Elem Social Studies 12 (Mike)

Great topic this week with teaching challenging subjects. My biggest takeaways are as follows:

• Know your school, environment and students – It will be imperative that I am aware of polices and procedures for everything involved with teaching but especially in the area of challenging subjects. I have seen many teachers be fired or at least petitions created to have the teacher fired over inappropriate lessons, activities, and speech when it come to topics that can easily offend someone. It will be important to learn the background of each of my students so I can be sensitive to their feelings and cultures.
• It’s always nice to know that your not the only one with hesitations about difficult topics. While I knew already that I wouldn’t be the only one who has reservations, it was get to see what reservations my peers have as well. Some are the same and some are different. I think discussing some of them together in our small groups helped many of us think of these topics in different ways which helps.
• Regardless of any best practices sheets or information I can read about to prepare for such difficult topics, it all comes down to speaking the truth!! The truth will set you free!!

One thing that wasn’t discussed as I look back on the agenda was fake news. I wonder how one should go about addressing fake news? My guess would be seek out the truth by finding multiple, reliable sources.

So tonight I have realized that what we have been doing with the strategies in class have a direct link to the literature circles. Obviously, I knew the activities we have been doing each week were tied into the reading of the book, but now I see how I would be able to use the literature circles as a start to different units. Reading the book in the literature circle builds on the background knowledge for each group. Where I would go different, is to then split the class up into different groups so that each group has one person from each of the books to complete activities going further so that one person could lead the group during that weeks lessons. For example, I could select 4 or 5 biographies for students to complete the literature circle with and focus the plans for each week around each book just like we have done in class. And with each week, I could figure out how to use each book/topic across content to keep the students engaged while they continue to learn about each person (and other content).  I feel like I should have picked up this sooner but I guess its better late than never.

The question about how learning the way we are in class versus how we learned in school seemed to be unanimous. I know there we answers given comparing the two but I think the biggest way to compare the two would be summed up easily with what Lynn said about self-direct teaching. Tonight is the first time I have heard that term used and I feel like it should be used more across the classes here at UR. I believe that one of the most important things I will do as a teacher is to be more of a guide that allows the students to learn as oppose to a person who gives the information to learn from. Making the learning engaging and giving the students some of (if not most of) ownership of their learning will be very beneficial in their success.

I was not a fan of the 4 reads activity. I felt like it was difficult for me to complete the tasks for some reason. I’m not sure if it had to do with the fact that we did it in groups and I was afraid that I was going to have something different from the group and was just too focused on that. Or maybe I was just thinking too hard but I will still be open to trying something like this. I think it is good to look at a document through different lenses in order to get all you can out of the document.

Once again, working on and finishing the lesson plan was helpful. It was a nice surprise to have few minutes to begin work on the bio lesson plan. I feel like I should be more comfortable when completing the bio lesson plan.

I feel that I was not as comfortable with the presentation as I have been in the past. Even though I always get a little nervous when presenting in front of my peers, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it and I feel like my last presentation went really well. It wasn’t because I waited to the last minute (working with a partner forces you to get it done sooner then later) but I think I should have read through it one more time and read it out loud to be a little more prepared. I will try to do this next time so I am a bit more comfortable.

I’m not sure if I want to work with a partner on the virtual filed trip or not. On one hand, you have someone to help with all the information and planning. On the other, you have to depend on them to help get the work done and compromise on what your going to do. I need to make a decision on this soon either way so I can get started on it. I think I am leaning on doing it myself but I might ask a few classmates what they are thinking and go from there.

The BBK activity is one of my favorites so far. I feel like being consistent in my teaching will be one of the keys to my students success and if I am able to use a strategy like this to always introduce new topics to my students, they will know the process and be able to become masters at it. However, I wonder if using the same strategy ALL the time would be beneficial or detrimental to students. If there are students that do not like the style of the BBK, would they be engaged and learn the material if that is all I use? Maybe it might be best to find three or four powerful ways to build that background knowledge so they could have a little variety but still be somewhat consistent in only using a few techniques.

I like that you guys changed the closing activity this week, however, I’m not so sure I could use that in lower elementary. I would be afraid that some of the boys might get a little carried away and someone might get hurt. Have either of you used this activity in elementary? How did it go?

I think the presentations have gone well for the first two groups who have presented. One takeaway from this weeks group for me was how they didn’t split the speaking parts in half where one person did their part then the other went. I like how they continued to go back and forth through the whole presentation. I think it makes the presentation more interesting to not listen to the same person for an extended period of time. I think Jennifer and I will follow their lead.

The conversation about bias in children’s books is always a very eye-opening, educational time in these classes. I want to focus on the Presidents birthday cake book we talked about. Stating the obvious, we all know that slavery was horrific and never should have taken place like it did. That being said, I still wonder about the bias part of the book (or any book) that depicts African Americans being happy and shown with smiles. We all know that there is no person that wants to be enslaved, but my question would be, if you put yourself in that time period the way it was and you were a slave and head chef for GW, I would assume that his life as a slave was much better than that of a slave who worked under the hot sun all day for someone that was not as prestigious as GW. Would I be completely out of line in saying that the chef and his family could have been happy/happier living with GW and clearly doing something that he might enjoy and is good at such as being a chef? It sounded like he was well known and well taken care of due to his talents even though he was a slave. I guess my point would be, just because an African American is smiling in a book during that time period, should it not be considered just because of that?

The lesson plan activity in working with a classmate was a great way to go about addressing concern with the lesson plans. We have gotten halfway to three-forths of the way completed and we have already learned a few things from each other about how to start the plan and how we can change things to make it ours. I am looking forward to see how different our plan is from others and what kind of tidbits I can pick up from other classmates that will help me be successful going forward.

The time spent talking about the lesson plans was well needed  and greatly appreciated. During my time at UR, there have been several lesson plan templates and different expectations. Some did not need/require specific detail which is what I was mostly lacking in my plan. I will be revising my plan to re-submit this weekend. The three column rubric also helps in knowing what you guys are looking for. This is my favorite kind of rubric. I plan on using this type of rubric through my teaching career.

I enjoyed the gallery walk activity (as seen in my lesson plan) but would have never thought about using that activity to do a picture walk through a book. While I love how we are doing activities in class that we can then take and use in our own classrooms, the fact that these activities can be used across several content areas will be most beneficial to me. I can see me using this activity to introduce many units across contents.

I can understand how the closing activity we did can be very beneficial to the teacher. It is a great way to see what the students learned along with what questions students may have. It seems to be very similar to an exit ticket. I need to start incorporating these kind of exercises in my closure part of my lesson plans. I noticed a teacher that had several different types of exit tickets on her desk when I was in her classroom this week. I meant to take a picture of them to have than as examples to use in the future but forgot to do so. I wonder if there is specific places to search for exit tickets and/or other exercises to use for closure.

 

It is always good to see examples of using a lesson or experience across content areas. I did not think this way while at the museum but after seeing the poem Dr. Stohr-Hunt wrote about the camel was a great reminder to always think across content when thinking about what your doing or what you want to do.

With the completion of literature circles this week, our group enjoyed the aspect of reading the fiction book followed by the non-fiction. I liked how Out of the Dust gave me a view of life during the Dust bowl time period and then I got the actual facts afterward with the Dust Bowl. It’s a good way to have students make connections between the two, understand the life and times of the period, and I think using this format in the schools will help students pull the meat out of what I will be asking them to learn in a fun manner.

Differentiation has always been an issue for me when doing lesson plans but I feel like the discussion tonight may have help me overcome the troubles I have had with it. Specifically when it was said that it is not for the content but how you access the content and/or how can you change the end product makes perfect sense. I’m not sure I was always focusing on how to change the content but putting my focus on how to assess the content and the end product will hopefully have me focused on the right area and allow me to come up with material easier than I have before.

Our guest gave a great presentation on how they performed the DBQ. The resources they shared for finding information will be useful, even the twitter info. I am not on twitter but will think about signing up to be able to get more resources. Sometimes I wonder if their is such a thing as too many resources. Having so much to choose from can be as detrimental as not having enough resources. However, after creating the last lesson plan for class, I was looking at many resources and could not find anything that jumped out at me. I was able to find something after searching for a very long time of course but I was searching the same resources for the most part. So,  I will be expanding my resources from now on anytime the present themselves. Another one is Pintrest. I did sign up for that in a previous class but have not used it enough to where I am comfortable with the app and finding material on there but will add that to my rotation to search for items going forward.

Having the tour of the museum through the eyes of a teacher as opposed to just  a museum goer was a great experience. I plan to take my kids though the kids area next time I go now that I know it is there. One thing I have thought about after the tour, was how they break up groups of students. If classes from a whole grade are going on the field trip and they only have 10-15 students in a group while touring, how do they space them out? What do the kids do who are waiting to go through the tour?

I can see myself using the distance learning field trips in my classroom. The VMFA might be a good electronic field trip (as our text book calls it) if there is something specific they offer that you are learning about in the classroom. Our text highlighted the “Teaching With Historic Places” website that I think could be more utilized since it has over 130 lesson plans to complete using the internet but I wonder if this would be geared more toward older students than the young students.

I wonder if doing a class museum in place of a field trip to a museum would be more beneficial to students. Instead of having all the classes in a grade go to VMFA, each class could take a piece of history and turn their classroom into an exhibit for the day. All students would still do all the same learning activities as they would prior to going to the museum but this way they know they are learning the material so they can become an artist for the time period. Each student (or pairs/groups) could choose what piece of art they would like to replicate. They make the art and the short labels for their piece. Their piece and a copy of the original piece gets to hang around the classroom. You could have students rotate classrooms for a period of time and have some type of gallery walk, picture hunt, or some activity that all the students complete in their travels for that day.

I think the big takeaway leads to the theme of the class so far this semester which is that social studies and history needs to be a hands on learning experience. I think this is most important when it comes to the history content area so that students will be able to stay engaged and continue to developed that “want to know” mindset about our past.

With the last literature group meeting with the book Out of the Dust, it was finally nice to have good conversations. With the majority of the book being very negative, it was nice to see a happy ending. I have always wondered how other people read, view, and interpret the same material I read and this activity is a good way to see that. It is good to see how others get some of the same things as me from the readings but even better so learn how others see things differently.

Being in the reading class and learning the importance of word sorts has been a bog learning tool. Seeing how using a word sort in other content areas was very interesting. I enjoyed completing this activity and getting a hands on experience in how to use it across contents. I think the strategy of using it at the beginning of the lesson and the revisiting the sort at the end is a good way for a student to see how their ideas can change once going through the lesson.

After going through all of the different types of assessments, I feel a bit overwhelmed. There is a lot that goes into making a good assessment. I feel like for the beginning teacher, it will be beneficial to reach out to those around me for examples used before and then just tweek them for the purposes I will be using them for. The rubric from the VDOE is very generic. I think that might be a useful starting point but I might be better off revisiting any of the rubrics I can pull up from my previous courses to use as a guide. I like the rubric from the Math course that only had the 3 columns where you write what needs to be improved on the left and what parts exceed expectations on the right. It is short and sweet and allows a teacher to provide feedback write on the rubric.

I enjoyed the video on the Theater boxes. This seems like a great activity to get kids working together doing a fun project. I wonder how long this activity takes. I think this is another activity that could be used across content areas. The students seem to be excited about doing it so using it across contents would keep them engaged and excited.

With not being in class right now, I took the time to browse around on the NCSS website. I read the article Social Studies in Action from the Executive Director Larry Paska.

So the big takeaway/ big idea that hit me when reading this is what does a teacher need to do during the summer to prepare for the new school year?

Obviously the focus of the article is on the content of social studies but it did make me think that maybe teachers don’t have as much time off over the summer as I once thought (which it ok). I know it is required to do continual development which I guess summer does seem like the best time to do that. But the article asks several questions in regards to what you should do (or ask yourself) in summer to prepare. This isn’t something I have thought about before so I’m glad its in my mind now.

Comment about the readings form Ch. 1 and 2

I think the overall aspect of Ch 1 puts most of the focus on planning which falls in line with the article I discussed above. As Shoob and Scout share “planning is the foundation of good instruction” (p. 25). Starting with the classroom and environment created by the teacher prior to day one, to planning lessons, to instruction, it will be imperative to “be ready” for the students. I wonder how the planning and preparedness for my student teaching will be different/the same as when I go into my first year of teaching. Even though I won’t be in charge on day one of my student teaching and it won’t be my classroom, how much input will I have on things? Regardless of that, I should be able to have a front row seat to how someone else does this which will allow me to takeaway the good, and discard the bad that I experience. Another chunk of the chapter focuses on knowing your students and connecting with your students in order to be an effect teacher. While this was a huge topic of discussion in Classroom and Behavior Management, I still wonder how long should it take to really know your students. Is it a week, a month? I’m sure a lot goes into determining this but my guess is it just depends on how much time a teacher puts into getting to know each student. Sure the assessments will give you the bulk of information you need to know about where the student falls, but I have a feeling that until you make personal connections with a student is when you truly see who they are.

With the main focus of chapter two focusing on background knowledge, this again is based on knowing your students. Shoob and Strout mention in the opening of the chapter “learning new content is strongly tied to their background knowledge about a subject” (p. 29). I thought of background knowledge as what a person already knows about a thing or topic, as either you know or you don’t. It never occurred to me that getting someone to the point of understand (the big idea) is building their background knowledge to make the connections needed to understand the “big idea”. In other words, teaching is about creating or building upon background knowledge to get to the next level. The foundation of teaching rests with background knowledge. This would explain why people are not as successful when learning things through memorization and being told to “just do it like this because this is how you do it.”

First I want to say the video with the show and tell was great. Since I plan to be doing lower elementary, I will look forward to using this activity in my classroom to get my students excited about history!

I’m enjoying being part of the literature circle but there are a few question I have about it. At what age would this activity be effective for students? Is this something you could only do with chapter books (older kids) or could I break it down and simplify it to do a picture book for younger elementary students? I wonder what other types of layouts (worksheets/guides) can be used to complete this activity. This is the second time (second class at UR) that we have used the same guide. Maybe different classes could use a different guide to give us a glimpse into other options.

The SOL sheet we did in class shows the progression scale for grades K-12. While grades 3-12 take the SOL, what kind of test/how are teachers in K-2 held accountable testing wise like all other grades?

I noticed that the “It says, I say, and so” activity this class was more successful than the previous two classes. I’m not really sure why that is. I’m not sure if it was the way it was presented, that fact that we have done it a few times now, or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t realize we were following the same routine with it since it wasn’t brought up until toward the end of the activity. Either way, I feel like it was a success this time.