Final Thoughts for the Semester

I loved the round table discussion we had in our class on Wednesday. It highlighted the important aspects I want to have when organizing my thoughts on teaching social studies. I believe that with an educated group of people sharing their thoughts about social studies makes everyone’s’ interest grow. I know this semester has made my interest in social studies spike up. I believe Social Studies is important in the classroom. I know that if I get a kindergarten classroom I will teach the importance of being a good citizen and give responsibilities to my students for the classroom. I think a lot of teachers think that just because there is not a text book for a subject, like social studies in kindergarten, then they do not need to teach it.

I believe it is important to have good resources when teaching. I know most of the time I can rely on the internet for a resource but when that fails hopefully I will have a teacher support base that I can rely on. I love the blog idea and keeping links on it.

I also want to have my students “uncover” things in history. I want them to be active in their learning and participate by doing and not sitting. I hope to organize a classroom of students that are interested and excited about learning social studies. Therefore, by having the students explore social studies rather than having them sit and listen to their text book on CD it will spark an interest in it.  I want an active learning environment when I teach all of my subjects but I know I have to be realistic and know that there will have to be worksheets, and reading. However, there is not a reason that worksheets cannot be fun or turned into an activity. I really liked performing skits, making charts, the living history museum, and box city. These are all great activities to use when teaching social studies.

I would like to have a tourist model of multicultural education but go deeper into it. I want to have my students explore different cultures and learn things about different countries. The reason I say tourist is because I want to make it where the students “visit” different countries. I want to be able to see different music, art, geography, etc of other places besides those that they are familiar with. This is something I have a strong interest in because I am not fully confident when talking about other countries so it would be exciting for me to be a part of their learning experience while learning with the students.

I know I have to teach the content and have my student understand history, geography, and other content area in social studies but I want my classroom to be active. I want the students to jump into their learning. I do not want to be a boring social studies teacher….I refuse to be!

MAP!!

For those of you who liked my Amelia Earhart poster with the huge map on it here is the link! This website is great for creating large maps! I was extremely happy to find it because I thought I was going to have to draw one out :(
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/megamaps.htm

I will also post the link on my favorite links as well as facebook.
This is a great website to keep if you ever need to print a large map to have you students write on.

Living History Museum

The living history museum is something I would definitely use in an upper elementary classroom! This was so much fun researching and making the poster board! I did not realize that I knew as much about Amelia Earhart until I started talking! Although my costume could have been a little better, I do believe my presentation covered important facts about her life. If I used this in an elementary classroom, I believe I would try to provide a small portion of the costume (making the classroom museum a more equal environment...someone's costume would not be "better" than another's).

This is just another great idea to add to my teacher keepsake box!!!

Thanksgiving and Elementary Textbooks

Hmmm...what to teach and what not to teach? I am very surprised at the facts I read about Thanksgiving. I am even more surprised that I am just now finding out about this, at the age of 23. I don't understand how elementary schools can continue to teach material without it being true facts.
I also taught my lesson on the Mayflower Compact to a fourth grade classroom. These students were full of questions about the Pilgrims and all that, but my part was to cover the compact. I was still shocked that the Mayflower and the Pilgrims first Thanksgiving meal was not what I learned back in fourth grade. I observed my mentor teacher talking to the students about Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving and the students were taught about everyone getting along and having a huge meal together. Did this really happen? Were the Pilgrims the first people to settle in the Americas? I am really confused and can't wait to read more about this historical event to answer my questions and more that I am sure will arise.

Social Studies Lesson

I taught my lesson in my field placement on Friday. It was a Social Studies lesson based on the Mayflower Compact.  I did not know that I could come up with activities and games to play with the Mayflower Compact, but I did. I made games for the vocabulary, like majority rules. I made note cards with questions on them . For example, the classroom will be painted one color red or blue? The students that answered in the majority got to stay standing and the rest of the class had to sit down. The students LOVED this! They wanted to play again :) I also went over the Mayflower Compact, I created on in a student friendly text and we compared it to the "real" one. This lesson was observed by my professor and I got so much positive feedback! I am so happy that I could create a lesson that the students enjoyed!

EVEREST

Well.....I'm not going to climb Everest anytime soon but I do find it extremely interesting! I really enjoyed Monday's class on all the facts and stories about people who climbed or atleast atempted. I am going to read that book Into Thin Air and would also like to see the movie. This is on my to do list :)

Social Studies Thoughts

WOW! What we have learned in this class so far! I love all the ideas we have been taught by Dr. Meier to use with our future students.I have enjoyed the process of expanding my own knowledge on social studies. This is a great class and very beneficial to anyone that is going into elementary education.
I want to find links that have something to do with each thing we have done in class to keep it organized and can easily find it :)