Month: February 2019

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.

The first video we needed to review before class connects very well with the graphic organizer we have used/discussed in the first 2 class sessions. Memory shows us what we know (or think) happened in the past while history is what actually happened based on primary sources we have to complete research with today. So for the “It says, I say, and so” organizer, our memory is what we need to use for the “I say” column, History (primary sources) is what we need to use for the “It says” column, and we need to evaluate both pieces of information to determine what our “and so” answer should be.

The main thing I learned in class is that there isn’t necessarily one right answer to any historical question based on the information used to arrive at that answer. Yes, it is one thing if everyone who is answering the same question is reaching their answer by using the same primary sources, then answers, most likely, will be in the same realm as one another. However, some people do tend to pick different parts of the same source to use in creating their answer. The big difference will come into play when a group is told to take a question or topic and come up with what happened using different primary sources.

When people use different sources to come up with one realization of what took place, the answers will be directly reflected by those sources used. What I am getting at is the fact that all sources are not reliable. This was a big takeaway for me in class. Even though, each primary source “is” accurate based on the first hand account of the person or who ever created it, the source may not be valid for the purpose of the research. The information can also be different based on the point of view. It is important to make sure that you have several sources from different places. I believe someone in class said that you should find multiple sources to back up your “I say” and look to find multiple sources that question what you thought. Then you can tell the “whole” history.

I wonder if we were given different primary sources instead of the same primary sources in class, what the different answers would have been with the boycott activity.

Three key points from class:

• History is a slow process – Hands on learning takes time
• Make a lesson/strategy your own – Make changes so it makes sense to you
• Go beyond the textbook – Primary sources are key to learning