Berg Science & Social Studies

This week was cut a bit short between President's Day Monday and a snow day on Friday. Sometimes that's just how it goes in teaching, you have to readjust plans and start again the next week!  I was still able to observe and help teach science lessons on birds and amphibians.  We have been doing much of our animal fact-learning and note-taking during our writing block because we don't have enough time devoted to science and social studies to get this learning and writing done. At first, I was unsure if using the writing block for science was a best practice, but Nell K. Duke changed my mind! In her webinar,  Speaking Up for Science and Social Studies,  she gives three reasons why she feels that more time devoted to science and social studies would greatly benefit literacy. Her first reason is that science and social studies knowledge greatly affects reading and writing, her second is that science and social studies provide a compelling context for teaching reading an...

 We switched gears in first grade this week from mainly focusing on social studies to mainly focusing on science. There are a few notable Americans we'll finish learning about in weeks to come, but the bulk of the learning has been done for this standard. We also did a lot around valentines which impacted some of our science and social studies learning, which happens! It's good to be flexible!  In our study of organisms, the first-grade team has been focusing on vertebrate animals. this week we learned about insects, which are invertebrates, to emphasize the difference between animals with a backbone and those without. This lesson was very interesting for the students, they had so much background knowledge to share and enjoyed learning some cool new facts. I actually learned some things too- I love when teaching also teaches me! My only disappointment with this lesson is that it's the wrong time of year to have some hands-on learning with insects. If we were further into sp...

 I love the framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)! I learned about it in my first class at Regis in the Fall of 2023. It really resonated with me then and it still does now. It is something that I have looked for in each of my practicum placements- and something that I would love to fully implement in my future classroom. It was especially interesting to intentionally observe and help teach through the UDL lens this week.   This past Wednesday the first graders were given a fun STEM project to work on. First the students watched a read-aloud of The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll. They were then given a set of supplies and told to create the biggest snowman they could. The students had 45 minutes to plan and make their snowman. According to Kopp, "STEM activities fall at the highest level of inquiry. In STEM activities, students apply learning for a real-life purpose, suited to address a real-life problem. They actually design and construct a model to add...