Once again I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for teacher week! Today is the last day and I will be telling you all about my favorite subject(s) to teach!
My favorite subject to teach varies a lot by grade level. In the past 3 years I have worked in Kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 5th grade! Yes, it's wide range of ages but I LOVE them all!
Kindergarten
Kindergarten is such an amazing year to watch. Even in the 1st month, I was amazed at how much progress my students had made. The subject that amazed me the most was writing. Most of my students entered my classroom not being able to write their name! By November, we were writing guided sentences with prompts at the beginning and students filling in their own answers near the end! Every day I was so proud of my students for their abilities to express themselves by sound-spelling words. There are so many skills and strategies to get students from a blank page to writing multiple sentences. For me, this subject was fun, rewarding, and allowed my students to be expressive!
3rd Grade
In third grade, my favorite subject to teach is math. My students last year were able to feel so much ownership when they finally "got" multiplication, fractions, division, and more! So much of the math curriculum is interactive and I was able to delve into real world examples with my students. They found math relatable which was highly rewarding for me to see! The manipulative activities, task cards, and games that I was able to use at this level really made math come alive for students.
5th Grade
Health is not only my favorite subject to teach in 5th grade, but it is also my all-time favorite subject to teach. When I was into my student teaching experience and was told that I would be teaching not only the basic health curriculum to my 5th graders, but the drug and alcohol unit as well, I was slightly terrified. While the curriculum had a lot of good information and lead points, I think I was most nervous about some of the questions that would come up - and boy did they! Besides some of the questions I expected - Why are these substances bad for you? How come adults can use them? - I got some questions I was not prepared for, such as: What is the difference between rum and beer? Why do some types of smoking cause the munchies and what are they? My cooperating teacher was wonderful though and helped me through my first round!
I ended up loving to teach this unit. I was able to have very honest and helpful discussions with my students about how the choices they make (positive or negative) affect them in so many ways. The curriculum also had us look at advertising strategies to entice people to buy as well as PSAs to warn against dangers.
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| Here are some of the PSAs that we looked at for smoking and alcohol use. The students were very quickly impacted! |
At the end of the unit, my students had the task of creating their own PSA poster about at least 1 substance. This was their final assessment and showed me what they took away from the unit (as well as a paragraph that accompanied the poster). The heartfelt messages that my students showed in these ads were quite inspiring.
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| This is a sample of a PSA that a student made. Sorry for the shadows - I took this for personal records ! I never thought I would be blogging with it :) |
Once the ads were graded, my students took them home and were able to share them with their families. Get this - many of my students STARTED THE CONVERSATION about drugs and alcohol with their parents. They told their parents about the dangers and some students even requested that their own parents make lifestyle changes. I absolutely love that knowledge about health made my students feel empowered to make changes in their own homes. Definitely a proud teacher moment!
Thank you for joining me again today! Be sure to jump over to Blog Hoppin' for more favorite subjects!
Have a lovely Labor Day weekend!
Allie
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