Field Experience Post #2

This week Loryn and myself did our first lesson on Patrick Henry and Benedict Arnold. A lot of our technology wasn't working (neither the Digital Story nor my Powerpoint would open up. So we had to do a lot of improvising and being flexible with the schedule. I ended up using a reader that projected my printed slides on the projector. Loryn's part with Patrick Henry went really well and she was super flexible with making things work. At the end of the lesson we did Decision Alley, which didn't work as well as I wanted it to. I don't think they fully got the concept of what they are supposed to do. Also, it was right at the very end of the lesson and there wasn't very much time to do it. So I think that contributed to it not working as well as I wanted.
We also taught our first science lessons which went really well. The students worked with chemical reactions. The first day, they mixed baking soda, calcium chloride and phenol red solution. This caused a heat reaction as well as a release of gas. The next day, the students had to figure out, using their own experiments, what chemical caused the heat to happen. They found out through the experiments that it was the calcium chloride that was causing the heat.
This coming week, we are teaching Patrick Henry and Benedict Arnold with a drama insert from the Diamante poem and we will be doing some more experiments with chemical reactions in science. Stay tuned!