And So It Begins...

   Group 1 went this week and they chose an interesting approach for their lessons. Instead of doing a direct instruction lesson the first day and an inquiry lesson the second day, they chose to do an inquiry lesson the first day and a cooperative lesson the second day. Personally, I was very confused in the beginning because I was unaware that they weren't doing a direct lesson. The students obviously enjoyed both days because they had the opportunity to do fun activities throughout both days, but I think there should have been a direct lesson to teach the concepts first. In the beginning of the inquiry lesson, the teachers went over several vocabulary words quickly and then moved onto the activity. I think that the vocabulary should've been done slower or broken up a little bit more between the to lessons. Other than that, the first day the students were each given a mineral bag where they had to identify the different types of minerals that their bags contained, then they presented their findings and one fact about their mineral. It was a great idea for the lesson and the students definitely enjoyed the activity.
   For the cooperative lesson, the students were asked to create a poster for one of the minerals that were in their bag during the inquiry lesson. The teachers brought in cool little gems and decorations for the students to use, so the posters looked awesome! After each group completed their poster, everyone went around and voted for which poster they thought was the best one. It was set up to be like a mineral show, which one of the teachers actually said she's been to before. I think it was so cool to have a teacher share that she's personally been to one. The lesson was such a great idea and the kids had so much fun doing it. The teachers seemed much more comfortable the second day as well, so the lesson as a whole was a success.