Pin..Interest..PINTEREST!

Well, well, well...We no longer live in the middle ages, and technology is not what it use to be. Shall I say we have it made today? Okay, okay, we have it made. Life is pretty easy, if you don't know the answer to something you no longer need to go on a long quest, or drag out all the encyclopedias. No, now, all the answers you need are found with a few strokes on the keyboard, and the click of a button on the word search. Then you have it...all your answers... found where, PINTEREST, of course!! With the invention of pinterest millions upon millions of people are finding out ways to do anything and everything. From how to boil water, to how to build a hobbit hole playhouse for your kid. Yes, pinterest has it all. In my opinion everyone should have an account, but really, truly, every TEACHER should have an account! Pinterest makes teaching easy, through this social media site you can find anything your heart desires about teacher, lesson plans, classroom management ideas, room decorating tips :) yea...it's all there within a click of a button! So someday when I become the best teacher imaginable to man or women, I'll give a big thanks to pinterest, and all the people who pin my interests. However, for now, I'll just be the best students imaginable to man or women...as long as they understand procrastination that is. This semester I am enrolled in a course called Educational Technology and one assignment is to use pinterest (horrid I know,) to create my own lesson plan and that's what I did. By using the social media site, pinterest, I created a lesson plan called "Parts of a Plant." This is a life science lesson for kindergartners which enables them to describe plant development and growth. Listed below are some pictures of how I pulled this together by using my niece as a guinea pig. 

Step 1: TEACH them the lesson, I started by explaining the 5 major parts of a plant; seed, roots, stem, leaves, flower. 

Step 2: We learned a song to help remember each part and how it helps the plant to grow big and strong. 

Step 3: Next using a diagram of a flower, I had my niece come up and label where each part went on the plant. This was to make sure she was following along and understanding everything. 

Step 4: She then was given various pictures and was asked to place the right pictures under the word "NEEDS" The pictures included everything a plant needed to grow big such as, water, sunshine, air, and soil.

     

We also looked at a fun app called "Green Up" which discusses plant parts and lets kids plant and grow their own crops! There is also a free version called "Green Up Lite."After  I was certain she understood everything we had discussed it was up to her to make a diagram of a plant. 

Step 5: Next she traced her hand to make up the petals and leaves and cut out a stem and circle for the middle. She then labeled each part of the plant. 

After doing all this I realized something....being a teacher is a lot of work! So much goes into each lesson and if I took anything at all from this assignment, it's that it is okay to take shortcuts like pinterest, not everything has to be on your own. I'm sure with some hard work and dedication this could have been accomplished without pinterest...but why take that chance! If information is out there use it! Click here PBL  for my project based learning link which is a detailed version of my lesson and here for my pinterest account which has some awesome pins that helped me to come up with this lesson!

Thanks, and enjoy!
P.S.Be Yourself!