The main idea that I learned during our first class is that social studies content should be made meaningful to students. Professor Bland’s description of why she loved social studies really stood out to me; Professor Bland explained that, with every conflict or event that has occurred across history, she has always enjoyed looking for the cause and effect relationship. Professor Bland also shared that People magazine is one of her guilty pleasures for very much the same reason – she likes to contemplate why people do the things that they do and how events lead up to final outcomes. Professor Bland’s perspective resonated with me. It seems intuitive that conflicts and events in history are the result of contributing factors, and it seems much more interesting to think of history in this way, but I don’t remember being taught this way in school. I think I would have enjoyed learning history much more and would be able to recall a lot more if cause and effect relationships played a larger role in the instruction that I received. I think most students would find history a lot more interesting if, rather than memorizing dates or events, they could imagine themselves in that same set of circumstances and imagine how they would react from multiple viewpoints.
I think that my earlier courses on instruction/assessment in math, science, and reading have prepared me well to understand the different components of a lesson plan and a unit (Ex: introduction/hook, objectives, learning targets, instruction, differentiation, formative assessment, closure, summative assessment, etc.), so although keeping in mind how to write strong lesson plans remains important, my main goal in this course is to develop a renewed appreciation for social studies and history and to learn how to share that enthusiasm with students through authentic experiences. My goal for myself is to reexamine the history that I learned and be able to understand the cause and effect relationships of events throughout history and be able to apply that knowledge to lessons that I create.
In order to achieve the goal of refreshing my social studies knowledge, deepening my understanding through examination of cause-effect relationships, and applying this knowledge to my planned instructional activities, there are certain elements that are key for me to get from this course contents and from the instructors. First, I need to figure out the best strategy to effectively and efficiently relearn and deepen my knowledge of the history that I will be teaching. I would love to find out if there are certain resources that are particularly helpful in meeting this goal. Second, I would like to learn some “go to” social studies instructional activities and teaching strategies that are best suited to help students make events that happened, often hundreds of years ago, meaningful to them. I would love to learn what instructional techniques have typically had the highest interest level with students and have produced the best results in applying the knowledge to other situations. Third, through my reading courses, I have learned a little bit about how much improved the non-fiction social studies resources today are compared to those of the past. In this course, I would like to learn more about which non-fiction series are best and which technology resources are best to use for social studies instruction and for projects or performance assessments.
NOTE: I loved the snowball activity that we did at the end of class to review key takeaways, and I would love to use this activity with students in my classroom. I think it is a really fun way to gauge what students learned from the lesson. I think if a variety of activities such as this or other exit tickets are used, students would infer that you are going to check to see what they gained from each lesson. As a result, they will be more likely to be actively engaged in each lesson.