Today was somewhat of a continuation of yesterday in the sense that some of my classes "played a game" on the National Geographic website as a form of informal pre-assessment, and others got to dive into the webquest. Interesting concept in the M-K book in chapter one: teaching so students learn. On one hand we would all kind of say "well, duh!", but on the other hand haven't we all had a teacher who "taught" , but we really didn't learn much? I am so scared of being the latter, especially since my curriculum has the potential to be as dry as dust. Were my student's really learning the countries that make up South America by playing "GeoSpy"? Or were they just being on a laptop and messing around? Of course, when I asked them was this better than looking at the map in the book and trying to memorize the countries they all gave a resounding "Yes!" In going from group to group I saw low scores rise as they played the game over and over, but for how long will the learning last? Those that played it yesterday got to get down to the business of designing their group's itinerary today. Those that played today will get started tomorrow, but without the laptops. (I only had them reserved for two days. We cannot "hog" them.)
Chapter one pointed out that what is learned at the beginning of class is retained longer. I do a bellringer, but it doesn't have to do with Social Studies, but with literacy. If you can't read, you have nothing no matter what the subject is. (Thank you Quality Quinn for Latin Cognates.) I will have to try and keep in mind that what I do at the beginning of class carries more weight in learning retention that what comes on the back-half.