Beginning to Think About Fieldwork

As time passes by, our fieldwork is starting to finally begin!! We were assigned our groups and topics and my group is getting the opportunity to teach a 5th grade class at Bishop Dunn all about Christopher Columbus!

After meeting with my three group-members about our ice breaker activity, we came up with the conclusion for the students to pass around a globe beach ball and answer personal and Columbus related questions. We met after class in the library and came up with questions like:

1. Where have you traveled to?

2. Have you ever been out of the country?

3. Would you consider yourself an explorer?

4. Who was Christopher Columbus?

5. What year did he sail the ocean blue?

After creating the questions, we figured they would pass the globe to each other, introduce themselves and tell us where they landed on the globe when they caught it. For example, if they landed on Antartica, we gave them a specific question. Along with the globe, we created a Columbus pre-assessment to see what basics they know about Christopher Columbus before they get an entire lesson on him and his voyages. Lastly, we created map name tags for about six students, which included construction paper and a picture of a map with their name in the center, which really relates to social studies as a whole.

After meeting with my group, the day finally came!! We were able to effectively use our activity with the 5th grade class and it went extremely well! The students were separated into 4 different groups and we got to rotate to each table to share our icebreaker with each student. We began by passing the globe to each other, telling our names and then explaining how the activity will work to the students. We randomly passed the globe to one student to start and he or she said their name, where they landed and then answered the question given. We learned a lot of great things about each student! We learned that there are many explorers in the class and at such a young age, I was surprised to learn how many of them traveled all over the world! Each student seemed so excited to answer the questions whether it was about traveling, their favorite foods/hobbies, or just a random question. They had fun passing the globe to one another and last minute, I came up with the idea to have the students pass the globe to us, the teachers, and ask us questions they were dying to find out. The students really enjoyed that and asked us our age, what our majors are, when we plan on becoming a teacher, and much more! They seemed thoroughly engaged in our activity which was exciting for our group. The one thing we didn't get to do was our Columbus pre-assessment questions. We should have incorporated them into the game, rather than make them separate questions. We were pressed on time, but the kids seemed to be having so much fun with our activity that we didn't want to interrupt it. Maybe we will somehow include our Columbus questions within our lesson, but overall our ice breaker went extremely well. Many of the kids shared that they enjoyed answering our questions and like passing around the globe to one another. It was a simple, yet fun way to get to know each student. We still have many things to learn but overall, this was a great way to engage the students and now we know how excited and participated they will be in our lessons!