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 ef...
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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...
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", ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
Yet again we have reached the end of a fieldwork cycle. This is always a bittersweet moment to reach. Our class of fifth graders was very intelligent and engaging to work with. I will miss them now that we are done, but I am proud of what we accomplished. Overall, I think my group's direct instruction was our best lesson. Our inquiry had a few "hick-ups" that could be improved with a little more practice and planning, especially when it comes to knowing where the students are going to move to their next station. Our cooperative learning lesson was a great experience as well. This was the first time I had taught a cooperative lesson. In class today we talked about what makes a cooperative lesson more than just group work. Group work is something that everyone has experienced in school at one point or another in their school career. Most people hear group project and they freat because people don't pull thier own weight and someone ends up doing it all. In a cooporative...
To help understand the benefit of cooperative and interactive learning, I watched a video on eClass that model poor cooperation and positive cooperation. In part 1 of the video, the president of the mock company demanded that the name of the product be "stars so bright bracelets". She would not take any feedback from the other people in the mock company who wanted to name them "friendly bracelets". The other members of the mock company also shot down the president's idea of naming them "stars so bright bracelets", call it a "stupid" idea. The president told the other members that it is what the president says goes. In this part, several people voiced their opinions, but they were very disrespectful when addressing their colleagues, which is not appropriate when collaborating with others. In part 2 of the video, the other members of the mock company gave their opinions on what color they thought the logo should be. One said rainbow, one said...
So, we just taught our last lesson and I have a bittersweet feeling about it. I think overall our lesson went fairly well, but I would definitely change somethings given the chance. This lesson was our cooperative lesson. None of us have ever taught a cooperative lesson before and it took some Our group chose to have each group of students research a different historical figure from our lesson (Sacagawea, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson, and Adams). Then as a group, the students had to work together to create a campaign poster that included facts about their candidate, a slogan, and negative comment to use against their rival. To ensure that the group ran smoothly, each student was assigned a role. The students could be a note taker, a facilitator, a presenter, or a helper. We assigned the roles before we got there to save some time. To ensure that all student would be individually accountable for contributing to the group, we had all of the students sign a contract. The student ...
Inquiry Day! "Imagine your room, all of the stuff in it. Now imagine how much more stuff you could fit in it if you were to double in size!" This is how our group of Social Studies Super Stars introduce the concept of the Louisiana Purchase, which was one of the greatest land deals of all time. In doubling the size of the U.S., President Jefferson wanted to learn what was out there. He hired the explores Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition through the Louisana Territory. To help them along their way, Louis and Clark hired Sacagawea, a Shoshone Native American woman to be their guide. To bring our students along on their journey, we had a Voki of Meriwether Lewis. The Voki was meant to say that something went wrong in time and he and his partner Clark, never went on their expedition. Something went wrong when we tried to play the Voki for the class. I am not sure if the volume was not working, or the video itself was not working. I had to improv...
Our First Day As Social Studies Teachers! February 22, George Washington's birthday, my group of Social Studies Super Star began to teach the 5th-grade class about the United States as a Young Nation. In 1789 Washington became the first president of the USA by a unanimous vote in the electoral college. Practically every person in the US wanted Washington to lead us as our first president except for Washington himself. As we taught the class these interesting facts, we implemented several strategies to help the students remember key vocabulary. I made sure that everytime a vocabulary word came up, I would either have the students say it with me or repeat it after me in a choral response. This was a great way to get the students to start internalizing this new vocabulary. After every two slides, we asked the students to answer check for understanding questions that were based on the information they had just learned. Our group also made sure to get an answer from each gro...
Group 1 Inquiry! On Thursday, February 12, Group 1 conducted their Inquiry lesson plan where the students followed a WebQuest. To begin the lesson, the teachers had the students log onto Google Classroom. This took much longer than they expected and it really took away from the lesson. At first, I thought it was taking so long because the students were doing a pre-assessment on there. However, after they finally logged on, the teachers had the students do a Kahoot! for a pre-assessment. The idea was good, but it didn't turn out so great in practice. The students, as you might expect, got too excited playing the game and I think it got the teachers a bit more frazzled after their technical difficulties. This lead to some chaos in the room. I must commend them on how they were able to recover and get the students to be so quiet while they were working on their independent practice. All of the students were practically silent and diligently working. The students seemed very intere...
Newburgh Ministry! On Friday, I volunteered at the Newburgh Ministry for MSMC's Project Jumpstart. I was a bit nervous about the area at first. I felt fairly uncomfortable getting out of my car and walking in there by myself. The next time I go, I am signed up to go with people from my group so I should feel a bit more comfortable. Aside from arriving, the rest of the night was a lot of fun. When I first got there, the kids were coloring and doing crossword puzzles. I sat down with the kids that were there and helped a little girl who was 4 years old color in one of the pages. Once everyone one arrived, Miss Veronica brought the kids over to do some yoga to get them ready for the night. I followed along with the yoga and it was fun. After that, each student got an iPad and was able to research different thing they could find in the ocean. The wifi wasn't working right so I help the kids sign onto the hotspot on my phone. I helped the little boy in the picture above find some ...
Group 1 Direct Instruction! Yesterday, Group 1 started off our fieldwork experience with the first direct instruction lesson. They taught the students about the branches of government, the bill of rights, and the constitution. I thought overall they did very well. I thought they all knew their content and that they did a great job of projecting their voices. I really liked their guided practice activity. Durin that activity, they gave each table a different set of terms. The definitions for these terms, which were events and other key concepts like the constitution, were put up on the SMART board and were read aloud by one of the teachers. The student had to discuss as a group what the correct term was and then look through the one they had to see they had the right answer. The group that did have the right answer got to go and put it up on the board. I felt that the student really liked this activity. I think the independent practice could have been a bit more reflective. Group one ...
Pre-Assessments and Getting to Know You Activities! Yesterday we started another round of fieldwork! This round of fieldwork, much like last semester, will be carried out at Bishop Dunn Memorial School . I was very excited to meet the new set of students and to be working with the fifth-grade. When I first started at the Mount, I was convinced that I only wanted to work with the youngest students in the first or second grade, but after a few years of fieldwork, I am starting to think I might like the fifth-grade more. I think this will be a great semester! All of the students we so bright and eager to learn. To get to know these amazing social studies superstars, we played a board game with the students. The board game consisted of three types of questions, questions to get to know the student, questions for them to get to know us, and social studies superstar questions to give them the opportunity to show their knowledge. I was pleased to see how engaged all of our st...
The News of the World! Today I attended one of the Library Week events pertaining to the books the News of the World , by Paulette Jiles. This book is a historical fiction novel about a man named Captian Jefferson Kyle Kidd who tells the news of the world to the people of the US by riding around on a horse and reading the newspaper to people across the growing United States. At the event, the Dominican Scholars lead the discussion and broke down how the book touches could be applied to the four pillars of the Dominican Scholars. The four pillars are study, service, spirituality, and community. They talked about the how the book touched on the study pillar when Captian Kidd teaches Johanna English and no matter how challenging the process was, they never gave up. The book touches on service when it talks about Captian Kidd being a soldier in the War of 1812. It was brought up how it was interesting that the book actually touched upon Captian Kidd's PTSD. I...
What were the takeaways of the getting to know you activity? Each time you start a new class, it is important to get to know the people who will be your colleagues for the next few months. Getting to know them will make you more comfortable with them and will allow you to have a sense of comunity in the classroom. The Getting to Know You activity we did in our Social Studies class was a special version of this comuity building exercise. It was special in the fact that it was digital. Being digital, everyone in the class was not only able to learn a little bit more about eachother, but we were all able to learn about differnt tools that could help us improve our lesson plans in the future. I learned about so many resources I have never heard of before from this activity, like podomatic , a site that allows you to create a voice memo, and tiki toki , a site that lets you create a 3D time line. In my own project I used two sites called QR Code Monkey and Straw Poll. These we...
What is Social Studies? Why do we teach it? And what will this class bring? I talked about what Social Studies meant to me in my first blog. In this blog, I will get more technical as I explore the first three chapters of our class textbook, Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School: Communities, Connections, and Citizenship, by Lawrence Lyman, Scott Waters, Harvey C. Foyle, and Allyson L. Lyman. In the first chapter, the authors explore what the definition of Social Studies actually is. According to New York State Education Department , the purpose of social studies education is for students to "confront questions about the wonder and excitement of humankind in the world." To me, that is a great description of what social studies should be about. If the students are not introduced to any topic within the boarded term of social studies with excitement and wonder, they will struggle to obtain the information. To further this definition, the National Council of Soc...
Welcome to my new Social Studies blog! The new semester has started and here I am, the day after my first Social Studies Methods class, writing my first blog. I am going to make sure that post at least once a week this semester so that my posts do pile up at the end. I have learned from my past experience to better my future. When you think about it, that is one of the core definitions of Social Studies, teaching the past to better the future. I say one of the core definitions because Social Studies is not just about the past and historical facts. It is also about human nature and the study of how people create societies and how societies interact. It is also about geography, cartography, mythology, philosophy, and many other elements that all return to the "social" or the people and how and why we are who we are. That is why I love Social Studies because the more you look back into history and take a minute to examine what the geography of different places is lik...