Final Reflection

This class, Integrating Teaching to Social Studies, has been one of the greatest experiences I have had at ETSU. I have learned so much and had such a wonderful time. I will be leaving this class with so many new ideas for my future classroom as well as student teaching. In my opinion, this was the only class out of ‘Block’ that actually taught me how to teach rather than just teaching me about the subject. This blog entry is going to tell you about some of the many things that I have learned in this class throughout the semester.
First, we have the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS). I had never heard of this until this class. The NCSS is a very great resource for teachers. They provide standards, publications, and other resources for teachers across the United States to use. Their website is a great tool to be familiar with. There are also conferences that they have all over the country. They help provide you with ways to incorporate social studies into other subjects.
As sad as it is to say, Social Studies is slowly disappearing in school systems. Many school systems deem this subject as not important. Principals tell teachers not to teach social studies and rather to focus on math and reading. I think that social studies is one of the most important subjects. It provides students with knowledge about their world, country, community, history, etc. Social studies is a very broad subject. It is important for teachers to know how to incorporate social studies into other subjects if they teach in a school that believes there is no time for social studies. Math can be incorporated with economics, environmental issues with science, and many activities with language arts. There really are no limits when it comes to incorporating.
Diversity is a major issue in classrooms. Being a teacher, you have to deal with many types of diversity whether it is with families, learning styles, cultures, etc. I believe that it is very important to have a culturally responsive classroom. If there are students of different cultures in your classroom, it is important to educate the other students of the cultures. It helps the students gain a knowledge and respect for the other students. Even if there are no students of a different culture in the classroom, it is important for the students to learn about other cultures so that they can have a better understanding of what is going on in the world around them.
My favorite part of this class was all of the activities that we did. I love the idea of an active classroom. I think active classrooms make learning more exciting and engaging for the students. My favorite activities we did in class were the living history museum, the story map, and the block city. There are many different things we can do with each of these activities.
I love the idea of having a democratic classroom. I had never thought about creating a class contract with the students instead of having certain rules until this class. This gives the students a sense of responsibility and makes the class more of a community. This is definitely something that I will be doing in my classroom.
There is so much more that I ramble on about, but I won’t. This class has been extraordinary! I appreciate everything that Dr. Meier has done for us during this semester. Thank you, Dr. Meier, for being so great! You will definitely be hearing from me in the future! 

TCAP Jeopardy

Wow! This made me realize how much review I need to do before I ever teach Social Studies. Some of this stuff seemed irrelevant though. I don't understand why students need to know this stuff? The game was fun though. I've always loved Jeopardy as a way to review. Thanks for the candy, Dr. Meier :)

Living History Museum

This is probably my favorite activity we have done this semester. I really enjoyed it. I learned so much about people in history I didn't even know. It was a lot of fun! I will definitely remember this when I teach!

Book Talk

Wow, so many interesting books I had never heard of! I really enjoyed this. It's a great activity to do in the classroom! Good job everyone!

Comprehension Strategies

Honestly, I had never really thought about comprehension strategies. When I think of comprehension, I think of tests and quizzes. I really liked the sticky note strategy. Something like that would really help me out. When I read, my mind always jumps around. Sticky notes would be a good way to keep my thoughts in order and to help me remember things. I definitely think that I will use this in my classroom. It's fun and efficient.

Lilly

The video about Lilly and the map absolutely amazed me! She was absolutely adorable. I was so amazed at how much she knew. I really love the fact that her parents work with her and that they don't push her too much to where she hates it. She has fun and they cheer her on. I wish I knew my countries like she did! Maybe I can teach my future children how to do this? :)

Social Studies Lesson

I taught my lesson for Dosser's class last week. It was on Changes in the Environment and how to care for it. Personally, I thought that it seemed more like science. Even the definitions in the social studies textbook were more science-like. I had a hard time finding standards and activities to go with the social studies part of it. I ended up making it more science. I thought it was hard, but it went well. I enjoyed teaching my lesson and the students seemed to really enjoy the activity I chose. I really enjoy teaching social studies.

Mt. Everest

After learning more about Mt. Everest, there is absolutely NO WAY that I would ever attempt that. First of all, I get short of breath thinking about being up that high with little oxygen. And second of all, there is no way I would be able to haul my out of shape butt up that mountain. I'm too big of a chicken. The crevices are traumatizing and so are avalanches. I might could hike up to the very first level (I think it was the base camp). Haha. That would be an accomplishment for me. I don't see how those people are able to do it!

Stress!

This semester is about to stress me out! There is so much due and it seems like the work just keeps getting piled on. Projects, Papers, Lessons, etc. Will it ever end? I'm so excited for the end of the semester, but I dread it at the same time because I still have so much to do before the end of it! I do have to say "thank you" to Dr. Meier. I really appreciate that she has allowed us to have extra time to get caught up. She is the only professor that isn't throwing assignments at us left and right.

Time to take a deep breath....

Not a Muggle!

I can officially say that I'm not a muggle! Learning about a "top secret society" in Dr. Meier's class was awesome! I really enjoyed it & this is something that I want to do. It deals so much with geography and it would be great to do in a classroom. I definitely plan on doing this whenever I have some free time!

Geography

So I just now realized that I had completely forgotten about last week's blog. My bad. Geography... where do I begin? I like it. I think it's interesting. I only remember having 2 Geography classes: one in 8th grade, and one my first semester of college. It's very interesting learning about everything around us. I like maps. I enjoy looking at maps and learning new things about different areas. I have a pretty good sense of direction, so I prefer maps over a GPS. I never really realized how bad some of the projections of the world were. The one's Dr. Meier showed in class amazed me.

Monday's Activity

The play activity we did in class on Monday was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it! Even though in a classroom with younger children it would be best to take more time to prepare, I really enjoyed doing it spur of the moment in our class. I thought that it made it more entertaining and funny. It also gave me a clearer picture of what actually happened during those two events. It broke things down into something simple and fun. I want to do activities like this in my classroom. I just hope that I have a chance. In Happy Valley, they have zero time for anything other than lecture and worksheets because of testing. I hope it is not like this in every classroom and school. I want to be able to make my class a great learning experience for my students.

Critical Voice

In the article Critical voices, I did not like how John sent Jenni to the library so that he could teach the lesson. He felt uncomfortable for no good reason at all. I think that he felt threatened by the way Jenni taught the lesson. Like he was afraid that the students would like her better or something. Maybe he was afraid that she would out teach him take his job? Either way, he handled this in an awful way. Why send her to the library? There was no point in this whatsoever. Students learn differently. Some of his students could have been really learning from her lesson and the way he teaches could hold the students back. It is important to present material in different ways to reach out to the different learning styles of the students.

Reflection.

As I was driving home from class on Wednesday, I was thinking about the Parliament activity that we did in class. During discussion, many people had concerns about students hiding and lying about items they had for taxes. Someone had the idea of breaking them up into groups with jobs and having imaginary items. This was a great idea. It would take extra preparation though. Another option that I think would work would be to ask the students if they have 10 certain items/school supplies with them. If they have them, place them on their desks. The students have yet to begin the activity, so they will quickly get out and display what they have. Then you could start the activity with everything displayed on the desks and they would have no time to hide them. Just an idea. I really liked this activity except for the fact that I lost all my m&m's! :)

Have a great Sunday everyone!

First one!

Hey everyone!

This is my first official blog, so please bear with me. I'm excited to learn more about blogging! I'll probably use this mainly to document my experience in Block and also share links and interesting things I come across dealing with teaching.