Post 4: Testing my ReDesign

This week I have been working with one of my colleagues to test out my ReDesign Unit that she wants to use with her 4th grade class as well. As previously talked about, I am adding in some key digital components along with a lot of student choice for a Regions/States Geography Unit in my 4th grade classroom. I teach in a Central Illinois low income school district, in a community that I now call my home. This has been my only job since I graduated college, and since being a teacher here I have learned so much about my community, but also the students that come from it. Having talked to my students and developed a relationship with them over the past year, I have learned that most of them have not visited another state before. When posed the question, “What is your favorite place to vacation to?”, I had 5 answer Bloomington because that’s that furthest they had been. I had 2 that had never left our town, and the rest answered that they had been to states such as Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Florida. No one had every been to the east or west coast, and I knew then that I had to find time to teach this Unit. Through talking to my colleague and reading the comment left by Amy on my Ideate Phase post (Thanks Amy!), I decided to accumulate different pictures from the various regions in the United States from my own personal travels, and photos of the travels of my colleagues here at school. I am going to add these photos into the Google Slides presentation that I will doing the bulk of my instructing from, and it’s my hope that this will encourage classroom discussions beyond basic facts of the regions. I want to share my own personal experiences, but also allow them to share the places they have been (or know something about), and ASK QUESTIONS!! I am really looking forward to this tweak in my design and also for getting to know more about this group of students that I have now!