Elem Social Studies 11 (Mercedes)

I think that the most important and valuable lesson that I took away from this past class was that everyone has a story and it is because of those stories that we have history to look back on. I think this is valuable because it creates not only points of interest but also of personal connection for students studying history. I loved the idea of bringing in artifacts that tell a story of someone in your family’s life and then having students sequentially figure out what was happening from deriving information and interpreting different kinds of primary sources. I noticed that I was far more engaged with this activity than I was when looking at documents of the past I felt no real connection to.

I also really enjoyed the comparison of paintings that we did. At my table we had a discussion about what grades we would use this activity in. Someone at the table said they believed first graders could do it. Though I don’t doubt they could point out differences in the pictures, I think that the key part of this lesson was the analysis of these pictures. The differences meant something historically which I think would benefit students of higher levels of elementary.

This week’s readings and class had a strong emphasis on the use of historical sources in the classroom to promote historical, analytical, and multi-dimensional thinking. When I think about my own experience with primary sources, I do not look on the memories fondly. I think about droning on about documents that I did not understand and frankly, did not care to. They seemed antiquated and I had a hard time deriving meaning from the somewhat foreign and decodable language in front of me. Most of my teachers did not offer much assistance in truly grasping the meaning of these sources. We merely scanned them and they told us what they were used for or we filled out monotonous and meaningless worksheets. In all honesty, Tuesday’s class period brought me back to this. As much as I understood the occasional need to go slowly through Social Studies material, I found myself staring at the clock just waiting for the lesson to end. I was not engaged enough and the worksheet and readings were far too repetitive.

The one positive experience I recall from my own years as a middle and high school Social Studies student relating to the use of primary sources takes me back to the seventh grade in Mrs. Cromley’s classroom. I believed that she used primary and secondary sources in a way that truly made me think critically and analytically about what was in front of me. Every day, each pair of students in the class of twelve was given newspaper articles from that day in history. We then had to present on articles we found interesting and compare and contrast with things we see in the news today. While studying the Industrial Revolution, we would look at photographs of the factories and the conditions and did an online simulation that put us in the role of a child in the pictures. We then wrote a reflective essay about our experience.

The articles we read and videos we watched also presented a lot of helpful and important points regarding history, historical thinking, and the use of primary and secondary sources. Something that was mentioned multiple times was the need for varying points of view when analyzing primary sources. I think this is key because it shows that there is no “one, true history” and that each document or painting that we look at has an audience in mind and a message they are trying to portray. I want to make sure that my students think critically about biases in the sources presented to them so that they can make their minds up for themselves. I want to facilitate individual and independent thinking processes. I also found it interesting in the “Think Historically” article that kids as young as 7 can begin to engage in source work. The final thing that really stood out to me was the point made that we should present our students with accounts from young people and children of that time period not only to create points of comparison with their own lives but also to give a perspective that is more easily accessible for them than that of a 45 year old working man.

The readings assigned this week were heavily focused on the role of vocabulary, reading, and literature in social studies. In the Chapter 3 reflection questions of the textbook, we are asked to think about how a focus on vocabulary will help our students. I believe that through reading, vocabulary will naturally expand. Students will develop a better understanding for what they are reading if they are explicitly taught the meaning behind the words they read. By implementing varied methods of vocabulary instruction the student will not only understand it but be able to use it in context, compare and contrast it to other words in the unit, classify it, and more.

I would use many of the strategies presented in these readings in my own classroom. In terms of vocabulary instruction, I thought that the most helpful strategies to implement would be creating an interactive and gradually growing Word Wall, the creation of content circles and utilizing graphic organizers. One type graphic organizer that stood out to me was the Frayer model. It asks the student to provide the word, real-life examples of the word, non-examples, a definition, and essential characteristics of the word. I also think that using Venn diagrams to compare and contrast words could be helpful.

In terms of reading instruction, Chapter 4 of the textbook and the Altieri reading provided many strategies that I could use in a social studies classroom. I was surprised to find out that “popcorn” reading, something that I experienced a lot of in my elementary, middle, and high school years, was actually not as useful as pair or independent reading. In my classroom, I would like students to read in pairs where one paragraph is read to a partner and then the partner summarizes what that paragraph said, key points, and provides possible questions. The students would then switch roles. If there were students who were struggling with reading, they could be in a group of three, still actively participating by summarizing and providing questions for the reader. I would also try to create opportunities for Readers Theater to make historical events more accessible and easier to understand for students. The marking and thinking activity could also be helpful if implemented early on and continued throughout. The final strategy that struck me was sketchnoting. I found this particularly interesting because of the use of visuals to like concepts and images directly with the text presented.

I came into this classroom with the expectation that this would be a lot like the Science Instruction class I took last semester with Dr. Stohr. I figured that the overall setup and organization of the class as well as the kinds of homework and projects assigned would be the same as Science and that many of the people would remain the same. However, I came into this class with a new set of expectations concerning what I will walk away with at the end of the semester. I expect that my teachers will give foundational support and instruct me and the other undergraduate students in a way that gives us the same toolkit as the people who are already teachers in our class. I expect that my professors will differentiate my work from the work of my classmates that already have their degrees in Education and classrooms of their own. I expect to get extensive background information on things like lesson planning and how to approach teaching in the classroom before I am expected to do any microteaching myself. In terms of what I expect from myself,  I hope to be receptive to the knowledge and foundational aids being gifted to me. I also expect to be present in class as much as possible and gather ideas about different ways to make learning social studies interactive and fun.

In our first class, I thought that the idea of relevance and meaning were crucial in terms of social studies instruction. In reflecting on my elementary years, I remember hating the history being taught to us because it felt so foreign and disconnected from my everyday life. I did not see the meaning it had for me and those around me because it was not presented in the correct way. Another thing that I found particularly important about the discussion we had in class was the emphasis put on creating interdisciplinary lessons. The image displayed on the board could have been used for so many different lessons and in the end, connected back to social studies.