Farewell Social Studies Methods

Not that long ago I entered my Social Studies course classroom excited yet nervous for all that was in store for me, though I was more nervous than excited or anxious. As I sat down at a computer and listened to all that Dr. Smirnova said I was begin to feel a bit overwhelmed. She mentioned a great deal of technology, three lesson plans that I have never heard of, and how we were a paperless classroom. eclass was now going to be our best friend. Have I mentioned I never used eclass prior to this Social Studies methods course. So this is where I began to stress and freak out a little bit. Dr. Smirnova then had us read letters that the previous class had wrote about their experience and all that they have been through. This letter did not make me feel any better. The student had mentioned all the stress and work load they have been through. To reassure me they mentioned to lean on my classmates for help and to stay on top of my work. Well now it is the end of the semester. The last day of the course is actually approaching, and well I've MADE IT! 

I completed this last methods course! I was able to get all of my work in and complete all of the given assignments when due! I was able to learn those three amazing lesson plans (direct, inquiry, and cooperative). Not only was I able to learn them but I was able to utilize them and teaching them within a second grade classroom setting! I learned to lean on my classmates. My classmates became some of my best friends. They became the people who would answer my phone calls, text messages, or face time calls, in the early morning or late night hours. My professor, Dr. Smirnova, was always there to help me when my classmates were not! I knew I could contact her at any time and soon enough she would get back to me with a helping hand. I can not believe all that I have accomplished and learned in this course. The amount of technology i learned is amazing and I truly can not wait to share it with others. Better yet, I can not wait to use it within my own classroom in the future. I am proud that all of us, as a class and a family, MADE IT together! With great support, feedback, open minds, and helping hands, we all helped each other through some of the toughest times. Heres the beginning to an amazing year and a bright future. Congratulations everyone! 

Dr. Smirnova, I couldn't thank you enough! Have a wonderful summer :)

My Teaching Philosophy

My passion for teaching grew even stronger when I had taken Dr.Smirnova’s social studies methods course. I learned a great deal of techniques, websites, and strategies, in order t engage students within the classroom. Dr. Smirnova provided us with a vast amount of tools and technology to use and teach social studies in an engaging and unique way. Teaching with these strategies brought social studies alive. Learning was fun! My personal philosophy about teaching is that it is the teacher’s role to educate all students in a supportive and respectful manor. Educators should have the ability to differentiate instruction techniques to meet the needs of each and every student is something that I value in education. Every child learns differently, so as a teacher I would use a wide range of techniques to help my students’ prosper and grow. I would approach an activity in numerous ways to help every child. I believe that every child learns differently; therefore it is crucial for a teacher to use different techniques and learning tools. I want to change the world, and I know education is where I could have the greatest impact. Future teachers, such as myself, can truly make a difference. To be an effective teacher, my students must have the opportunity to take responsibility for becoming life-long learners, while having fun. I want my students to become empowered by their own learning. I want to teach my students to love learning.

            An effective teacher is one who knows how to engage his or her students and properly meets the needs of each and every student. An effective teacher is one who creates a learning experience that is meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active, can build student leaning in all areas. To do so, teachers can apply numerous strategies and techniques in their lessons. I learned three excellent strategies this semester that I would be sure to use in the future! The three learning strategies included: direct instruction, inquiry, and cooperative learning. Direct instruction is when the lesson is teacher based, and the teacher directly teaches the lesson to the students. Inquiry lesson is when the students research information, make observations, collect data, and eventually devise their own way to report their findings to their classmates. Cooperative learning is when students work together in small groups to complete an activity or task. Students are working together in these lessons to achieve a common goal. I had the chance to apply my skills and use these methods during fieldwork. I was truly able to see the great impact these strategies alone had on the students.

My philosophy is based on the five characteristics of powerful social studies are: Meaningful, Integrative, Value-Based, Challenging, and Active. Social studies learning should be meaningful learning experience to truly grab the student’s attention and interest. When students are capable of making connections between new content and prior knowledge, students will learn and remember the content that is being taught. It is crucial to help students make text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections. Helping children make these connections allow them to relate it to their own experiences and further their understanding. Engagement and hands-on activities help connect text to real life situations. I learned when students make these connections it would help them prosper and grow into well-educated individuals. As a teacher, I believe that the learning process should be integrative. It is crucial to incorporate a vast amount of topic and skills. It is important to keep students in touch with the world around them. One way to do so is inform students on the current events within their society. This will allow students to become more aware, involved, and engaged, within their society. This will help promote personal development and further students understanding allowing them to make generalizations, build their cognitive development, and promote personal development. Helping students do just this will allow them to make better connections in all areas and learn how to apply their skills and new knowledge in all content areas. Teaching should be value-based because it is meaningful to students and allows students to relate to the content. Learning should be challenging allowing students to build off their prior knowledge and educate themselves. Students should be active participants in their learning and build off of one another’s ideas and knowledge. In the future, I will be sure to include incorporate these five powerful strategies into my lessons and units.  

It is time...Mock Interview Time!

Instead of having a final my social studies professor decided to hold a mock interview in order to demonstrate our knowledge of the course content. Three students volunteered to me administrators. The administrators were to interview their colleagues. This had all take places in class on Wednesday. Each administrator wrote a personal story, which they shared with us, and created interview questions on various topics such as: direct instruction, inquiry learning, cooperative learning, major concepts, generalizations, blooms taxonomy, and elements of social studies. 

Each administrator interviewed their colleagues and asked the questions they generated. Administration was then assigned to hire their colleagues based on their answers, personality, and overall performance during the interview. I feel as though the questions asked were all different yet based on the content we learned throughout the year. It was amazing how each and every one of us knew all of the answers, yet answered them in our own unique way. I was impressed with some of the questions that were asked. The administrators put a lot of hard work and dedication into writing their stories and creating such unique questions as well! I was truly impressed. Overall the experience was amazing and I am truly appreciative to have experience such a thing. It allowed us all to review the course material while getting real life practice for our future interviews. We all prepared ourselves and practiced as if we were in a professional situation. Each and every one of us dressed up as well. We all looked great! J Having this hand on experience in a setting that we were all comfortable in truly helped make this a positive learning experience! I am excited to see all the images and pictures taken of this day!

Below are some great helpful videos you might enjoy! 

Teaching Interview Questions

How to interview for a teaching job

TES interview tips for teachers, by teachers 

It's Your Time To Shine! Find Your Own Current Event!

It is extremely important to capture student’s attention and inform them of all that is going on in today’s world.  It is extremely important to raise student awareness of the issues within society, and even in their very own communities. I learned that it is important to introduce current events to students because it allows them to understand the economy, politics, social structures, and environment, in order to make the best choices about how to live their lives, and stay in tune with all that happens around them.

Slowly newspapers have become neglected and began to lose their footing as a primary source of news. That does not mean current events and the news is less important, it just means it is easier then ever to have access too. Whether it is watching the news on television, listening to the radio, or browsing the Internet, understanding what is going on in the world is truly important. 

Young students have much to gain from exploring the Internet and being knowledgeable of what is happening in the world around them. I learned that social studies classrooms are the perfect way in which students can establish a foundation of awareness and inquiry. Current events offer the social studies teacher countless opportunities to make curriculum relevant to our everyday lives. Not only does incorporating current events in the curriculum help students learn about the world around them but it allows them to build language, learn new vocabulary words, further their reading comprehension, build their critical thinking, problem solving, oral expressions, and listening skills. Finally, teaching current events creates plenty of opportunities for cooperative learning, classroom discussions, debates, and purposeful follow up writing activities.

There are plenty of amazing websites for students to explore and learn about current events. I explored the Pearson’s Education website (click on the link and it will bring you to the site!) Doctor Smirnova provided me. I truly loved this website and felt as though students could learn a great deal from it. It had a social studies library students could use to help define words they were unfamiliar with. It has a link that provides students with current events happening all over the word and provides the date and yea in which they occurred. One of my favorite things about this website is the link This Day In History. I think this is a fun an exciting way to engage students. I think it would be a great idea for teachers to use this site and write a daily fun fact each day of the week to engage students. The site also has activities and games for students!

Doctor Smirnova provided another website called Free Technology For Teachers. This website provided plenty of excellent resources for teachers to find current event stories that are relevant and appropriate for students. This site also provided appropriate activities for students to do when they visually explore the news themselves in search of current events. Some of these activities provided were Ten by Ten, AP Timeline reader, Newseum’s todays front pages, Newspaper map, and Google fast flip. Ten by ten is a program that connects images with specific news stories. Every hour a ten by ten gird will have over a 100 images connected to the top 100 news stories from that hour, from around the world. I think this is an excellent program for students because it connects a visual to a current event. It has over 100 images giving students the option to decide what they want to read about. AP timeline is a program that gives readers a way to create their own timeline. Students can choose up to ten categories and arrange them on their timeline. Students can always come back to their timeline and read the events. Newseum’s todays front pages is a program I would definitely introduce to my students! I think this program is an excellent program that allows students to explore and view all of the important and current front pages of major newspapers around the world. A map will be provided with little orange dots that correspond to the polishing location of each newspaper. When a student places their mouse on one of the dots it will generate a picture of that newspaper’s current front page. The student can then click on the image and it will allow them to read the front page or click through the newspaper’s website. Newspaper map was another program for locating and relating newspapers from locations all around the world as well. Google fast flip is a magazine that displays some of the most popular websites on the Internet. The visual displays will make it easier for students and teachers to flip through the images and learn all about the current events that are taking place. It makes it easy to quickly browse and learn a great deal of information. These are some of the places I found my ideas when searching to create an activity for my current event project. I will definitely use these in the future within my classroom.

Here are the links for all of the programs: 

• Ten by Ten
• AP Timeline reader
• Newseum's todays front pages
• Newspaper map
• Google Fast Flip

I searched the internet when trying to create an activity to do with my social studies methods class. When searching the internet I came over a great deal of current events that truly captured my attention. As for my final project I decided to have my colleagues search the internet and research their own articles. I felt as though this would be a great way for them to learn through experience. It will allow them to interact with one another and build off each other’s ideas. I placed my colleagues in four different groups. Each group was assigned a different geographical scope: world, state, local, and educational news. Each group was to search for an article based on their assigned location and be ready to share what they found along with their views of the article. I felt as though this was a great idea because it was more students based and allowed them to educate themselves in order to become aware of all that is occurring. It allowed them to not only educate themselves but educate their classmates as well. I felt as though my activity went extremely well and my colleagues enjoyed finding their own articles and working together.

I will be sure to use all that I mentioned in the future when teaching current events. It will have to be modified for specific grade levels but not much. I feel as though each grade would benefit from using the online educational websites and games. I feel as though students learn a great deal when they research their own information, find something that captures there attention, has visual aids to guide them, and the power to educate their classmates. I feel that students of all grades can participate in such an activity. For younger students the websites and webpages may have to be monitored to make sure they are appropriate for students to search though.

A Movie Like No Other....BizMovie

Today I presented my bizmovie project to the class. I created my presentation using GoAnimate for schools free trial. It was disappointing that their free trial only allows for a short period of time. I enjoyed using GoAnimate but as a student it is too expensive to purchase. I wish they allowed free trials with limited options and a longer span of time to create a presentation. Using Go Animate I was allowed to choose a setting, select my actors, type or record my dialog, and last but not least add animations to my setting and characters. It was extremely engaging and interactive. It was easy and simple to use as well. After I created my presentation I previewed my final project.

Here are some images from my project I have created. I used different characters and scenes in the short time span I was allowed.

My classmates and I used BizMovie, which was an interactive way to teach students economics in the classroom while having them become engaged in real life experiences. BizMovie is an interactive student based project that allows students to create their own product and company. It is an excellent tool for students to use and learn economics with! I would definitely be sure to use this tool in the future. 

What Is In The Bag?

Creating my own artifact bag was extremely exciting. The focus of my bag was on the first 
Thanksgiving and the Native Americans. I did not have any personal artifacts from that time period; therefore I used artifacts that represented the first Thanksgiving and the Native Americans. I used a small pumpkin to represent the first Thanksgiving, and I used a rock to represent Plymouth Rock, and a gold coin to represent Jamestown. I also used a beaded, authentic looking, bracelet and some feathers. After creating my artifact bag, I presented it to my classmates and they had to guess my topic and the importance of each artifact. I loved this project because it allowed me to have control over my own social studies learning while having fun. (My artifacts are listed below) :)

The artifact bag project I completed was an entirely new experience for me. I have never created an artifact bag before, let alone I have never heard of this project. I did not know the many learning benefits of creating an artifact bag. I learned that creating an artifact bag is extremely useful within a social studies classroom. This project helped me develop my pedagogical knowledge through experience. Going through the process, methods of teaching my assigned topic, and learning from my colleagues, allowed me to recognize the true value and purpose of the project. I recognized the development of the project and all of the hard work and dedication it truly takes to create an excellent artifact bag. I also recognized the classroom management aspect. Students were truly focused on figuring out what their artifacts would be and creating a positive learning experience. 

Overall I thought this was an extremely rich learning experience. It helps get students researching and developing information to find certain artifacts. Such historical artifacts, or artifacts that represent historical times, could help bridge the gap between the present and the past for students. This project would help students build and master their critical thinking skills and learn all about history. At the end of this project students would have analyzed information, applied the appropriate standards, recognized similarities and differences between different topics in social studies. Students will have learned to search for information, facts, and evidence. Students would also draw inferences or conclusions based on their topic, predict, and transform their knowledge.Though this project may seem simple students are actually learning a great deal of information, not just social studies but every day concepts and learning tools they would need. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity to experience this project and learn all about it. Not only did I enjoy the project but also it opened my eyes and gave me new ideas that I will definitely be incorporating in my future classroom.

Here are the artifacts that were found within my artifact bag! 

My POWERPOINT! My powerpoint is a short powerpoint that I used as a guideline to help show what i included within my artifact bag, the story I would use to teach a lesson based on my artifact bag, and a chart full of questions that I ask myself and fill in as I explored and observing each artifact. 

Here is an example of the chart I created with the questions I would have answered while looking at the artifacts. 

Here are some videos to check out and further your understanding on the First Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoy! 

1. The story of Thanksgiving

2. The Story of The First Thanksgiving