first direct lesson

Today we got to view our fellow classmates doing their first lesson ! They did an amazing job for going first and they really set the president high for the rest of the class! I loved how they used thumbs up and thumbs down to interact with the students and ask them questions without having them all speak at once. They also did a great job at reviewing the material they used and taught. I am still nervous to do my own lesson plan but watching them it makes me more confident within myself that I will do just fine.

Yayy second graders !

Today, we met all our lovely second graders at BDM. What a great class they were! We went around and talked to each group of students and found out where they were in social studies overall. They were a very smart bunch and very cooperative. A lot of them were very eager to learn and to be taught by us, I think they really enjoyed us being there. It was great to be in the classroom and start to get to know the children we will be teaching for the first time. My group asked the students about what they have learned in social studies so far, if they knew anything about colonies, what their favorite subjects are and how they feel about school. It was hard to get a feel for what they knew about social studies but it is good to know we made the pre test and can see what the children responded to. I can't wait to start teaching all these boys and girls !

Field work starts soon!

So today in Fridays class we postponed our jigsaw projects and discussed field work starting Monday. As groups we will be brainstorming Pre-test questions that will be made up of multiple choice, true false, and text questions. The best way for us to communicate and introduce our lessons would be to read them a book about the topic we will be teaching, so for my group that would be about colonies. We were introduced to the edTPA website and are to become familiar  with it and learn how to navigate and create our own to turn in our field work assessments. The rubric is broken down into five different parts, A-E. Part A is an introduction on where i will be teaching and a little background on the students, part B will be all three of our lesson plans which will include; direct, inquiry and cooperative, part C all be all of our handouts, smart bored presentations and all the material we will be using with the students, part D will be all of our assessments and the feedback we will receive, and part E will be our reflections and skills, and how we will analyze what we did during our teaching experience. 

Have Faith

It's the middle of the third week of SS methods and the weather has caused us to have virtual class. It is amazing that with this technology we can still have class even when school is closed, from the privacy of my own house ! We all got our assignments for our base groups and everyone has to put together their own presentation to teach their groups about their specific topic. We also learned how to formulate our lesson plans and how to find the information. The class seems to be getting overwhelming but I'm staying calm and keeping faith that everything will fall into place. 

Learning outcomes and resources

Today we learned about Assessment, graphic organizers, models, methods, and strategies. During the powerpoint we learned what exactly social studies was and the best ways to teach it. For elementary school students, it is best for them to work in small groups or individually. We can show them visual aids and try to take them on historical field trips so they can get hands on experience. We also learned the powerful elements of Social Studies which include; meaningful, integrated, value based, challenging and active. Meaningful - engaging students with real world situations, integrative - draws on more then one discipline, Value-based - strengthens students sense of democratic values and social responsibility. Challenging -  incorporates different perspectives, and active -  makes use of what is given and works with it in the classroom. An interesting thing I learned during this class was that students learn best by teaching others. Because if they are teaching other classmates they obviously get the material and are using their knowledge to help others. 

A New Day Has Come

So the second class has come and gone. We all presented our about me projects, it was great to get to know everyone and all the different projects that were created. The whole class also taught us how to use their specific projects in the classroom and how to use them. Who knew that you could do so much on the computer and on the internet. It really is an amazing thing, and I can't wait to use it more and get to know everything I can about it. 

Fresh start, Fresh Semester

The beginning of the semester has started and it is the first day of Social Studies Methods. We have read some letters of past students and it is scaring the crap out of me, this class seems like it is going to be the hardest one yet. It's going to be an adjustment to get use to doing everything online and learning all the different things we are going to have to do. Im going to have to get use to checking the website everyday and keeping up with all the work that is being posted.