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Describe your reasons for selecting this particular recording. Explain why you believe this recording could be effective with students. 1. Students can relate to what it feels like to be in school - connects them to history 2. The sound quality was pretty good. 3. Age appropriate activity 4. More engaging for students 5. Allows for many different activities using this song because of its abundance of information that relate to the students. 6. Lends itself easily to compare/contrast discussions Describe at least 5 ways the recording you selected could be used in the classroom. Try to expand ideas for different subject areas and/or grade levels. For each lesson idea, include a brief description of how this activity could help promote critical thinking skills in students.

1. With my 6th grade ELP students, I thought it would be fun to have the students listen to the song, analzye it for the different components included in the song (describes what the school looks like, the teacher, the lessons, etc), and then work to compose their own song about school today (either using the same tune or coming up with one on their own). The Critical Thinking element is taking information from the earlier song and creating a new project that is symbolic of today's schools.

2. I thought I could start a lesson by having the students close their eyes and listen to the song once the whole way through. Then I would allow them to open their eyes and listen to the song a second time. During the second time, students would need to start drawing what they thought a school house/classroom looked like during that time period. They could also draw a part of the song that stuck out to them. I would then let students turn and talk and share their picture with the person sitting next to them. Students would need to compare their picture with the person next to them. We would discuss as a whole why some of the pictures looked different than others. This skill allows students to think critically about why their pictures differed and how that differentiation is created.

3. I thought we could also listen to the song and see if there are any mistakes in grammar or in what the people say. I noticed that the singer said 2 + 2 = 3. I want to see if the students pick that out. We will listen to each line of the song and see what stands out to the students and what it brings about to them. In this way, students will be connecting to this song on so many levels. Something that is historic, they will be able to make connections to and I think that is a great lesson in it's own.

4. Another activity: Students could analyze the cover of the sheet music. Then listen to the recording. How well does the cover of the sheet music represent what is in the song? What did they get right? What's missing? Why did the artist choose to leave some things out? Draw what you think the cover should look like, based on the song. Again, the analysis of the music and the creation of a newer version based on that analysis is higher level thinking.

5. I believe that it would be a good idea to explain that students attended one room school houses in the early 1900's. I would display a picture of a one room school house. Then we could listen to the song. The students could write a story about how they would feel if we had only one room in our school. We could count the rooms in our school and compare the two outcomes. We could graph the number of rooms to provide a visual example of the difference.

6. We could discuss how the students got to school. Did the students ride busses or did they have to walk? Did they go to school in a car? The students could write about how they travel to school.

7. Listening to this song would be a good springboard for research with my 4th graders. The song was written in 1922, so when would the songs creators been going to school? Let’s do some background reading on schools in the early 1900’s or late 1800s. How accurately does this song portray that time period with regards to school? Students can take different parts of the country and rural vs. city. Based on your research, in what part of the country do you think these boys went to school? was it a rural or city school? The element of research and constructing knowledge based on that research is the element critical thinking.