Group One, Time to Shine!

On Tuesday, my group, which is group one taught out direct instruction lesson to the fifth graders!  The topic my group had to teach them was about the formation of our nation so, we taught about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the branches of governments, and different events that occurred while the Constitution was being written. Throughout our lesson they were participating by answering all of the questions and filling in the missing words that were on their note sheet.  Our note sheets worked very well this semester.  We made it so that it was less words for the students to fill in and that everything matched exactly, and it worked!  The students were very focused during the whole direct lesson which was very pleasing and encouraging.  They were really into our Students vs. Teachers game so, they wanted to earn as many points as they could.

For guided practice, we had the students build a time line.  On the smartboard, we projected the date and definition of the key term the students were going to place on the timeline, the students read the definition out loud, and them we had the groups turn and talk about what they thought the term was, then the group who thought they had it raised their hand, and if it was correct, they came up and put the term on the time line. The students enjoyed this, and it was an effective way to go over the terms that they learned. This allowed the students to earn even more points for the students vs. teachers game! They were very good at this.
 
The students ended our direct instruction by doing an independent practice and completing a "Forming a New Nation Exit Ticket". This exit ticket had 5 multiple choice questions and 5 true or false questions about everything that they learned that day.  This allowed us to see what the students really learned about everything that we taught them.  After we looked at the exit tickets, the students did fairly well.

 Of course, at the end of our lesson, we kept count of how many points the students had and how many points the teachers had to continue with the students vs. teachers game for our inquiry lesson with the fifth grade which is up next on Tuesday!  I am looking forward to see how well the fifth graders apply everything they learned!