Thanksgiving Unit
I choose the lesson I presented on Thanksgiving as evidence of competence because every one of the students enjoyed the lesson and learned from it. I put a lot of effort in planning and implementing this lesson and really enjoyed collaborating with the general education teacher as well as the special education assistants. I had to overcome numerous obstacles with this lesson but overall it was worth it! Since there were only two days during the week of Thanksgiving to teach, the second grade teachers decided not to teach out of the reading series which I initially based my lesson on. However, I had no problem changing my lesson for the class and since it was Thanksgiving week I decided to present a lesson on Thanksgiving. I discussed the challenges the pilgrims faced during their voyage on the Mayflower and after landing at Plymouth. I also incorporated a PowerPoint about the pilgrims voyage and discovery of Plymouth. I decided to create workstations for the students with the help of two special education assistants. The first workstation was a PowerPoint presentation which included a song about the first Thanksgiving and questions. Students and teacher joined into the song. The second station was listening to a book while answering questions throughout the story. The third workstation was creating a feastive turkey out of construction paper. The students really enjoyed all three workstation. I was really happy of the outcome of this lesson.
This entire lesson was conducted over one day and included comprehension, writing, fine motor skills, and critical thinking skills. This was a lesson I was extremely proud of because all of the students had a good time in a somewhat feastive, holiday atmosphere, but were learning every step of the way.
Matter Unit
For my matter unit I incorporated a book, experiments and worksheets and I believe using a lot of hands-on and demonstration really helped the students learn about the different states of matter. The students and I really enjoyed the experiments for this unit and most of the students wanted to demonstate the experiments again.
Sound Unit
The sound unit I conducted had various manipulatives. I incorporated books, experiments, and a PowerPoint presentation. As mention above, the students enjoy hands-on activities and especially loved using the tuning fork. It was so much easier to hold their attention when using manipulatives and the students learned much easier from the experiments that I planned in my lesson.