Elem Social Studies 08 (Lane)

The virtual field trip creativity tonight was awesome! I loved seeing everyone’s field trip plans.  No two plans were alike.  I got some great inspiration from others’ work.  I also didn’t realize how many possibilities there were for virtual field trips.  A few projects that stood out to me were 1) when we got the chance to take a trip on the Susan Constant and we actually got to feel like we were on the boat, and 2) using google maps to give a big picture point of view followed by a very real and up-close look inside a room of a great pyramid.

Reflecting on what we have learned this semester using the posters around the room was very eye-opening.  It was nice to look back at everything we have learned about teaching social studies.  Other peoples’ responses reminded me of some of the things I forgot we practiced.  I think everyone got a lot out of our class time.  I think my two favorite things that we did this semester were the literature groups (comparing fiction and nonfiction texts) and the virtual field trip project.  I can definitely see myself implementing both into my future classroom.

 

Teaching tough topics in the classroom is a task I am very much hesitant about.  I enjoyed the exercises that we practiced tonight, specifically when we tried to come up with inevitable questions. As fun as that was, it did make me think about the preparation that’ll need to go into my lessons.  I found it helpful to talk about tough topics with classmates because it reminded that I’m not the only one with biases and sensitivities toward topics.

 

Tonight’s class was definitely heavier than normal, but talking about the the civil right movement generally feels that way.  I don’t remember learning about the Birmingham church bombing in school so that was a shock to me.  I have a hard time hinking about how to go about implementing a lesson in the classroom about the bombing.  What grade level would this be appropriate for?

I again liked the technique of using an image to spark interest and questions into the lesson.  The more we practice this strategy, the more I see its benefits.

I am excited to try the QFT in a classroom!  I imagine students would be quite engaged when they realize how focused and careful they have to be.  I think the QFT might be one of my favorite strategies so far.

First of all, I learned much more about the Dust Bowl tonight than I ever learned in grade school.  I never read Out of the Dust in school, so I enjoyed learning about it during the presentation tonight.  The book format was also different than I expected.  I was very surprised to see that the nonfiction book was a graphic novel.  I thought it was a much more exciting nonfiction book than what we typically see.  I think it would be a fun book to introduce to students and see how they react to the format.

I liked tonight’s work with primary and secondary sources.  I feel like we haven’t done any work with songs as sources.  At the end of class when we were doing our closing activity, I liked what Tonya said regarding the source groups.  Splitting student groups up to discover new sources and then come back to their original groups can help keep students accountable for their learning.  There’s a sense of responsibility that comes with having to teach your peers about something.  I think that exercise we did would be very effective in a classroom.

I was surprised to find that I was genuinely engaged in tonight’s ‘notice and wonder’ map activity.  I had no trouble coming up with questions about what I saw on the map, and I noticed a lot of details that I found interesting.  This was the first activity that I truly felt a grasp on the concept of See, Think, Wonder.  I think back to the Harriet Tubman activity.  I saw first hand how difficult it can be to read a passage about historical events and try to decode, wonder, and ‘read between the lines’.  I think students are more likely to be instantly less excited about a reading passage than a picture, map, or other visual.  With the map activity, we had minimal front-loading, but we recognized the area on the map and many symbols and markings.  Having these connections from prior knowledge allowed us to think and question the map even more.  Overall I think the what made this mini lesson so engaging was the fact that we had a visual, rather than a whole jumble of words on a page, and it was recognizable and relevant.

I was excited to share our group’s nonfiction book with the class.  It aligned so well to our fiction book, which gave me even more faith in using Blood on the River as an appropriate read aloud for a class.  Depending on my grade level, I can definitely see myself having 1607: A New Look at Jamestown in my classroom as a resource.  There are a number lesson plan possibilities I can think to create based off of this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s article readings about project based learning.  The first-hand account of how a teacher struggled and succeeded while implementing PBL was reassuring to me.  I love the idea of project-based learning and DBQs, but at this point for me it’s all theory.  Connecting this reading with the Kindergarten Teachers’ presentation really made this practice come alive for me.  It’s one thing to learn about PBL and formative assessments through readings and discussions, but it’s an entirely different learning experience when you get to personally interact with teachers implementing these activities on a daily basis.

I think it would be really helpful to hear from an upper elementary teacher who is working on PBLs and DBQs in the classroom.  I would appreciate getting a different perspective or experience.  It was also encouraging to hear the two teachers talk about their professional learning community.  One thing I am worried about when becoming a teacher is the idea of being alone in my lesson planning.  I liked hearing these teachers talk about their collaboration with their kindergarten team and being able to bounce ideas off of each other.

Coming away from class last night, I am still very lost on how to critique a rubric to determine its efficiency level.  I understand the general idea, but I am worried for my assessment project because I feel like I didn’t get enough specific direction about critiquing.  During our discussion, many people had different feelings about the efficiency of the example rubric, so my question is, are differing opinions okay?

I have to say that I was blown away by all that VMFA has to offer for student groups and teachers.  First of all, I had no idea they had the start space and interactive art area of the ground floor level.  I have been to VMFA many times and I have never seen it. My favorite part of the tour was the interactive room.  I was excited to see the multilingual touch board, the tablets with headphones for the visually impaired, and the magnetic shape wall.  I appreciate all that they offer for children and adults.

I enjoyed the open-ended discussion based around the art pieces on the second floor.  I think as adults we are inclined to answer logically, so it seemed like we had trouble making imaginative guesses or “wonderings” about the pieces.  I think the variety of art pieces we viewed and talked about gave me even more insight into how to lead discussion about primary sources in my own classroom.

I was also very excited to experience the mock distance learning class.  This program makes the museum so much more accessible for students.  Thinking forward as a teacher, this distance learning opportunity is not an alternative in the case that funds are hard to come by for a field trip.  Maggie had a purposeful plan, and her questions were open-ended and though provoking.

I felt like I learned a lot of valuable information form the ‘good versus bad’ assessment lesson.  I am a very visual person so it was helpful to me to have a solid, hard copy of good and bad assessment tools.  I have always struggled in school when it comes to taking tests and learning how important it is to create an effective, clear, and straightforward test is very useful to know moving forward as a teacher.  I always caught on to weird wording and over-thought at least half of my test questions convinced they were either just poorly written or meant to be a trick.

I am still a little confused about what I read in chapter 10 of the textbook.  I feel much more connected to the ideas of different assessments after the activities in class, but terms like rubric and criteria and performance-based and project-based still have me a bit confused.  I also struggle with what traditional assessments are appropriate and effective and also just how to make a clear rubric.  I assume many skills will come with time and experience, but I and currently at a loss for how I am supposed to formulate criteria to relay to students.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Harriet Tubman activity in class tonight.  When we were given the rate your knowledge sheet, I felt almost like our lesson was backwards in a sense.  I liked the lesson that we participated in as well as the one we observed in the video because it seemed so different than the social studies lessons I was used to in school.  I think it was very useful discussing the vocabulary of the lesson prior to diving into the meat of the topic.  Front loading is so important!  I was intrigued when each group was asked to pick three words that best fit together and each group picked different words.  Overall, the timeline of the lesson was really interesting and new to me but it flowed really well.  The progression from the vocabulary to discussion to the reading was really fluid and even helped boost my knowledge of the subject!  It was also nice to be able to see a teacher actively teaching the lesson.

 

 

I enjoyed the literature circles again this week.  To elaborate on what I said last week about seeing how literature circles can be beneficial to students, I think having students act in the different roles each week will allow them to constantly see the book in a different way.  So for a personal example, I was the setting and summary specialist last week.  I had to identify all the characters as they were introduced and interpret their role in the story.  Then I had to create a timeline from the information given and record how long the expedition was and where they landed throughout.  This made the fictional story more real to me.  This week I was the discussion director.  The other members of my group went before me, so we had mostly discussed the week’s reading already.  I was nice to wrap up by asking questions that we hadn’t thought about and interpreting our reading.  Literature circle discussion really gives the story more depth and value when students are able to reflect and even add new perspective to the mix.

During our continued work with primary sources this week, I was pleasantly surprised to get to work with the authentic materials from the envelopes!  Like I have mentioned before, my family is big into history and collecting artifacts.  I have grown up around my grandfather’s collection of civil war memorabilia (guns, bullets, confederate soldier belt buckles, etc) and I have visitied countless forts and historical sites around the country.  My point is, the fact that we used real pictures and authentic papers really was meaningful to me.  There is a whole new level of interest when students are able to see and handle materials or even go to a museum and experience history first-hand.