When I am planning my lessons, I tend to gather materials from all over the web to use in my room. I really don't have a favorite site, I just sort of pick and choose things that will suit my needs. So, for my lesson on the reasons for exploration, I choose a two page information sheet from a homeschooling site that really looked like it had exactly what I needed. I read...most of it...and was pleased.
The paragraph started to quote all of this scripture, talk about the "forceful Muslim religion" and how people wanted to spread the word of the lord savior Jesus Christ. Um...yeah...that isn't exactly what I was going for in our historical discussion! So I sort of paraphrased and then went into a big discussion on how sometimes sources aren't as reliable as others because they may be biased or slant towards a specific point of view and that is why it is important to get many sources when writing informational text.
When the kids made their flipbooks summarizing the main reasons for exploration, we were sure to use our text book too ;)
Has anything like this ever happened to you? Please tell me I am not alone in "surprise" info that comes up while teaching!
No. It happens! My neighbor teacher was talking about the cities that were originally part of the colonies. It mentioned in the reading that New York City was known as the big apple. In the discussion a student wondered why. My neighbor teacher said she would extra credit to anyone who could come with the answer the next day. *Yeah it turns out that it was called that because of a 'lady of the evening' and her brothel.
ReplyDeleteIt took a long time for her to live that one down!
Emily
Oh my! Though I didn't know that...so that is actually rather interesting (to me, not to the kiddos I am sure!)
DeleteThat type of thing always seems to happen to me when I show YouTube videos in class- they are just lovely and fun, but the "suggestions" they put at the very end are always a mess! Grrrrr >:( Now, I plant myself as close to the pause button as possible, so if it gets within 15 seconds of being over, I'm ready!
ReplyDelete~Stephanie
3rd Grade Thoughts
Good idea Stephanie!!
DeleteI feel your pain! I'm gotten caught with YouTube videos before. It always pays to preview. Hang in there!
ReplyDeleteYouTube especially...you never know when a big scary face will pop up! ;)
DeleteOh, yes. I know the feeling! The worst was when I taught 3rd grade. I was reading aloud "Stone Fox" at the suggestion of a colleague. Well, in case you didn't know (I didn't), the poor dog dies at the end. Several kids burst into tears, I got teary, and I had parent phone calls asking why I was reading such an upsetting book to the class, etc. It was awful!
ReplyDeleteNote to self: Don't read Stone Fox aloud.
DeleteHaha - I have totally found myself in this situation. I like to read the kids these Native American stories I grew up with, however once in a while a story will be very religious and they will be praying or talking a lot about how God got them through stuff and I have to skip all around!
ReplyDeleteHopefully your textbook does mention though that missionary attempts at spreading the gospel (particularly Catholic Jesuits) was a HUGE reason (along with gold, spices, land) for exploration, particularly for the Spanish and even Queen Isabella!
Most definitely! I wanted them to know about the religious aspect of exploration because, like you said, it was a very large reason for why people went out...however I would have liked a more less religously biased way to tell them :)
DeleteThat is hilarious. Luckily I teach in a Catholic school so I can kind of get around some of that religious stuff. I one time sent fifth graders to research Mardi Gras on the internet. Ummm, have you ever googled "Mardi Gras"? Bad idea....tons of pictures of what goes on during Mardi Gras. Necklace earning and all.... Oops.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I bought your "poet-trees" and can't wait to use them next week!
Jenny
I recently almost had a big mess on my hands because I use brain break videos that are on a Pinterest board of mine. One day I forgot to pull it up ahead of time with my 3rd graders. Well, one of my friends had pinned something on breastfeeding, and the picture was of an exposed breast with a baby attached. EEK!! I clicked through as quick as possible, and PRAISE GOD that none of them noticed! I was sweating bullets, though. Needless to say, my pin board is pulled up at the beginning of the day now.
ReplyDeleteDon't Let The Teacher Stay Up Late
OY!
DeleteBeen there. Showed a video to kindergarten on giraffes that a parent sent in to share. I watched "most" of it, but seemed to miss the part when the speaker said " the male mounts the female to mate and release the sperm". I went to my admin and said I was sorry, but I might have shown "giraffe porn" in class today.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! I am totally giggling right now :) I can just imagine how that went over! hee hee
DeleteI teach 4th grade and our team had pulled various resources together last year to teach inferences. One of my teammates printed a worksheet that had several short paragraphs from which the students had to make an inference. Well, she didn't read it and handed it out to her class. I guess it was aimed at an older age group because one of the inferences they were supposed to make was about a woman being told that her husband had died in a war, but even worse was the one where they had to figure out from the clues that the dad was cheating on the mom. Oops. Needless to say, nobody else on the team ended up using that sheet :)
ReplyDeleteIn my first few weeks of teaching, I passed out an information sheet about Globes. It didn't occur to me at all that I might actually NEED a globe. As we read the sheet, it told us to locate different points on the globe. Whoopsie! Glad those crazy days are over.
ReplyDelete