What is Patriotism? March 15th

My Teaching Teammate and I JUST got back from teaching our first real lesson for the unit, and our first time teaching the ENTIRE class in Ms. D's first grade room. (How am I going to get up this early next year EVERY DAY?). It went really well and was pretty trying at the same time. Teaching a CONCEPT like "patriotism" or the idea of "being patriotic" has to really click for students to have any idea what you are talking about, and at an age as young as 6 - you have to really stretch your kiddos from those concrete things they associate it with all the way over to the abstract, cognitive and affective feel of it. Whenever I get frustrated with students not being able to push their knowledge further, I wonder what it would be like to teach older kiddos - I know that the lesson we did today would have been an incredible discussion and evaluation with students in upper elementary, but I also have to remind myself that I will be starting these kiddos on the right path to that ability and understanding - and remind myself how much I love the "little ones." I am still struggling with that "What grade do I want to be in?" saga -but regardless of my placement next year, I still have good vibes about any age.

Since it is such a hard idea to get a hold of, we did a direct instruction lesson -with all of the sections (presentation, guided practice, individual practice,closure and evaluation). We got there nice and early and witnessed the end of announcements, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance (so perfect!) and such right before we kicked in. We had a quick discussion about patriotism (I brought in a huge posterboard and as we talked about the US and it's symbols/ideas I jotted down what students were producing and their thought process). The lightbulb was not going off for very many of the students, and with some help from Ms. D and Ms. K we made some progress - mostly listings of monuments and special places, the Fourth of July anda few key words, like "represent" and "national". We then zoomed out to patriotism as an idea of "being proud and celebrating your country, no matter where you are from." Reilly did a hilarious 3 minute skit about "First grade-alonia" where he recited a fake pledge of allegiance, talked about how cool of a place it was, and then did a "traditional first grade dance." The whole class jumped up and pranced around and celebrated with him. We hoped this would inspire students to generalize ideas from their life under the category of being patriotic. We then had images pre-printed out (of people voting, an olympic gold medalist rockin' the red white and blue, and then a group of people reciting the national anthem/pledge) and talked about where they were, what they were doing and how it was national pride. Then we moved on to the "Exit card" moment where students drew a picture about patriotism in THEIR lives, and then wrote on lines below it to answer the question: "What is one thing you REALLY learned today." This last activity was somewhat drawn out - students got caught up in the picture, and some of them wrote things they already knew that we didn't talk about today at all (the flag is red, white and blue -or- The flag has 50 stars). The best answer was "I learned that Reilly is from first grade a lonia" by Student K. The pictures make me smile (mostly of the flag, liberty bell, and fireworks) and we did hit the nail on the head with the few kiddos that put things down about "everyone celebrates the fourth of july differently," "patriotism is to honor our country," and "Other countries can be patriotic."

As with every lesson - there were so many things I MYSELF learned.
1) whole group instruction is really hard. There is a reason they decide to do so many centers and partner and group work untill you get to be in 2nd or 3rd grade - it is much more successful and gives you a better feel for students and where they are at. Even with two teachers, I feel like Reilly and I couldn't "get with" every kid at every part. A few of the kids didn't have sentences or couldn't get help to write what they wanted.
2) I need to work on time management - I still feel like a lot of the time we are guessing as to how long things will take, and how long students will take to DO things. My Teammate and I ran over the time a bit and the students can't move very fast when you ask them to produce a sentence or even draw a picture...which leads me to:
3)if you want information -ask them to write a sentence and THEN draw you a picture. They love the process of creation and will not stop untill they are done.
4) Students will get as frustrated and discouraged as you will at times. Keep going - be flexible and finish strong. Student O, who is brilliant but horribly distracted, decided to make comments that were not relevant in hopes of being funny, and then when he was disciplined by his teacher at the end, he gave up on doing his exit card. At other times when we were asking questions about patriotism we got nothing but blank stares from the kiddos on the rug. :(
5) You are never too old to act like a kid - we all had a blast dancing around and screaming "First Grade-A-lonia" at the top of our lungs, and if anything kids will never forget this crazy morning after announcements with their friends from UVa.

I am excited for our next lesson !