Keep it Simple (...Stupid)

 
 It's about that time...

To write some lesson plans. 

And about the time to remind myself, "Colleen, keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate this."

But my mind opens up and begins to jump around. Instead of pouncing on a solid topic, landing on the knowledge points to share and identifying activities to solidify student understanding, I begin to get stuck in thinking about all of the different topics that I could focus these lessons on. 

This next paragraph is dedicated to anyone who has seen the 1980s video version of Anne of Green Gables - I'm talking about the VHS complete version. My father read me all of L M Montgomery books from this series. When I was in elementary school I checked this movie out from our public library constantly. 

There is a character from the books and films, Miss Muriel Stacey who is the quintessential powerhouse inspirational teacher.  It is funny that Anne (also a teacher) is the heroine of the series, but Miss Stacey... she's the one that is up on my teacher pedestal and she's the one that makes me spend too long meditating on the "perfect" lesson plan topic. 

I think that Anne's true profession was writing, but Miss Stacey is meant to be a teacher. She has a number of simple truths to share with her students. She teaches with compassion and firmness. She ultimately inspires her students to think outside of the box and to turn the world into their classroom. 

This blog post is becoming a book review so its time to turn this ship around. 

I've chosen a geography standard for my lessons plans. I took our professor's recommendation that less is more and I've selected this standard:

SS:G.3.2 

I can explain how weather, climate, and other environmental characteristics affect people's lives in a place or region.

I know that the second graders that I will be instructing would probably love to study extreme weather in each quadrant of the U.S. and this is tempting to focus on, for at least one of my lesson plans, but I am also aware that this might be frightening to some kiddos and with as much as kids have to be anxious about, this is a scenario that I would like to avoid, but I feel like it could be a fun focus.

If you are generous to read this post, would you mind giving me your opinion on this?

At least I know that will not be like my 6th grade social studies teacher at my British school who poised numerous questions to my twin sister and I about the US election process to check his understanding. I remember Maureen and I, at twelve years old, sitting in our classroom doing our best to answer his questions correctly.

"Yes, I think presidential elections take place every three years - no, wait, every four years?"

While thinking, "Dude, we are twelve, you are like forty. You're the teacher. Don't you know this stuff?"

It's so funny that more than once teachers made assumptions about Maureen and I that  because we had just moved to the U.K. from the U.S. that we automatically were eligible to teach a U.S. history class? 👎

My career advisor - "Oh, I know what you should do when you grow up! The Queen has American horse trainers, you could train horses for the Queen." 👎

Me - thinking, "Are you serious?" What I said, "Oh, well I'm allergic to horses, so I don't think that is going to happen."

At least the questions that I ask the students will be to gauge their understanding and try to engage them, not to try to support my knowledge. I hope to be plenty prepared for these lessons, not flying by the seat of my pants (too much!).

Thanks for reading. I look forward to reading your posts this week! Please share any recommendations! 😏