Month: April 2019

I was impressed by the visual presentations.  Everyone was creative and there were some fantastic ideas.  Even with just listening to the summaries, I learned new things, such as the information about the Statue of Liberty.  It was great to see the various applications that people used in their presentations.  I am interested in incorporating them into future lesson plans.  It was definitely an idea gathering presentation time.  I think that working on the project with Tonya was also very valuable.  This assignment lent itself better to creating a cooperative lesson plan than the George Washington lesson plan did.  Tonya and I have been writing lesson plans for 3 semesters and I think we both have ingrained methods.  It was a good learning experience to understand why she did things a specific way.  I believe we melded our techniques well.  I’m not sure how it could be done, but I think cooperative lesson planning should be experienced earlier on in our education.  For me, that would have been in the science class.  It might also be interesting to do one in each class.  It would have exposed me to new ideas and methods and would have made me more confident in my lesson planning abilities.

I began this class with reservations, having not had great experiences in my past with social studies.  My eyes were opened to all of the possibilities of what social studies can be.  I value all of the activities we did and the resources we learned about.  I will definitely be a better teacher for taking social studies.  I hope to make my students’ experiences more engaging and memorable than mine.  Thank you for taking the time to help me expand my knowledge and become more comfortable with the topics I will eventually teach.

Talking about vulnerabilities in class was eye-opening.  My top concern is not having my own children.  I have always felt that this has put me at a disadvantage.  I thought that it would give a better experience with understanding child development and relating to kids (even though I have never had any problems interacting with children).  However, my group brought up a good point.  By not having my own kids, I have a fresh slate.  I won’t be tempted to talk or treat my student’s like I would my own children.  They saw my vulnerability as a positive.  It was also interesting to hear the vulnerabilities of others in my group.  We all have our own insecurities and it was beneficial to talk about them.

I realized that I definitely need to think about how to respond to students who are having strong emotions.  Besides trying to defuse the situation and talk to the student, or have them take a 10-count, the number of strategies I have to draw upon is low.  What would be a good resource to get information from?

At this point, while I’m not in the moment, I think I could probably teach most challenging subject without an issue.  Being a scientist, I tend to fall back onto the facts.  I would need to find credible resources to give me confidence in what I am teaching.  My one concern would be with answering questions.  I worry that I would give too much information or inappropriate information for the age of the student.  I work in an area that deals with some tough circumstances.  Sometimes I think I am a little too desensitized to things that would bother everyone else and not aware enough of other peoples sensitivities.

I really appreciated having time to work on the visual field trip.  It gave us a great start on the project.

I really enjoyed using the QFT in class.  Again, it was interesting to see how we all started out with different questions but narrowed them down to similar main questions.  I can see how this technique would be intimidating for teachers because of the uncertainty of the end questions and not necessarily knowing the direction of the lessons.  But, I feel like students would understand what questions might be the most important ones to answer.  If there is a question that I, as a teacher, I did not think of I don’t see why it can’t be a learning experience for everyone.  I think it’s okay to show students that the teacher does not know everything and has to learn just like them.  It would also give students increased confidence to say that they do not know either.

I did not have a clue what massive resistance meant when we started.  This is definitely an excellent activity to get students engaged in social studies because it involves kids their age and schools located in the area.  It would easier for the students to connect with, as opposed to something that happened to adults in Alabama.  When teaching about the massive resistance would it fall under Virginia Studies or would it be a part the information learned about the Civil Rights Movement?  Would other states teach about the massive resistance?  Or, is it only something that Virginia students learn because it happened here?

 

The continuation of planning the George Washington lesson was easier this week.  I think that might be because the other group I was working with had a firm grasp of what was included in a good lesson plan.  I was also ready to discuss my ideas.  It was interesting to find that the other group had a very similar thought process as my partner and me.  I wonder how many other groups used the same sort of sequencing.  I would have liked to see something different to diversify my ideas. However, I was encouraged that I was on the right track.

I really enjoyed the puzzle portion of the BBK activity.  It was fun to go to a different group to learn something new and report back to my group.  I can see how students would be thoroughly engaged with this activity.  The students would become an expert on the knowledge they are bringing back to their group.  It’s not a lot of information to stress over and the consensus within the puzzle groups build confidence with the knowledge they are going to relay.  Then the students get to feel important when it’s their turn to report.  It’s a good way to disperse a lot of information quickly.  It’s also a creative way to differentiate the skill levels within the classroom.  I was excited to realize that I had incorporated something very similar in my first lesson plan.

I do have a question about the articles we read.  I think that art can be a great way to teach social studies.  It can help to reinforce knowledge about a culture or society.  Having the students try to replicate art, such as weaving, using the methods of the time period being studied would bring some empathy and connection to the people of that time.  If there is an art program at the school, would you still take the time to teach the art concepts or should they be covered in art class?