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Finishing Social Studies Methods!!!

As all of my work is in its final touches, I am excited to be finishing up Social Studies Methods. I have learned a lot this semester. Much like Science Methods, I learned a lot of new technologies to use in class. One of the most interesting pieces of technology that I had learned about was Mentimeter . This was a website that allows you to ask the class questions to which they can answer with words to make a word cloud or even simple multiple choice words. What makes this website different is that the results come in real time. The website will automatically save the results and email them to the creator. This would be a very useful tool to use in my classroom one day to get the students engaged and excited about many topics, not just Social Studies. Another great piece of technology that we had learned about is ThingLink . We had used this tool last year in science to teach the class about the different layers of the Atmosphere, but I think ThingLink is a much more effective tool f
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Dreamers in the United States

Current events are essential to Social Studies learning. The ultimate goal of teaching Social Studies is to prepare students to become active citizens in society. Though learning about maps, philosophy, and history are essential to Social Studies, if a person does not know what is currently happening around them, they can never truly be a contributing member of society. In an article that I had recently read,"Judge Says 'Dreamers' Program Must Continue," by Associated Press, you can learn about one of the most debated current events of the last few years. Immigration has been a hot topic in the United States for a long time. One of the protections of young undocumented immigrants is called DACA. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arivals Program. This program allows children who were brought to the US without permission live and work in the United States as "Dreamer." It was started by President Barack Obama in 2012. President Donald Turmp has b
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Assessment of the Students

When your a teacher accountability is very important. You must be able to show that what you have done, helped the students learn. One way to do so is to give the student pre-and post-assessments. Pre-tests serve a way of getting understanding of how much the students know or do not know to better create a lesson. In a unit plan, if the students showed that they knew a lot about a topic such as George Washington, but they knew very little about political parties, then in the lesson the teacher can give a brief overview of George Washington to focus on political parties. Then the post-test at the end of the unit tells the teacher just how much the students have learned and if she needs to go back an reteach any part of the lesson. My group taught about the Young United States, so our pre-assessment questions were "what is a political party?". "inauguration is when the president is sworn into office by declaring his/her loyalty to the constitution: true or false", &qu
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Philosophy of Social Studies Teaching

Teaching Social Studies!  When it comes to Social Studies, I have always been a big fan of the subject. All of my Social Studies teachers have been amazing and would want to be anything else but a history major in college. I realize that many students will not share this sentiment when it comes to Social Studies. They may find the subject hard, boring, or even unbearable. To me, these sentiments come from not having the right teacher. If your teacher is not passionate about what they teach, the students will never truly become passionate about the subject themselves. For a teacher to be a successful Social Studies teacher, her main goal should be to make history come to life and the way to do this is by implementing the five principals of Social Studies teaching.  The five principles of Social Studies teaching are having meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active lessons. For a lesson to be mindful it must have a purpose. This means that you shouldn't ju
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Mock Interviews

 Today we had our mock interviews in class. I volunteered to be an administrator during the interviews. My specific role was to interview people from the inquiry angle. I had come up with four questions centered around the process of inquiry and how my colleagues turned potential employees would implement it in their future classrooms. The four questions I asked were, " Which of the five E’s would you consider the most important to the Inquiry model?", " What technologies would you incorporate into an inquiry lesson based on Ancient Greece to help students engage with your content in the elements of history, geography, philosophy, etc ?", "Why do you think this technology will bring the process of inquiry to life?", and "How does providing students with divergent/open-ended questions (that require multiple answers) encourage higher order thinking and how would you incorporate them into your classroom?" These were the three main questions that I
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Artifact Bags! Can you guess where these objects are from?

Artifact Bags are an amazing way to help history come to life for children. The excitement of unwrapping a mystery item can be a very exciting way to engage the students. For my artifact bag, I choose to include four items. The items I had included were a British Pound, a painting of Henry Clay in Congress, a copy of the Star Spangled Banner flag, and a set of Mardi Gras Beads. So, do you have any ideas about the time period these items represent? I challenge you to try and find the connection and then continue reading. After all of your exploration, did you come to the conclusion that these items represent the War of 1812? Let me explain each artifact to make sure you see the connection. The first item, the British Pound represented the British breaking the Free Trade Agreement by not allowing the US to trade with France by going so far as to capture US sailors. Artifact number two, the painting of Henry Clay, represented the group of people that Henry Clay lead called the War
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X Marks The Spot

Do you remember learning about geography in school? Maybe you used maps or globs to explore the different features of our world. Today, students can experience 3D models using Google Earth to explore locations on the other side of the globe in seconds! Teaching a lesson with Google Earth is definitely something that I would love to us in my classroom one day. I would give the students latitude and longitude coordinates to explore like a scavenger hunt. One of my favorite parts of Geography was learning about latitude and longitude in sixth grade. My teacher was the faculty adviser for the LEGO robotics club and the tech crew, so he was well versed in technology. To learn latitude and longitude, my teacher had us play a more interactive form of Battle Ship. He gave everyone a large map with latitude and longitude lines on it that we would mark in several spots to represent our bases. Once everyone had marked their bases, we would take turns calling out coordinates to try and hit one of
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