This year I had the opportunity to cover several two-month long maternity leaves at Torah Prep Girls School. I grew so much as a teacher and really enjoyed the different subjects and students. I taught 4th grade Judaic Studies, 3rd grade general studies, and middle school language arts.
3rd grade:
Some of my most memorable lesson innovations came in third grade social studies. I thought it would be fun for the students to do an activity mimicking international trade when their social studies book covered that subject. Each pair of students represented one country, with one primary export (for example, Bolivia - beans.) They arranged desks in a circle, made signs for their country and primary export, and also for what they wanted to import. We used the board game "Cholent" with it's recipe ingredient cards so everyone could trade to make cholent according to their recipe. Then we made a flow chart about the step-by-step process of making cholent, from obtaining the ingredients all the way to cleaning up when it's done.
Our best curricular project was for the social studies unit on economics. We made a real assembly line, learned about specialized workers in factories, teamwork, efficiency, material and human resources, and supply and demand.
Once the girls mastered those concepts through making an assembly line for paper pinwheels, they planned their bigger project. It was to make Purim greeting cards and Thank You cards, sell them, and with the proceeds, buy new books for the classroom library. This project involved elegantly written persuasive letters to the principal to donate paper copies (written in cursive penmanship,) business math, new creative skills, and a lot of teamwork. The girls thought they'd be able to purchase about four new books with the money they earned, but I was able to get them SEVENTEEN!!!! I hope they won't soon forget how gratifying (and multidisciplinary!) this project was.
The girls had a nice party for me after my last teaching day with the help of their Judaics co-teacher. They performed a skit based on something we learned, read a poem/song that they wrote in an acrostic of "Mrs. Friedman," and gave me a copy of that poem in a frame. How sweet! I presented them with the books I purchased with their raised money, and a game card from the beloved multiplication/division game I introduced them to, "24."
One last favorite notable thing I did with third grade (besides read them the BEST "lost" Dr. Seuss stories) was help teach their "science buddies" class on Simple Machines. I found a great Sesame Street video which inspired a lot of kids to go home and make their own kinetic art/chain reaction contraption/simple machines at home. I was really proud of myself for finding a way to extend the short times of those lessons by making it so interesting that they did it for fun at home on the weekends!
Middle school:
I loved getting to know these older girls. I thought of numerous thought-provoking journal prompts, helped them understand difficult literature and poetry. worked one on one with all of them to improve their writing, one project or assignment at a time. With the 8th grade, I got to read Island of the Blue Dolphins with them. It was a book I really enjoyed when I was younger and still had a 20-year old copy!
Below, a student is presenting her famous person "character in a bag" project about Eleanor Roosevelt.
Back in the fall, when I taught 4th grade Judaic Studies, I was thrilled to think of a gardening related project when we studied Sefer Yehoshua (the prophet Joshua.) In ch. 2, when the spies go into Jericho, there is a good description of Rachav's inn in the wall, with the rope hanging out the window with the notifying red thread. The spies hid in flax on the roof. So what did we do? You will understand from the picture below, and oh, was it fun to make these... we made paper "rock walls" to be laminated and wrapped around cleaned out peanut butter jars, and each wall had all the things we read about in the chapter. Then we cut out little men (the spies) from foam paper and added googly eyes. Then we filled the containers with soil and planted flax in them! That way the little spies could hide in there when the king's army came looking for the traitors. (And they wouldn't get soaked from watering because they were made of foam.) It was super cute and the flax grew very tall!
We also did a great skit from the same unit.
Here's hoping I'll have lots more good experiences subbing and teaching ;o)
