Month: April 2019

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.