The Next Step Back In Time: Ancient Greece

Today we took our second step back in time.  We visited Ancient Greece.  Rachel and Rebecca used a great focus statement.  The statement is when the teacher-candidates say "Macaroni and cheese" the students reply with "Everyone freeze".  This was a focus statement that I haven't heard before and the students really liked it.  In the direct lesson for Ancient Greece the teacher-candidates taught a group of vocabulary words.  Some of the words were: continent, polytheism, mono theism, and democracy.  The teacher-candidates then gave the students a short break before they moved into the inquiry lesson.  Their inquiry lesson was to research different mythological gods of Ancient Greece.  The students were given clues and they need to use the inquiry process to match the clues they had, to the god that went with the clues.  This was a fun activity for the students and the students seemed to like it a lot.  For the teacher-candidates cooperative learning lesson they used the gods from the inquiry lesson to create a glogster as a group.  The students were broken into groups by the god they received in the inquiry lesson.  The groups worked together to create a digital posters using the webpage gloster.  This was a new tool for the students.  It was a great project for them and they truly enjoyed it.  The one thing I realized from their session is to always check your technology before you start your lesson.