When I saw that the next topic we would be teaching in social studies was habitats, I initially thought about the time training that I attended for my teaching science course. This training was called Project WILD and they talked all about how to incorporate environmental topics and content into the classroom. In part of the training they had each of us take a stuffed animal and we used them in various different activities. One of the activities was a sorting activity that required the students to move in the appropriate category that their animal belonged to. After being introduced to that activity, I thought that using stuffed animals in class would be a great idea to increase student excitement and engagement. There’s something about stuffed animals that almost every student loves, especially kindergarteners.

This lesson that I taught consisted of a read-aloud of a DRA book and then having the students write about the habitat of an animal that is given to them. This writing needed to include key facts such as where they live, what food they eat, what their home may look like, what climate they live in, etc. When reading the book the students were able to see that although animals may be different, there are a lot of animals that have similar habitats. The standard that I used in my lesson was seeing that some animals have similar habitats, which is one of the reasons I did jump on using the DRA book. It was leveled appropriately with sight words and pictures of the animals that they were talking about on each page. Originally, when I first began thinking about my lesson, I was just going to pick a book about habitats, but there weren’t any general books about habitats in the library. Therefore, my CT suggested using a DRA book instead. The students did like the book, but I may have liked to see what books were available through the technology sight Myon. Something that went well in my lesson was the engagement during the writing. Most of the time, during writing, the students will either sit unsure of what to write or they write a sentence or two and say they are done. In this lesson, the students were engaged with their writing until I told them they would begin packing up. I thought this was definitely a success because it shows me that these students are fully capable of being independent writers and learners, even at their age. They do have the stamina to write, as long as they are interested in what they are writing about. Along with the stamina and engagement they had, the students also were able to expand their sentences and their words in a much larger manner than what they normally do.

Even though I am pleased with the way this lesson went, there are always things that can be changed or improved on. For example, if I had time in my lesson, I would have liked to do a rotation type thing where the students moved to a new animals. This would allow them to write about more than just one animals habitat. Additionally, another thing I would change is what I hadn’t planned on. I was planning on having the students write on a pre-lined sheet of paper where there would be room at the top to draw a picture of the animal in the habitat. Instead of using the paper, I just had the students write it in their social studies notebook. I would have liked to use this to maybe hang up in the classroom, because of their excellent work.

Something that was surprising in the lesson was before beginning the writing I gave explicit directions NOT to play with the stuffed animals. However, I thought I would still have to remind at least one student to to play with the animals. To my surprise, the entire time I didn’t have to get onto any students. I guess I’m getting better at my directional skills. This was one of the goals that I needed to work on because of my unfamiliarity with having to be so explicit. To my surprise, there was a student that did especially well with this lesson. This student is definitely a gifted student that gets bored with certain things we do in class very easily. This boredom then leads to him misbehaving. However, this lesson really kept him engaged the whole time and he wrote a lot, where normally he’ll write one or two sentences then say he’s done. This must have been an interest of his which could explain his engagement and motivation. Another student that did well is normally unsure of what to write during writing time. In this lesson, she went right to work and even drew an excellent picture to support her writing.

My next steps from here is to see what they understand about the basic idea of a habitat. If they did then I would move on to teaching regions thus allowing them to move from big idea to specific, which is much more developmentally appropriate for their age.