a cookbook from first grade. The recipes on chart paper are hung around the room.

Finished fortune cookies, each complete with a student created fortune inside!

Day Four: "Wind Socks"

Day Five: "Brainstorming and Closure"