Week 3: Jan. 29th - Feb. 2nd

This week in the 1st grade classroom that I am student teaching in, we continued our unit on "Families Near and Far" using the InquirEd curriculum. The lesson that I my mentor teacher instruct was on 'working together' and how working together can help solve problems within a community to improve it. This lesson directly related to Colorado State Standard SS1.S4.GLE1. It related back to the Colorado essential skill "recognize how members of a community rely on each other, considering personal contributions as applicable" (Colorado Department of Education, 2020). After reviewing the Colorado state standards, Common Core standards, and watching the lesson in action- it was evident that these skills were being taught. 

She started off the lesson by activating students background knowledge by talking about the lesson that they had the day prior, where they discussed a conflict that was in the community and how it was solved. She defined the word conflict for students, and had all the students say the word and repeat the definition for the word. After activating their background knowledge on the subject, she told students that today they were going to read another story about a conflict in a community and how it was solved. 

Before reading the story, students were shown a picture of a garden.  Showing students pictures a a great way to engage them in the content (Kopp, 2017). Similar to the questions presented in the book, my mentor teacher asked what the students thought they were doing in the picture (gardening) and any wonders that they had. She then asked students "why do people create gardens" and a few students responded by saying "to make food" or "to grow food". She asked students to raise their hands if they have ever gardened before, and multiple students in the classroom raised their hands. Students wanted to tell about their experiences gardening before and she said they would have the opportunity to share later about their experiences, but because of time constraints we had to move onto reading the story. 

The story was called City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan and was about a community that came together to build a garden in an empty lot where an old apartment building was knocked down. They worked together to come-up with what to do with the land, and built a beautiful garden together. Before reading the story, she had students look at the cover and guess what the book would be about. Multiple students said that the story would be about a garden given there was a picture of a garden on the cover of the book and we just had a discussion about our past experiences gardening. 

While reading the book, she summarized it to ensure students understanding; she did this quickly to ensure that students were grasping the main idea of what was happening in the story. Throughout the story, she also explicitly defined vocabulary terms. For example, the word petition came up, and she told the students that a petition is something that you get signed to get something done. She also made a real-life connection and talked about a petition that the students signed in the beginning of the year to have the sprinklers turned on during recess if it was over 90 degrees outside. 

Also while reading the story, she asked many inquiring questions. This inquiring questions were to help students start to think critically about the importance of how working together helps strengthen a community. After reading the story, there was time for a discussion. She asked students "What problems did this community face at the beginning of the story?" and students were prompted to turn-and-talk with a partner about their answer. After, students shared with their partners why the building in the story was knocked down. After students had the opportunity to share both prompts with their partners, she cold called on students to share what they initially shared with their partners. Many of the students had the same answer and were able to talk about the problem and proposed solution. 

To further active students interest in the story after reading, she discussed how the school has a garden and a lot of people worked together to build it- just like in the story. This real life comparison helped students grasp the importance of working together, and one student even asked if we as a class could go clean-up the schools garden. 

To conclude the lesson, she told students that we will continue working on how families are different and work together to solve problems next week. Unfortunately, there was no time for students to complete the writing portion of the exercise- but, a formative assessment of student knowledge was assessed through the turn-and-talk opportunity. Overall, this lesson followed an inquiry arc. Students were prompted to come-up with ideas independently and were provided with the resources (the story) to succeed in doing so. Students were asked high-level questions while reading the story and students were engaged with the topic through multiple applicable connections to their current funds of knowledge. Overall, this was a great lesson and students understood the importance of working together as a community to solve problems.