Native American Jigsaw

Today we tried another method of jigsawing! Last time we did the jigsaw method in our class we used base group and expert groups in order to teach the different parts of the social interactive model. This time we were researching different Native American Tribes. 

The tribe my group was given was the Lakota Indians. We had to research things like the history, culture, clothing, food, important people, and their habitat. I was in charge of researching the history of the tribe. 

The tribe has a lot of history. Most of it involved being victimized by the United States people and government like many other Native tribes. 

Once we had all out research on the power point we had to present it to the class!

I really enjoyed working with my group on this activity. We all took responsibility of a part of the project and when everything came together it turned out really well. This shows that using the jigsaw method addressed the individual accountability of the SIM. 

This is something that I would like to use in my future classroom because the students get to act like the teacher. They will feel special that they were able to teach the class something new. On top of that they are deepening their knowledge on the topic when they are teaching others. This can be used with many other topics besides Native Tribes. Many things in Social Studies can be taught through this method. 

Aside from learning just content students are also learning on how to work together. They are developing their social skills. It is important that students learn how to work together respectfully. At the end of each jigsaw methods students must evaluate each other. These cooperative learning skills are very important for students to learn because they will use them throughout their lives!

Here is my PPT on the Lakota Indians! 

END OF THE SEMESTER!!!!!

It is finally the end of the semester! These last couple weeks have been a struggle, but I made it through! I just have to complete one final and submit my efolio for my Social Studies Methods class. This class I can honestly say taught me the most from my methods classes. That being said it definitely was not easy. I was able to teach a full fifth grade for the first time. I was taught many different tool that I can incorporate in my future classroom. Dr.Smirnova knew exactly how to push us to where we needed to be. I learned how to better write lesson. how to teach better, new ideas for teaching Social Studies and how to cooperate with different people. I would not have made it through this class if it wasn't for the group of people I worked with. We all helped each other along the way. If one of us didn't get something someone was there to help them.  Cooperative learning is now something that I have experienced and can't wait to use in my future classroom. 

All of that being said I am so happy this semester is over! I cannot wait to go home and spend time with my family, and get back to working. I need more money! I am excited for next semester to see what it has to offer, but my college journey is starting to come to a close. I am officially past the half way point of my undergraduate career! That is kind of scary.

So that's all for now! 

Choosing to be Grateful

Our teacher asked us to read the article "Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier." In the article it discusses how being grateful makes people happier. For example people who made a list of what they were grateful for everyday had more happiness in their life than people who didn't. Sometimes it's hard to be grateful for small things. When we have a bad day we think the world is out to get us, but in reality we have so much to be thankful for everyday. I am thankful for my family. They have been their for me no matter what. They will always come first in my life. I would do anything for my family. I am also thankful my boyfriend. We have been together for over four years now and he has been there for me through everything. I love my pets more than anything as well. I have two cats and a dog that always seem to put a smile on my face. We need to be grateful for all that we have in life. We are all truly blessed to have people who loves us.  

Job Interview

In class we just finished our mock interviews! In our class four people were assigned roles of administrators and the rest of the class were potential teacher candidates that they could hire. Each administrator came to our groups and asked us questions relating to direct instruction, inquiry and cooperative lesson, assessment and differentiation. 

In order to prepare for the interview I went back and looked at the materials that we have gone through in this class. I prepared my teaching philosophy statement and my resume.I was very nervous for the interview questions because I was unsure of what they were going to ask and how to cover all of the material we have learned so far.

Some of the questions I knew right of the bat like questions relating to implemented the different instruction models. Other questions I had to stop and think about. Those questions were usually more abstract. For example if assessment was part of the house which part would it be? Another question I had to think more about was when you think of direct instruction what color would you think of? I thought this was a very abstract question that I could not prepare for. I had to really stop and think about this question. I ended just picking a random color just to get through the question. 

One of the questions that I really did like was the one where we had to choose a time to go back in history. That question really made me think about where I would want to go and why. I felt really prepared for the questions where they would ask what would my classroom would like during different types of instruction.
Next time I feel I need to be able to think more abstractly and prepare more for those types of questions. This experience I feel was a good step in the right direction to future job interviews. It made me think on my feet which is something we don't do often enough in school classes.
At the end of the session the administrators choose one person from each group that they would "hire" and I got picked! So I guess I did something right!

Economics

Today in class we presented different economic topics to the class. When I first heard we were going to teach about economics I was a little nervous. I had never really learned much on economics and if I did I don't remember it at all. The only thing I remember learning was about the stock market during Computer Literacy my sophomore year. I was given a certain amount of money to invest in three stocks and had to watch the progress and compare them to the S & P 500. But that was college. I don't think I ever learned anything in elementary school! 

I was really surprised by how many different ways my classmates incorporated economics into a classroom setting. My topic was scarcity and economic decision making. Scarcity is when people have unlimited wants, but the resources are limited. If resources are in high demand, but are scarce this drive the prices up. This leads to economic decision making. When products are scarce people have to make choices about how they will spend their money. Will the spend more for the product? Go somewhere else to get it? Or just go without it altogether? These are questions people face everyday and are the basic foundations of economics. 

My peers talked about other things such as: The difference between micro and macroeconomics, the different concepts, approaches to teaching economics, the decision making model, and ways to break down economics in the classroom.

One way to to incorporate scarcity in the classroom is by giving students fake money and giving them limited resources to "buy". The students will have to make decisions about what products are the most necessary. There are also many different online games that students can play to learn about economics. In one classroom that I observed in they had a classroom store. When they showed good behavior they received money that they could save up and spend in the store. This taught them that when money is limited they need to prioritize what they want the most. I think this is a really fun way to help manage the classroom and teach economics at a young age. 

I feel that it is really important to start teaching students economics at a young age so that when they learn about it later on in more detail they will have a basic understanding!

Here's the link to my slides: Slides

and my thinglink

Artifact Bags

Artifact Bag

Today In class we did an artifact bag activity based on our unit plan topics. My topic was on the thirteen colonies. For the activity we had to pick a specific pace or person and then come up with three artifacts that would help the students figure out that place. I chose the colony of Rhode Island. In order to make more authentic artifacts I went to Michael's and got textured paper. I printed out the religious freedom document on this paper and a picture of Roger Williams. I also included a picture of people building ships with lumber. These artifacts went inside a bag that was decorated with the 13 colonies. 

During class we were split into groups to teach our artifact bags too. This is the power point that I used to teach: PPT. In the power point it contains the directions for the activity and a place to record the information they found on the artifact. If I were to use this in a real classroom I would have had my students use their textbooks and the internet to figure out which colony they had. 

I really liked some on my peers artifacts. One of the people in my group used a tea bag to make the paper look distressed and old fashioned. Other people burned the sides of the paper which I thought was really cool. This activity allowed for everyone in the class to be creative and it had great results.

In my future classroom I would really like to use this idea. I think this could be a great get to know you activity in the beginning of the year. Students could create the artifact bag based on themselves. In upper elementary school class this could also be used when teaching about certain topics in history. I think that students would really enjoy this project. 

Current Event Project

Today we presented our current event presentation to the class. I think that it went really well. My partner and I chose to do our current event on changes taking place in elementary school's cafeterias. We had our class read the article we picked and then watch a brief video on how to create a healthy food plate. Afterward we modeled a dinner plate that we made in order to show what the students would be doing in their groups. Then we gave them time to create their own healthy lunches on the power point. The class seemed really engaged and enjoyed the activity. One group even made their lunch a vegetarian lunch because one of the members in their group was a vegetarian! Afterwards we had the students present their plates to the class. 

Here is the link to our power point! 

Reflection: 

Current events are very important to use incorporate in the classroom! There are so many different tools to use when talking about current events. We used this website to help us! I think it is really important for students to know things that are going on in the world and especially things that could effect them. We used Newsela to find the current events for out project. Newsela is a great tool because you can highlight the article, change the reading level and even create quizzes right on the website. What I didn't like about using the website was that it confined us to using just their articles and it was hard to find one that we liked for using the "Create a menu" activity. I felt that our activity went really well. The class all had really nice comments to say about our activity and all of the "wishes" mostly had to do with having more time. We were confined to just ten minutes (we went over a couple minutes). I think the time constraint effected out activity negatively because they didn't have enough time to watch the full video and had to rush in the activity. When doing this a real class I would change the amount of time we had for this activity to be more around 20 minutes to give the students ample time to complete. 

In The Classroom: 

In my future classroom I would love to include current events. Depending on what grade I have the way I teach current events would differ. If I was teaching this to a first grade class I would choose articles that they would understand. Maybe something that was interesting happening in the area. The article would have to be something light and fun because the students are so young. The students could also find their own current events and discuss them in class. If the students are older I could teach using more worldly articles. Things that involve something deeper than I could address in a lower grade classroom. They would be able to have more of discussion about articles including having debates about different opinions. Students could pick a current event and teach that event to the class like we did in class. The articles can be used for other things like sequencing, word hunts, the five w's etc.

 

Inquiry Design Model

I was really interested the see the c3 teachers inquiry design model. I think it was a great template that teachers can follow when design an inquiry lesson. I felt that that when I planned the inquiry lesson it was one of the hardest to come up with and plan for. This was a very explicit design model that states exactly what you need. 

I really liked how the model helped build on the student knowledge. The supporting questions was a great idea to help scaffold the children into understand the bigger question that the lesson is addressing. 

It is also set up in a way that each supporting questions comes with a task that comes with a source. In this model everything is linked together and goes hand in hand. This is something that I can definitely use when I have to plan my inquiry lessons

Fun Ways to Teach Geography!

When I was in school learning about geography, it was pretty boring, Not a lot of teachers tried to make it overly fun or engaging for the students so below I listed some ways that when I am a teacher I would like to use in my classroom!

Adopt a Rock

This idea includes bringing a rock into class and having the students identify where it may have came from, how it was shaped and things like that. Then students can take turns taking the rock home and creating a scrapbook of the rocks adventures! 

Bingo

Everyone knows bingo. I think it could be really fun and great way to review vocabulary by putting down terms on their bingo cards and reading out the definitions! The students will have to listen to the definition and read their terms and match the definition to their terms until someone gets bingo!

Creating Models

I really liked the idea of using the plasticine to create physical features. It can be used to create mountains, valleys, canyons or many other things. It is a more hands on way to learning these features that we see everyday!

Stop Disasters!

I really thought the online stop disasters games was really interesting. I think this was a very fun and captivating way to teach about the effects of natural disasters. I particularly liked how it teaches the students how they can help prevent the disasters and gives them facts to help them.It really is a great learning tool. 

Landscape in a box!

I thought this idea was really interesting and creative. The students can be assigned an area and can create a landscape in a burger box based on the area. This involves students doing a hands on project while doing research on their area. These would be great to display around the classroom!

Before and After pictures!

In this activity students are shown a picture of something and have to make prediction on what happened before the picture and what could have happened after the picture. Students will need to infer from the picture. This works on many different skills

Model your Place on a Paper Plate

This is similar to the burger box one but its more of building on a paper plate. Students can remodel the play ground outside and add more features to how they would like it to be. Or they can change their backyard around and add ponds or trees or anything they can think of 

Shanty Town Game

In this game students have to build a shack in order to protect their children from the rains. Students will be given materials to start to build with and then can "work" in order to get other materials at the teachers discretion. This "work" could be short informational activities. After about a half hour the rain will come and whoever's child remains the most dry wins!

Where is that game?

Before this game the teacher goes around the school and takes pictures at weird angles, close ups, or anything else the teachers can think of to challenge the students observational skills. The students will be given these pictures and have to identify where these pictures were taken. The group who gets the most right wins.

Atlas Race

I like the idea of the atlas race because it exposes the class to places they have never heard of before while teaching them atlas skills. They can also right a brief response on that place once it is found in order to gain more knowledge! 

Pre and Post tests!

During our fieldwork we have to create a pre-test to see what our students already knew! Creating this pretest was more challenging because every group had to contribute questions from their topics. It was also kind of hard to decide what questions we wanted to asked them before we had really fully developed our lesson plans. We weren't sure what aspects we were going to put emphasis on. 

After our fieldwork was over we had to contribute to the post test. We used two questions from the pre-test and two new questions. I thought this was easier because we knew what the goal of our lessons were and what the students should have come away with. I am very curious to find out how the students do on this test because it will show how well we taught our lessons!

Fieldwork Experience

We have just come to the end of our field work experience! I had a great time working with the fifth grade students and I really learned a lot through this experience. I learned that writing a lesson takes a lot of time and preparation. Many things go into planning a lesson and you shouldn't start it at the last minute. One thing that I learned is that although on paper a lesson may sound great it may not always go as planned when run in a classroom. All students respond differently to different lesson. I also learned that I really need to work on not saying the words "guys". It was really hard for me not to say it. I really enjoyed teaching the lesson and the activities we had because I think they were very effective and a lot of fun. I also learned that you need to rehearse and over plan! The more we rehearsed the better it ran.

When working with this class I discovered that managing a classroom is harder than it looks. With a classroom full of 30 fifth grade students things can get rowdy pretty quickly if you are not in control. It was also hard to tailor to every students needs in the class. I noticed that we need to pay attention to particular students because some work better together than others. There are so many different personalities at play in a classroom and because of this students don't always get along when doing group work. In the groups in our classroom students often resulted to name calling and being mean to one another. This taught me that I need to teach how to be a good group member and how to be respectful to one another. I think this will be easier in my future classroom because I will know how my students work better.

I feel that my expectations were met in this experience. I really expected to learn a lot from finally being able to teach a full class and I can honestly say I did. I learned so much about planning and how to be a presence in front of the classroom. I was able to watch my peers teach and learn from them as well. 

I had always worried that I would be too quiet in front of classroom because I don't have a loud voice. After this experience I know that I have what it takes to be a classroom teacher. I know now that I can take charge and be flexible. I can write an effective lesson plan and teach in many different ways. This experience just made me more excited for my future.

Team teaching is also harder than expected. We had a hard time meeting and were left to plan things all at once. We had so many different ideas going around that it was hard to agree on one idea and plan it. Working as a group brings together many different challenges, but we over came those challenges in order to make an effective lesson. It was also a little unrealistic because I don't think in my future teaching I will ever be working to teach one lesson with five teachers! I think the students enjoyed this because they had different voices and views from each teacher. 

The Jigsaw Method

This week and class we implemented the jigsaw method of learning. We were involved in two different groups, base groups and expert groups. In our base groups we were all assigned a number and a topic that went along with that number. In the above picture this is represented by the colored puzzle. We then split, like the puzzle pieces, and joined our expert groups. In these groups we researched our topic and became "experts". After researching we returned to our base groups and taught them about our topic. So we had five different experts in our group!

I liked this idea because we were able to become experts in one topic and by reteaching the topic we really had a deeper understanding. The problem I did have with this method was that it was hard to retain knowledge that the other experts taught. So although I am an expert in one topic I only had a small grasp on the other topics. I liked how we had to tests because that helped me test my knowledge and review so I became more comfortable with the material 

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning!

Positive Interdependence: When members understand that they must work together to achieve the goal they promote a more positive environment. 

- Higher Achievement 

-More Time Spent on Task

- Critical Thinking

- Higher Self Esteem 

-Helps cope with Stress

-More students succeed 

Three different types of cooperative learning groups

Formal- one class to a few weeks

Informal- a few minutes

Cooperative- long term 

Individual Accountability:Taking responsibility of your part of the group 

The purpose of the group is to make each member stronger and more likely to succeed.

How to ensure group accountability  

Groups should be small and manageable 

Individual tests to each group member

Random oral exams to students 

Assigning roles to each student 

 Group Processing: is when students work together while the teacher monitors and the students discuss off of each others ideas. 

4 parts

-Feedback

-Reflection

-Improvement goals

- Celebration 

Purposes

- Improve working together over time

-Streamlines progress

-Increase individual accountability 

-Reduces negativity

Social Skills: Interacting with others

Six Outcomes

1. Personal Identity 

2. Life Success 

3. Quality of Life

4. Mental Health

5. Physical Health

6. Ability to Cope with Stress

The Four "F" Skills

Forming: The basic skills needed for a functioning, cooperative learning group.

Functioning: The skills needed to manage the group’s activities to complete a task and to maintain effective working relationships among members.

Formulating:The skills needed to understand the material being studied at a deeper level, to stimulate the use of higher quality reasoning strategies, and to maximize retention.

Fermenting: The skills needed to rethink the material being studied, manage cognitive conflict, search for more information, and communicate the rationale behind one’s conclusion.

Four Phases of Learning Social Skills

1. Awkward

2. Phony

3. Mechanical

4. Integrated

Bloom's Taxonomy

Knowledge: The lowest level of the cognitive domain. It is about recalling information. 

Examples include knowing facts, theories, principles etc. 

Verbs included are: define, list, state, identify

Comprehension: The second level of the cognitive domain. This level is about the meaning of information. It's one step beyond recalling information.

Examples include understanding facts and principles, interpreting charts and graphs, justify methods and procedures.

Verbs included are: Explain, predict, interpret, infer, summarize

Application: The third level of the domain. This is the ability to use the new information to concrete situations. It is a higher level of understanding than comprehension.

Examples included are apply concepts and principles to new situations, apply laws and theories to practical situations

Verbs included: How would you show, make use of, modify, demonstrate, solve, or apply

Analysis: The fourth level of the domain. The ability to break down material into its components.It requires an understanding of both the content and the structural form of the material.

Examples included are: recognize unstated assumptions,and distinguish between facts and inferences.

Verbs used: Differentiate, compare / contrast, distinguish

Evaluation: the highest level. It involves judging the materials value. It contains a little bit of all the other parts of the domain. 

Examples include: Judge the consistency of the written work or judge how the conclusions are supported by the data. 

Verbs: Justify, appraise, evaluate, judge 

Creating: Putting parts together to make a new whole. It stresses creative behaviors, with emphasis on the formulation of new patterns or structure.

Examples are  write a well organized paper, give a well organized speech, write a creative short story

Verbs include: Design, construct, develop, formulate, imagine, create, change

Assessment

Today we learned all about assessment! Assessment in extremely important because it is a way to assess the students progress on the topics. We can directly compare and see how students are improving or what areas we need to reteach! You can assess students on their readiness (skills, concepts, and content knowledge), their interests, or their learning profile (strengths, weaknesses, work preferences). 

But what does assessment actually consist of? 

Measurement

Evaluation 

Feedback 

It is important that assessments aren't seen as punishments or just as grades. If given the right ways tests should be gifts that enhance the students learning. Teachers need to use the assessments and give feed back and make instruction decisions based on the assessments. 

Three types of assessment

Diagnostic

This is your pre-test to see what students already know

Formative

This is an on-going assessment throughout the unit

Summative

This is the end of the year or end of unit test 

Selected-Response Questions

Multiple choice

Binary choice

Interpretive exercises 

Matching

Constructed-Response Questions

Completion 

Short answers

Restricted response essay

Extended response essay

What is Social Studies?

When I think of Social Studies my first thought is that it is the study of the past, but in reality it is so much more than that! It includes Geography, Economics, Social Science, Citizenship and many other things! I personally have had some great Social Studies teachers in my life as a student and because of that I always really enjoyed the subject. I also had teachers that made it extremely dry and boring. My teachers have shaped the way that I want to teach Social Studies. 

In class we talked about the powerful elements of Social Studies. It occurred to me that all of the teachers I loved used these elements to teach. The elements included:

Meaningful

connecting to real world experience

Integrative

uses more than one discipline or skill

Value-Based

strengthens democratic value and social responsibility 

Challenging

uses children's critical thinking abilities

Active

hands on and minds on activities

Another interesting aspect of class was the learning pyramid about the best way students learn! I need to keep this in mind when I become a teacher!

Attempting to Blog

So here I am attempting to blog! To be honest I have never tried to blog in my entire life. It is something that I have never really understood, but after playing around with this it doesn't seem all that hard. It is kind of exciting to be able to do something like this. 

What I am looking forward to about blogging is having a space to write down my thoughts and ideas and share them with my peers. 

I thought this quote was funny and interesting: 

First Day of Class After Thoughts

After the first day of class I walked out of the classroom overwhelmed. How was I ever going to be able to keep up with all these new technological resources? I had never had a class where everything was online! At the time I was extremely nervous, but even now after a few class days have passed I still feel a sense of anxiety about this class. Although, I do feel more confident in my abilities to learn new things based on what we have done so far.
I have heard many things about this class. The first thing I heard was that this class was a lot of work. I know that I am going to have to stay on top of my work and not procrastinate. This can be tough at times for me because I play softball for some of the fall and can be extremely busy. I know that I will need to prioritize this class above most things. I also heard that this class will teach you a lot of different techniques that I can use in my future classroom. I am extremely excited about this! I want all of the resources I can get to help me be the best teacher I can be!
Let's see how this journey goes!