Class: Designing and Implementing learning Bags, and their importance for a home school connection in math, science, and reading…

Bag Summary Standard 3: Family and Community Engagement sound familiar? How about engagement, collaboration, and communication indicators? Wait let’s not forget about parent/family engagement, learning expectations, curriculum support, two-way communication and finally culturally proficient communication? If you are a public school teacher especially in a system that has lacked funds then these terms, phrases, whatever you would like to call them have been eating at you for at least the past two years. The reason that they have become such a burden is not because we haven’t been providing these things to our students and their families for years upon years, it is because now we have to physically prove we are providing these things to our students and their families. Our word and reputations as being good even great teachers that are constantly visited and revisited by past students isn’t enough for the powers that be (not sure who they are) and our jobs seem to now be forever insecure. Designing and Implementing Learning Bags, and their importance for a home school connection in math, science, and reading couldn’t be any better way of physically showing our good practice as teachers to those who hold us in judgment. Seventh grade social studies covers thousands and thousands of years of history from the beginning of man right up to the beginnings of the Roman Empire. Before students start studying prehistory, Homo sapiens and the development of civilizations we start by explaining the five themes of geography and how they have played and continue to play a huge part in civilizations development, modernization, and continual communication with others. The 5 Themes of Geography Learning Bag contains materials for students and their families that will make learning the themes more personal and easier for a seventh grade student. Things like iPods, cell phones, face book, Abercrombie, Nike, coffee lattes, and gps systems are things not mentioned in our classroom textbook but using these things to explain the themes are much easier for the students to understand rather than farming, newspapers, and the Pony Express. The included in this bag in not necessarily a modern game however, Battleship is a classic game that teaches longitude/latitude, absolute and relative location and since it is kinesthetic and requires more than one person I felt it may not (although I’m sure it is out there) be an app on their phones but it may be a game they could enjoy. The next two Learning Bags, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece were created in similar ways. Egypt and Greece are two units of many that we cover in the seventh grade. Now when I say cover I say that lightly because as a teacher of social studies I could spend the entire school year and then some on these two units. The Learning Bags are full of enrichment readings and writings that will provide that student enriching information that we unfortunately will not have the time to completely cover in class. The student can spend extra time on gods/goddesses, pharaohs, architecture or wars. There are many students that are true history buffs and these bags can help satisfy their love of history or maybe just Egypt and Greece. This past school year I encountered more absences, students on IEPs, students in pull-out programs and a number of students who were hospitalized. As I was creating these bags I thought of those students. The Learning Bags could be used for those students who need work sent to them at home or wherever and the Learning Bags could also be tweaked to accommodate students who may be struggling learners or students with special needs. The Learning Bags are going to provide many learning opportunities for students at all levels.