Month: April 2019

It was so great to see all the virtual field trip presentations! I appreciated seeing how each person/group incorporated technology differently and built an experience for students that would be memorable and engaging. It was also super-informative to hear each presenter talk through their lesson plan and the strategies they would use along the way. I gained some confidence that I’m relatively on-target, and I also picked up some new ideas, tools, and approaches.

I also appreciated the final reflection activity — and the fact that we could dribble our thoughts out in between the presentations. (As you know, I like reflecting, but it takes time to formulate my thoughts, especially thoughts about a 4-month-long adventure like this.) Reading over the comments was a great review of what we’ve learned…many important strategies and experiences came swimming back as I read over the comments. It is clear that asking for open ended feedback like that takes some bravery — you never quite know what you’re going to get — but I think that kind feedback is super-important, and the process of reflecting is also important for the student. So, thank you for modeling this for us…I am hoping to incorporate a lot of reflection/feedback into my classroom, and this seemed like a good tool.

Lynne, I will forever think of you when “I wonder” with my students. I wish you the best finishing up that doctorate, and hope to see you around!!

Dr. Stohr, I look forward to seeing you again in a few weeks for another amazing course!

Thank you to both of you for helping me build my skills, knowledge, and confidence, for listening with thoughtful patience as I worked through my frustrations with the messiness of lesson planning, and for kindling in me a true appreciation for – and interest in – Social Studies. I honestly never thought I’d ever say that last bit. 🙂

-Lisa

It was fascinating to me how much of tonight’s class lined up with my takeaways from the Teaching Hard History conference — and really encouraging that several of the things I took away are considered best practices! (See my Reflection in Box: https://richmond.app.box.com/file/428881338757  Also in that folder are the PDFs of several of the resources from Teaching Tolerance. I showed these to the classmates at my table and they asked that I share them, which I will happily do.) Also, I heard a Teaching Hard History podcast (Kwame Alexander) that connected to the emotional response worksheet we went over. The podcast did a great job of discussing the emotional responses that many students experience (and why), as well as some ways to deal with them. I need to re-listen to that. Do either of you have any other recommended podcasts along these lines?

For me, finding good collections of source materials is such an important part of feeling confident about approaching these topics in the classroom. I don’t feel like I have enough experience yet to know when I’ve found a balanced or complete or even appropriate set of materials. I am grateful that I have had the chance to explore the TT resources, which I feel like I can trust, and I hope to find some additional reliable sources to add to my list. I suppose I will never really be finished with that part of the job…

You discussed the importance of bringing parents (with the approval of the principal) into the loop if I plan to address difficult/controversial subjects. But what if these topics are not contained to a unit, and are more of a thread running through history, all the way into current events? I’m thinking about racism/slavery, specifically, but the question could apply to other themes too.

 

I think the QFT is a great way to build questioning skills (yay, metacognition!), build interest, and get a great view of students’ prior knowledge. It was interesting to see how many of our group’s initial questions were closed-ended (even though we already knew a lot of the background details on this image), and then how much more interesting the questions became when we opened them up. I absolutely love the idea of leading students to develop their own questions that will drive their learning. Knowing my brain, choosing the “right” QFocus will probably take me a LONG time…any tips here would be most welcome. 🙂

I like how the Four Reads strategy adds some helpful structure/guidance to the analysis of a document…seems like students could probably handle much more difficult content when it’s approached this way. I also like how such a simple thing like folding the paper up can make the task seem less overwhelming, easier to digest, and kind of mysterious. I actually like this method better than the National Archives analysis guides, which seem clunky and not quite aligned with some of the in-class uses I’ve come across thus far (I keep wanting to skip big chunks of the guide). If I’m specifically working on learning how to analyze and artifact or photo, great. So maybe use those when first teaching the skill. But if I’m using a document or image as a way to build interest, honing in on just the essential, relevant pieces (like in the Four Reads tasks) might be more effective.

Menti is so fun! I want to play around with it some to get a feel for how to incorporate it. I like that it has lots of choices to visually represent the data…good math/science connections. In the word cloud, I wish the related words would group themselves together, but that could be a fun language lesson (synonyms, precision in word choice, word gradients, etc.) — to print and cut a recent word cloud apart and sort/reorganize it. Or, we could group into broad categories and then do the cloud again to see how it changed.

Again, I really appreciated the dual-level teaching…giving us a taste of the student experience, and also explicitly addressing the teaching strategy. Thank you!

The BBK activity is great! I enjoyed going through the process as a student and also having you explain, from a teacher’s perspective, the how and why of the process in explicit terms. That is one of the most helpful models for me — to see a strategy or method from both sides at once. Just going through it as a student, I tend to focus on the task, and not on the process. Just learning how a strategy works from a teacher’s perspective, I don’t get to see and feel it from the student’s perspective. So, thank you!! I can see how natural it would be to differentiate in this model, giving each student, regardless of their reading level or background knowledge, a turn being the expert. I expect that I will use this strategy frequently with my future upper elementary students.

I am so curious now about the government recommendations that were given during the 30s. I wonder if they were effective. I wonder if people had the resources to implement any of the recommendations, or if the government provided resources. I wonder why we hear so much about the Great Depression, but not so much about this — and wonder if students in the midwest learn about this more comprehensively. I also think about our current US food supply — and the fact that the midwest has just been destroyed by floods…this sounds a lot more like a national emergency than that other thing (which shall remain unnamed). I think I’ll plant a big garden this year….

As far as lesson planning goes, I think I’m in good shape. 🙂 My main problem (and time-vortex), as I’ve mentioned, is in deciding which standard or topic to plan for. This time around, I gave myself a time limit to make that decision, and almost stuck to it…which saved me TONS of time. So, while my Maggie Walker lesson has still taken me longer than I think is reasonable, I’m nearly finished and feeling pretty good about it. Thanks for the extra time and support to work through the process!

Finally, I apologize for the late entry here. With my kids home on spring break, and getting into the flow with Maggie Walker, it honestly just slipped my mind. 🙁