Reflect on becoming a blogger:
In what ways has blogging enhanced your learning experience in this course?
In what ways has blogging hindered your learning experience in this course?
How have your views of teaching Social Studies changed since you entered this course six weeks ago
Is being a blogger that different from being a poster? Besides the fact that the whole world can see, and it do not go away after a set number of months. I do not think so.
So that sounded pretty negative. But I am not negative about blogging, I am rather neutral. There were good parts of blogging and bad parts. I will start with the good.
I enjoyed getting to voice my thoughts and ideas through the blog, and getting Dr. Duncan's responses. I also like the idea that other people could read and respond to my ideas, although no one did.
The things that were not so great about blogging could probably be blamed mostly on the time constraints on the course. I felt rushed to get my blogs done, so I did not get to enjoy each posting as much as I could have and would have like to. Also, I did not get to post about other things, although I would have liked to. Looking through other people blogs, I realize they found the time to get their thoughts in, and even add pictures and make their blogs really interesting. I regret that I did not spend the time on mine that they did, but I was just concerned with getting the blogs posted in time.
This course has really changed Social Studies for me. Before, I was not excited about and and I never thought to make it interesting by integrating the various arts. Of course I had thought about mixing it with Language Arts and maybe Science, but now that I have seen such great examples from my classmates of how I can make Social Studies relevant and fun, I know that I can do a lot more with Social Studies than what my teachers did!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Points of View
What are your reactions or experiences with point of view, perspectives, biases in history? How will you assist and ESL learner in your classroom? (please note, this is not just Spanish speaking children)
I don't remember enough about my Social Studies classes to make comments about my experiences with point of view, perspectives and biases from my own education. What I can talk about, is my own point of view on the subject!
I think that it is imperative that teachers do one of two things when teaching a topic that requires the students to look at opposite points of view. Teachers should either stay completely neural, acting as if they have no opinion either way. This way, the students are presented with just the facts. From the facts, the students can decide their own opinions and rationale. The other options of teachers, and this one some people may disagree with, is that they present both sides of the story with equal spirit and passion. This way, the students have a chance to see each side of the story fought for.
In either situation there is always the issue of students coming into the class with preconceived ideas or things that they might have heard from people the live with. This is especially a problem when debating current events, such as elections. students often come in with strong opinions going this way or that, but if a teacher probes them, they will find that the opinions are not supported by much than exactly what the student must have heard someone else say. For this reason, it is very important that before students are asked to take a side and make an argument, they not only have to know the facts, but they have to understand them. They need to know the background and the understand the after-effects. If the students are well informed, they will be more likely, and better equipped, to form their own opinions and make their own decisions.
We have talked a lot about how to create classrooms and lessons that support ESL learners. For Social Studies, one of the great things I can do is to highlight their culture. By letting them teach us about their culture and their language, that student will feel like a part of the class, and will find their place in the classroom community. If I have two students who speak the same language, I can have them work together on some tasks, especially things that involve reading and comprehension, so that they can work out the meanings of words and ideas together. For other activities I could buddy the ESL student up with a native English speaker who could help them understand the directions for assignments. If it is available, I would like to have copies of books that we read in their native language, especially if they speak or read little or no English. For any assignment or task I would have the directions written on the board or printed out. We learned that always having pictures that describe what the directions say is helpful. For example, if the students are supposed to cut something out, have a picture of a pair of scissors beside that direction. That will help the ESL student associate the word to the action.
I don't remember enough about my Social Studies classes to make comments about my experiences with point of view, perspectives and biases from my own education. What I can talk about, is my own point of view on the subject!
I think that it is imperative that teachers do one of two things when teaching a topic that requires the students to look at opposite points of view. Teachers should either stay completely neural, acting as if they have no opinion either way. This way, the students are presented with just the facts. From the facts, the students can decide their own opinions and rationale. The other options of teachers, and this one some people may disagree with, is that they present both sides of the story with equal spirit and passion. This way, the students have a chance to see each side of the story fought for.
In either situation there is always the issue of students coming into the class with preconceived ideas or things that they might have heard from people the live with. This is especially a problem when debating current events, such as elections. students often come in with strong opinions going this way or that, but if a teacher probes them, they will find that the opinions are not supported by much than exactly what the student must have heard someone else say. For this reason, it is very important that before students are asked to take a side and make an argument, they not only have to know the facts, but they have to understand them. They need to know the background and the understand the after-effects. If the students are well informed, they will be more likely, and better equipped, to form their own opinions and make their own decisions.
We have talked a lot about how to create classrooms and lessons that support ESL learners. For Social Studies, one of the great things I can do is to highlight their culture. By letting them teach us about their culture and their language, that student will feel like a part of the class, and will find their place in the classroom community. If I have two students who speak the same language, I can have them work together on some tasks, especially things that involve reading and comprehension, so that they can work out the meanings of words and ideas together. For other activities I could buddy the ESL student up with a native English speaker who could help them understand the directions for assignments. If it is available, I would like to have copies of books that we read in their native language, especially if they speak or read little or no English. For any assignment or task I would have the directions written on the board or printed out. We learned that always having pictures that describe what the directions say is helpful. For example, if the students are supposed to cut something out, have a picture of a pair of scissors beside that direction. That will help the ESL student associate the word to the action.
Monday, July 19, 2010
New questions, new answers
The days of the textbook containing all the answers we need are over. By using broad but intriguing essential and unit questions to guide students through learning, teachers no longer will be dependent on the textbooks that have so long led us through each school year. With new questions leading the way, the answers will be wherever students can find them; on the internet, in nonfiction and novels, through talking with people they know and hearing oral history, or a host of other places they may look.
When the textbook contained all the answers, the questions were not doing their job. They were not making the material interesting a relevant to the students, they were not covering the material sufficiently, and the understanding was not always what it needed to be. Now that teachers are creating the questions, they can design them to fit what actually needs to be learned. The questions can call on specific ideas to be though about and applied to make the content more relevant for the students. The teachers decide what material needs to be covered and to what extent, and designs the instruction around that, rather than following the textbook, so the students will answer those questions correctly.
Teacher-made questions leave the answers up to the students. When the answers are in the textbook, it leaves no room for the students to interpret the answers their own way, to mold the ideas and form them in their own understanding. In the textbook, answers are given to everyone in the same form. With essential questions and unit questions, students have the opportunity to take in ideas and work with them until they make sense to them. They do not just have to accept the ideas that are written in a book.
When the textbook contained all the answers, the questions were not doing their job. They were not making the material interesting a relevant to the students, they were not covering the material sufficiently, and the understanding was not always what it needed to be. Now that teachers are creating the questions, they can design them to fit what actually needs to be learned. The questions can call on specific ideas to be though about and applied to make the content more relevant for the students. The teachers decide what material needs to be covered and to what extent, and designs the instruction around that, rather than following the textbook, so the students will answer those questions correctly.
Teacher-made questions leave the answers up to the students. When the answers are in the textbook, it leaves no room for the students to interpret the answers their own way, to mold the ideas and form them in their own understanding. In the textbook, answers are given to everyone in the same form. With essential questions and unit questions, students have the opportunity to take in ideas and work with them until they make sense to them. They do not just have to accept the ideas that are written in a book.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Annual Plans
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an annual plan? Why start with resources in designing units?
I was super excited to begin learning about annual plans. I have always been worried about how I would plan a whole year of teaching, making sure to cover all of the objectives in time. Seeing this annual plan come together (with a lot of help from my group members) helped me understand that it is possible to plan out a year from day one and make sure that all of the objectives have been included. Planning for fourth grade social studies, while a little challenging because it is our/my first annual plan, seems like it might be easier than say, planning a whole year for Kindergarten or First grade. Fourth grade social studies is full of interesting topics that work together in a way that make it easy to create a chronological flow to the annual plan.
I can see how annual plans would help teachers envision their year and figure out how quickly they need to move and what topics they need to spend the most time on, but when it comes to interdisciplinary teaching, I wonder how well the two work together. If I were to make annual plans for language arts, math, science and social studies, how would I plan to merge them into each other at specific points, so that I could use interdisciplinary teaching sometimes? Or, would I create something like a master annual plan with each subject say, in a different color. That way, I could plan units and include multiple disciplines for each unit. It just seems like this type of planning would take a lot of time and effort, but it might be worth it.
Another thing I wonder about with annual plans is, if you have everything planned out to the exact week, then, in November or February you are assessing and realize that the majority of your students are still totally lost at the end of a week long or two week long unit (which you should have already caught in formative assessments, but somehow missed, what happens to the rest of your annual plan? You can't take another two weeks to reteach the information because you will get way behind. Should you plan for wiggle room in your annual plan?
I was super excited to begin learning about annual plans. I have always been worried about how I would plan a whole year of teaching, making sure to cover all of the objectives in time. Seeing this annual plan come together (with a lot of help from my group members) helped me understand that it is possible to plan out a year from day one and make sure that all of the objectives have been included. Planning for fourth grade social studies, while a little challenging because it is our/my first annual plan, seems like it might be easier than say, planning a whole year for Kindergarten or First grade. Fourth grade social studies is full of interesting topics that work together in a way that make it easy to create a chronological flow to the annual plan.
I can see how annual plans would help teachers envision their year and figure out how quickly they need to move and what topics they need to spend the most time on, but when it comes to interdisciplinary teaching, I wonder how well the two work together. If I were to make annual plans for language arts, math, science and social studies, how would I plan to merge them into each other at specific points, so that I could use interdisciplinary teaching sometimes? Or, would I create something like a master annual plan with each subject say, in a different color. That way, I could plan units and include multiple disciplines for each unit. It just seems like this type of planning would take a lot of time and effort, but it might be worth it.
Another thing I wonder about with annual plans is, if you have everything planned out to the exact week, then, in November or February you are assessing and realize that the majority of your students are still totally lost at the end of a week long or two week long unit (which you should have already caught in formative assessments, but somehow missed, what happens to the rest of your annual plan? You can't take another two weeks to reteach the information because you will get way behind. Should you plan for wiggle room in your annual plan?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Meaningful, well-planned S.S. lessons
“What are the attributes of meaningful, well-planned social studies lessons?”
Before beginning this class and starting all the reading about integrating disciplines, I thought that the best and most efficient way to teach Social Studies would be through integration. With such limited time for teaching in the school day and so much to cover, it seems like integration is your best bet for teaching all of the subjects. To me, planning a thematic unit makes the most sense. With that, a teacher can plan ahead to incorporate each content area into one themed unit. That way the whole school day will (hopefully) flow smoothly and the students will be able to easily make connections between what they are learning for each content area.
Looking at Social Studies as a separate subject, I think it is important to make it interesting for the students. I personally do not remember much about social studies in elementary school. The one thing that stands out to me is that I received the Social Studies award in third grade, so I just automatically thought it was my favorite subject. Looking back, I realize that those awards are given to the students who didn't get the "Perfect Attendance Award" and also that my teacher was out half the year on maternity leave, so how well did she actually know my aptitude in Social Studies? That's it, that's all I remember about Social Studies, other than the textbooks were crazy-heavy and smelled funny. So, I think lessons need to be exciting, hands-on and they need to mean something to the students. If teachers know their students well enough, they should be able to design lessons in which students can connect personally to the content and get something meaningful out of it. Incorporating other subjects that students may enjoy more, such as visual arts, music or drama might help many students make that personal connection.
We have talked a lot about text books versus basal readers in our other classes, and while I think that text books do offer a lot of valuable fact-like information, students will not remember the information they get out of a text book. I think that doing a novel study to learn about a certain subject in Social Studies guarantees that the students will be more engaged in the reading and it will give their imaginations a chance to work with the historical facts, to act it out in their mind so they can commit it to memory their own way.
A good Social Studies lesson plan, much like any other lesson plan, needs to begin by grabbing the students attention and sucking them in. They need to see that what they are going to learn will be important and what they are going to be doing will be meaningful and interesting. The activities need to challenge the students to think and discuss their ideas, but not be so hard that it discourages them. The assessment needs to check that the student can apply the information that should have been learned.
Before beginning this class and starting all the reading about integrating disciplines, I thought that the best and most efficient way to teach Social Studies would be through integration. With such limited time for teaching in the school day and so much to cover, it seems like integration is your best bet for teaching all of the subjects. To me, planning a thematic unit makes the most sense. With that, a teacher can plan ahead to incorporate each content area into one themed unit. That way the whole school day will (hopefully) flow smoothly and the students will be able to easily make connections between what they are learning for each content area.
Looking at Social Studies as a separate subject, I think it is important to make it interesting for the students. I personally do not remember much about social studies in elementary school. The one thing that stands out to me is that I received the Social Studies award in third grade, so I just automatically thought it was my favorite subject. Looking back, I realize that those awards are given to the students who didn't get the "Perfect Attendance Award" and also that my teacher was out half the year on maternity leave, so how well did she actually know my aptitude in Social Studies? That's it, that's all I remember about Social Studies, other than the textbooks were crazy-heavy and smelled funny. So, I think lessons need to be exciting, hands-on and they need to mean something to the students. If teachers know their students well enough, they should be able to design lessons in which students can connect personally to the content and get something meaningful out of it. Incorporating other subjects that students may enjoy more, such as visual arts, music or drama might help many students make that personal connection.
We have talked a lot about text books versus basal readers in our other classes, and while I think that text books do offer a lot of valuable fact-like information, students will not remember the information they get out of a text book. I think that doing a novel study to learn about a certain subject in Social Studies guarantees that the students will be more engaged in the reading and it will give their imaginations a chance to work with the historical facts, to act it out in their mind so they can commit it to memory their own way.
A good Social Studies lesson plan, much like any other lesson plan, needs to begin by grabbing the students attention and sucking them in. They need to see that what they are going to learn will be important and what they are going to be doing will be meaningful and interesting. The activities need to challenge the students to think and discuss their ideas, but not be so hard that it discourages them. The assessment needs to check that the student can apply the information that should have been learned.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
My First Post!
So, this is my first post. Setting up the blog was easy, but finding Dr. Duncan's blog is proving to be a bit harder. So now our whole table is trying to figure it out. Now I think we (as a table) have figured it out! I am going to go try to figure out the rest of how to follow her. This is the end of my first post!
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