New School Year--New Common Core Standards--New Planning

After taking a hiatus, I am back and ready to blog in full force. I attended some great iPad conferences and presented at some too this summer and am excited about the new school year. I am planning on blogging with my students full force. I will join Twitter Tuesdays at my school as we tweet with other classrooms. I am also committing to have my students do more creationary apps, like iMovie and Book Creator. Stay tuned as I dive in to these new exciting adventures.

This weekend I spent much of the sunny days inside and working on planning for the new school year. I have two residents (like student teachers) this year which I will take with me on my teaching journey for the year. They were probably enjoying the sunny weather. With all this planning going on, I didn't want them to miss out on my planning. Therefore, I actually thought out loud and recorded it for them and my colleagues.

I am teaching a new curriculum as my kindergartners embark on an accelerated curriculum. Here is my planning of my first quarter of social studies. It is integrated with literacy. The one thing I will change is the progression from family to school community to city community. I am not going to do city but rather neighborhood. This will be more powerful for my kindergarten students and offer rich opportunity for students to share with their classmates where they live. The students do not live in school boundaries.

Social Studies Unit Plan-Family and Communities

Because I am changing city to neighborhood, one of the family projects is for students to take a walk with their families in their neighborhood taking pictures of different stores or businesses. They will email me the pictures or print them out and bring them to school. Students will determine the neighborhood's needs and wants. They will report this information and then share out with the class.

I was able to order a free map of the neighborhoods by a local real estate agent so we can reference their neighborhoods on a map.

I am excited about this plan and hope to increase the project based learning in my classroom. Stay tuned for more.