Just home from teaching a second grade class today. I get so see them again tomorrow, which will be nice since I won't have to spend as much time with introductions and rules. The morning went smoothly reading decodable books and discussing the aptosaurus (ah, the demise of the brontosaurus). Students love dinosaurs and fossils, regardless of how they're exposed to it (fiction or expository). They were engaged and eager to share ideas and questions, perfect! After lunch McGruff the crime dog came by to talk about gangs, unfortunate that this is a necessity in schools.

The excitement of dinosaurs and gangs left my students underwhelmed to talk about our social studies topic, government and laws. Now, I can't blame them because I found myself lecturing about a topic they couldn't clearly visualize ... if we had more time we could have acted out the responsibilities of the 3 branches of government, and I should have made it happen anyway but .. I didn't. Ah, so they were a bit glazed eyed and it the discussion, er pontification, took longer than planned. I had a few minutes left in the day so we got to finish the day with a fun art lesson. Woo! Now to think about how I can revisit our government lesson in a quick mini-lesson format ... hmmm.

Hmm, I was thinking about drawing an apple tree on large construction paper with 3 branches. Each branch grows it's own unique apples (green apples, yellow, and red). Each color has a role that that gov't branch is responsible for ... important people within the branch. The students must paste the apples under the appropriate branch on the tree...could be fun. And discuss.