"Show Me" Missouri’s Temperatures (Video)

For today’s classroom observation we watched a video about a teacher named Ms. Sally Camden, who was teaching her “Show Me” Missouri’s Temperatures activity to her fourth grade class at Perryville Elementary (in Perryville, Missouri). To start the lesson Ms. Camden first focused on using subjects that were familiar to her students, such as the four seasons and temperature change. Instead of simply discussing these topics, Ms. Camden incorporated the use of music into the lesson by playing the spring portion of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and asking each student to think of words that reminded them of spring. The class then discussed and organized their responses on the board. When watching this scene I really enjoyed Ms. Camden’s approach to reviewing these topics. Not only was she able to encourage the class to discuss the seasons, but was able to integrate music and vocabulary skills into the lesson as well.

Once the class had completed this activity, Ms. Camden led the group in filling out a “Know-Wonder-Learned” (K-W-L) chart about Missouri’s weather (temperature and seasons), watched a short video (about the seasons), and used paper cutouts to divide the state into five geographic regions. The students then chose a city from each region, researched its seasonal temperatures, recorded the data onto a spreadsheet, calculated the average temperatures, and created graphs. In order to perform these tasks, tools including the Internet and Microsoft Excel were used.

In the video, when discussing her lesson plan, Ms. Camden states that she “…designed it so that students could integrate skills in math, science, social studies, and language arts.” The fact that Ms. Camden’s approach has given her students an opportunity to gain experience (using technology) as well as improve other various skills (reading, writing, and vocabulary) is certainly one of the many strengths of her lesson plan. Also, Ms. Camden’s pace and use of visual models greatly assisted in the success of her lesson plan. By using a KWL chart Ms. Camden was able to determine the current knowledge of her students, encourage questions, and assess student learning. It was such a cool experience to see Ms. Camden ask her students, “How long does it take the earth to rotate around the sun?” and to instantly see a hand pop up with the answer, “one year.” It is moments like this that make teaching so awesome!

Although Ms. Camden could have given the students more experience working in Microsoft Excel, I think she gave them an excellent lesson that not only taught them about specific subjects, but gave them a number of experiences using different tools and forms of technology.