March 1st, 2007: Fourth Grade Social Studies

For the first section of social studies today, a parent came in a gave a presentation on Texas. The teacher was very enthusiastic and privately told me how parents can be great resources. The fourth grade curriculum for social studies just made a change from Virginia history to American geography and I can tell the teacher is still adjusting to the change.
I was very impressed with the parent's presentation, but I chose to observe student interaction, participation and overall behavior during the presentation. When the parent was asking students what they knew about Texas and the Alamo and such, I was not terribly surprised that certain students knew a ton and others not much at all. I really enjoyed observing the notes that students were recording during the presentation. One student had written over a page of notes, but other chose to write down important information. I was surprised at the information they chose to record. They were picking out the most important facts to write down and paying attention to the parent, showing they did not view this as down time.
As the presentation wore on, I noticed that half of the class was not paying attention. Even though it was a very interesting and interactive talk, talking for 30+ minutes was too long for the kids. They definitely needed more hands on and moving activities. Overall, I was swayed that using parents could be very useful but it should be thought out about timing before hand.
The parent (unexpectedly) did not stick around for the second section so I got to see some very improv teaching. She prepared them ahead of time and told them that a parent had come to the first class to talk and also given out stars to the students and they would not get any. She explained that it was not fair, but she didn't want to hear complaining. I liked the way she confronted it before it became an issue. The students accepted it and even recalled situations where they had received something special that the first block had not. For this section she mainly just talked about issues of current day oil crises, credit card debt and other off-topic subjects. This works well with the class, though. She is very knowledgeable and present complicated topics in simple terms. It is important for students to be aware of issues and in a way she is teaching them to be good educated citizens.
I was trying to think of what I would have done in this situation because the last thing I would do is try to lecture about Texas because I do not know much about it. I may have tried to present the main points and gone back to yesterday's topic or a current event that I knew about to discuss. I suppose quick thinking will come with more practice.