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.