Day 36 - Fridays are the best.

I love Fridays. Every week they seem like this new and special phenomenon, created just for me :)
I began class with my review of the "woman question" followed by the timeline challenge activity that I did with first period. 4th period handled the timeline just fine, but 5th period is just a little too goofy to do something like that. Oh well, we survived.
Today was the day we introduced the final project of our internship to 4th and 5th period. Carrie found a Roaring 1920s WebQuest (which is a internet based inquiry project) and we decided to adapt it for our students. The idea is that students pick one of seven themes from the 1920s (things like, fashion, sports, crime, business and technology, cars, etc.) and create a magazine cover and article related to their chosen theme. Their magazine cover needs to include at least 7 facts connected to their theme and their article is likely to be focused on a more specific aspect of that theme. The students really have a lot of freedom with this project because they get to pick a topic that interests them, and within each topic there are many different topics/issues they can choose to investigate. Knowing that we would not have computers for the students, Carrie and I printed out some information to get the students started. They could also find a lot of information in their textbooks. This counts as a test grade for them, but this is significantly easier than a test, so if they follow all the directions and do well, many grades will be helped by this project.
One cool moment of the day happened during 4th period. I was talking to some kids about cars or crime or something, and I told them that I saw the car that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was in when he was shot, as well as the uniform that he was wearing (his assassination was the event that triggered World War I) that day. As I was looking up the pictures of them on my computer I was telling the students about what it was like to see these things in person and they could tell I was getting really excited. When I found the picture I said, "When I saw his car and uniform I almost peed my pants." Some of the students just chuckled and I said, "I know, I know. I am giant nerd." But they got interested in the pictures because I was so excited about it, and then other students wanted to see what their classmates were looking at. It was really neat to see all of that happen. Plus, any time I get to talk about studying abroad I get really happy :)
I left school after 5th period to go take my Professional Education exam for Florida teacher certification and passed! Woohoo! So now once I officially graduate I can apply for my teaching certificate!! I can't believe it! Ahhh!