We the People of Social Studies with Rebecca Lawson

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 ...