Putting it All Together

 

At the beginning of the Social Studies methods course, I had little knowledge about the three instructional teaching approaches, assessment in teaching, the importance of cooperative learning, and integrating technology into the classroom for young students. Now, I have learned about all of those aspects of teaching and I have succeeded in learning various technological tools to use in the classroom. I want to learn more about technology tools such as Smart Board Notebook and interactive activities. I learned how to blog, insert videos, photos, and images and I now recognize the tremendous resources there are for integrating technology into the school curriculum. Through the BizWorld project, I learned about economics with second graders as I planned and implemented lessons, activities, and celebrations of learning. I believe the collaboration with my peers and the cooperative learning with the students was the best learning experience I had received from the course. Taken what I have learned and experienced form the course, I will create a social studies classroom that promotes an engaging learning environment. Students will learn social studies through meaningful experiences by connecting with their world and expanding it. I plan to create my social studies community of  exceptional learners through challenging, value-based, and purposeful learning activities and lessons with a hands-on approach. The more students do, the more they will know. 

Teacher Job Interview

Our class conducted a teacher job interview this week. My classmate, Michelle and I were the interviewers. We posed as a principal and an administrator for the interview and the rest of the class posed as teacher candidates. I interviewed two groups and asked them questions regarding direct instruction methods and assessment. The questions served as part of an overall review for the course and helped us think about questions that may be asked of us in an authentic job interview. I also read classroom scenarios to my groups regarding classroom management and instructional approaches. I thought the scenarios were the best part of the interview because we thought hard to figure out what we would do in each given situation. I like the collaboration of this activity because of its authenticity; in real life we may be faced with a classroom situation that we will have to collaborate with others to rectify. I thought the mock interview was a good activity for all to see the different ways of viewing and thinking about the instructional approaches and assessment in teaching. After the interview, we advised the interviewees about a real interview according to what Michelle and I learned at the principal panel meeting for KDP; dress professionally, speak confidently and enthusiastically, make eye contact, shake hands with all panel members, and be yourself are the most important things you should do in an interview. Through this role-play activity, we taught each other by contributing to conversation regarding the questions and received an experience which mimics what our teacher interview will be like; personally, I believe it was a great way to conclude the course and bring all we have learned together.

Celebrating Library Week

To celebrate library week, the students from the second grade at Bishop Dunn Memorial and our class gathered together to speak about our BizWorld project experiences. I believe that the best aspect of the BizWorld project was learning by teaching along with the students and the considerable amount of cooperation and socials skills opportunities the project provided. The students spoke about their experiences and contributions to the project, which include their strengths and challenges and what they enjoyed the most. The students spoke about how much they had enjoyed our teaching and experiencing the project along with them. It truly was a wonderful educational and meaningful learning experience for all.

Students' Reflective Speeches

BizWorld Students and Teachers

21st Century Classrooms



                              I have created a voki classroom character. 

Voki allows teachers and students to create speaking avatars in engaging, stimulating, and meaningful ways. Voki motivates students to participate in classroom discusions and activities, and improves message comprehension. Voki is a student friendly way to introduce technology and an effective language and instructional tool. Now that I have learned how to use Voki, I will be sure to use it in my lesson plans. I could use Voki to act out a speech of a historical character, assign homework, or give a presentation. Students can use Voki to present their findings after research, create a historical figure they have been studying about, or create different Voki characters from various cultural backgrounds to apply what they have learned from cultural studies.

 

 

Artifact Bag Activity



Create a Motivated Historical Unit



Make Connections



Generate Questions



Create Multigenre Artifact Research Projects

                                                                                                                             




Stimulate Curiosity

                These are just a few ways to use the artifact bag in your classroom.

Using the artifact bag activity in the classroom will stimulate students curiosity for newly introduced topics and provide a meaningful way to learn history. Students will learn that artifacts are important to historians; artifacts provide imperative and conclusive evidence for a historical inquiry. There are many ways in which to use an artifact bag activity. For my artifact bag, I wanted to connect the BizWorld project with history. Since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had such a tremendous impact on America's workforce, I chose to focus on the New Deal program, which he proposed in his second term of his presidency. My artifact bag reflects the evolution of America's business ethics which President Roosevelt set forth in his Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Linking historyto the BizWorld project through an artifact bag activity will provide students with a historical perspective of how Americans worked long ago, how business ethics evolved overtime, and how important business ethics are for the health, safety, and fairness of employees in the business world.

        









Geography: An Integral Part of Life

Hug the World

Love Geography

It is not possible to think of our daily existence without thinking of geography as an integral part. To be aware of our surroundings means to be aware of geography, what is occurring in the world, why it is occurring, and how it effects ourselves as well as others throughout the world. The Native American people were the first people to experience America's geography and its influence on their lives. In class, we studied Native American tribes which spread from coast to coast; we particularly studied the Tlingit, Muscogee, and Dine Native American tribes. Each tribe had a special relationship with the particular region and environment in which they lived. The Native American people's lives were influenced by geography and the tribes were limited by their natural resources. The Tlingit tribe lived in northwest geographical region; their lives were influenced by the colder climate and rich resources of vegetation. The Muscogee tribe in the southeast geographical region; their lives were influenced by the many rivers and creeks which surrounded them.The Dine tribe lived in the southwest geographical region; their lives were influenced by the the warm and dry conditions of their environment. Learning about geography through the concept of location and the relationship people have with their environment is an important awareness for good citizenship. I believe teaching and studying about geography and its relationship with people enlightens the dynamics of what is occurring around the world; we are greatly influenced by our personal geographic location.

Team Building through Cooperative Learning

Powerful learning and deep understanding derive from team building through cooperative methods. There are five characteristics of cooperative learning; the acronym PIGS, demonstrates these characteristics:

PIGS FACE

              One cooperative learning method that can be implemented is Jigsaw. In a           class project, we all had the opportunity to learn and participate in the Jigsaw cooperative learning method. After viewing the video on the jigsaw method,

 Cooperative Learning in Elementary School: Jigsaw Method

we divided our class into expert groups to learn a specific topic, researched the topic with our partners, created presentations about our topic, and resumed to our home groups to teach what we had learned. The topics consisted of the five characteristics of cooperative learning: positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, social skills, and face-to-face promotive interaction. In my expert group, my partner and I researched group processing and social skills, after which I create a presentation to teach my home group.

Cooperative Learning

Learning about cooperative learning and cooperative learning methods was a learn through doing experience for me. As a teacher, I believe cooperative learning is an essential part of social studies teaching and instruction. Cooperative learning is formulated to encourage cooperation while learning, improve students' self-esteem, increase academic achievement, foster civic behavior, as well as support and celebrate diversity among the classroom community. 

Purposeful and Powerful Elements of Social Studies

To establish a social studies learning environment that is purposeful and powerful, the NCSS emphasizes its vision by identifying five imparative elements: meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active. Incorporating these five elements into the social studies environment is long term and continual through social studies instruction and activities. When students are exposed to the five elelments in social studies instruction and learning, they gain an understanding of their world to become well-informed citizens of society whose positive contributions will foster, thrive, and enable their community on a local level as well as an international level to flourish. Teaching economics in the second grade at Bishop Dunn Memorial School gave me the opportunity to practice the five elements. As a teacher, I strongly believe the five elements are the foundation of social studies instruction and learning.

Purposeful and Powerful Social Studies Elements 

Meaningful-students are engaged to make self-to-world connections

Integrative-students utilize more than one discipline

Value-Based-students' sense of democratic values and social responsibility are strengthened

Challenging-students' perspectives and critical thinking skills are incorporated

Active-students participate and utilize manipulates and the physical environment

BizWorld Business Celebration

The BizWorld companies sold their products, calculated their sales, and the overall value of their companies this week. Company celebration pitches were created by each company for celebration night and awards were given for individual participation and to the companies as a team. Celebration night was a time for all of the students and teachers to shine; it was great see the students so excited and proud of their accomplishments. Each company presented their pitches to the audience and shared what they had learned in the BizWorld project and the student teachers shared what they had learned during the project and what they enjoyed about the project. I believe that all of the company members enjoyed the BizWorld project and everyone learned a considerable amount about entrepreneurship. For me, the BizWorld project was an enjoyable, rewarding, and educational experience; I will miss the second grade students at Bishop Dunn Memorial School. The BizWorld project was a wonderful experience and an opportunity that I am happy to have been a part of!

Companies in Action





This week the second grade companies at Bishop Dunn Memorial produced their friendship bracelets; it was a good learning experience for everyone. Starting to make the bracelets was a little difficult, but all of the companies were enthusiastic about producing their product. After watching the video on how to make the friendship bracelets, and purchasing the string and tape, the companies made a prototype so they could begin production. The companies had to make business decisions during the production stage; they how to predict many bracelets they would make in a day and predict how much money they would make. I believe the companies were surprised when they had over predicted with an average of forty bracelets and eighty dollars per day. The reality of the business world came to fruition for the companies as they worked through their decision making. Another business task for the companies this week was to create the design of the packaging and an advertisement for marketing their products. As the companies worked cooperatively, I believe they realized that working for the good of their company was paying off; they seemed to worked more productively as their products increased in size. All of the companies created interesting package designs and advertisements ranging from songs to posters. I believe the companies are prepared and very excited to start selling their product.      

Cooperation is Key for Productivity

After Michele and Christine's inquiry lesson and witnessing a few cooperation challenges in the second grade, our class decided to make a video demonstrating good and bad cooperation. The video consisted of three scenarios; the first demonstrated one person dominating a business meeting, the second scenario demonstrated everyone arguing in a business meeting, and the third scenario demonstrated everyone cooperating, listening to each other, and valuing each other's opinion in the business meeting. I felt the cooperation video was an excellent idea and I definitely saw an improvement in the behavior of the students after they had viewed the video. I would use this video in my own classroom and I would recommend it to all teachers; I feel that visualizing good and bad cooperation instead of vocalizing good and bad cooperation makes for a better understanding to the students. During Michele and Christine's cooperative lesson, the students prepared a pitch for the Venture Capitalist to raise money for their companies. To prepare the students for this task, a video demonstrating a pitch was shown to the students and an in class demonstration was given. I felt the students still were not quite sure about what it was they were supposed to do for the pitch and perhaps if the pitch was modeled and explained a bit more they would have understood the pitch procedure better. I feel that all of us are learning from each other's lessons, how we could improve upon the lessons, and what might be a better way of doing something in the lessons; all of our experiences in the BizWorld project lessons are an asset to our future teaching.

Building Companies in BizWorld




Engage students with SMART Board!

 

Michele and Christine implemented their lessons this week for the BizWorld project. I feel that the direct instruction lesson went pretty well. The students were engaged in the review of job positions and venture capitalist discussion. They were eager to share their answers with the whole class after working in group discussions and their explanations demonstrated a good understanding of the material. After discussing what a pitch is and what design is, Michele and Christine did a SMART Board review activity. I think this was a good choice for reviewing what the students had learned because the students kept engaged in the lesson with the SMART Board interaction. The more we engage students the more they will learn! One suggestion I would make to my classmates is when transitioning from one activity to another, make sure that all students are listening and looking at you before moving forward because the students will miss important information. I know I tend to do the same thing at times and I try to make a conscience effort and remind myself of this too. During the inquiry lesson, there were technological difficulties and Michele and Christine did the best they could. Because time was lost for the lesson and the students lost their focus it was hard to keep the on task. I think we all learned a value lesson; always have a backup plan in case something does not go as planned. The students worked within their companies by predicting, formulating a hypothesis, collecting data, and writing a conclusion on how they were to raise money to start their companies. Most of the students knew they had to raise money to start their companies, but they were not sure about how the Venture Capitalist was involved in the process. The group of students I worked with was not cooperating very well and had to be reminded of being nonproductive. I think we should all be more aware of the students' behavior and stress to them that they will only be rewarded on good productivity and that good productivity is what builds a great company.

Launching the BizWorld Project

This week began the adventures in the BizWorld Project in the second grade at Bishop Dunn Memorial School. Although it was a little stressful and difficult to plan our lessons, given the time we had, I enjoyed my fieldwork experience very much. My partner Megan and I planned and implemented three different lesson plans: direct instruction, inquiry, and collaborative. For the direct instruction lesson, we presented a power point presentation about business vocabulary, we lectured about what a business was, and we lectured about what makes a good company. We engaged the students by asking questions and I was happy to learn that most of the students had a pretty good grasp on the business vocabulary and what a  makes a  good company. We did a whole-class worksheet to check the students' understanding; the one thing I would change is to not allow the students to read the questions aloud because it took some time away and we had to rush through our conclusion of the lesson. For the inquiry lesson, we created an exploration activity where each group had to figure out, through the scientific method, the mystery company presented to them. Each group had a paper bag filled with products from a specific company; the students had to predict, collect the data, analyze the data, and draw a conclusion. Most of the students did well with the activity, but some were a little challenged by it. Each group presented their findings and although it was good to have the students participate this way, our time ran short. The lesson turn out fine though because we were able to present our conclusion in a timely manner. We presented a power point presentation explaining all of different jobs in a company, from here the students filled out a job application which states why they are right for the job they chose. For the cooperative lesson, student job applications were reviewed and jobs were appointed. Some groups had difficulty agreeing on the jobs that were to be given to them and needed reminding that they were a company now a had to cooperate in order to be productive. The students participated in an activity which they needed to name their company and design a logo. After agreeing on the name and logo, they needed to incorporate their companies which was a bit confusing for the students. If I could do this part of the lesson again, I would have tried to explain and model it better and left more time for this part of the lesson.

About Me

The "about me" project was fun and interesting. I created a comic about myself, which was a technological challenge. I have learn many things about my classmates: their heritage, social studies experiences, what they are proud of, and what anxieties they have about teaching. I have realised that everyone has similar anxieties about teaching and I feel better knowing that I am not alone. I think that we can all learn from each other and lean on each other as we begin our adventures into social studies teaching.

Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Going to the curriculum library this week was a really great informative experience. Tiffany, who is the curriculum librarian, is very knowledgeable and I feel confident knowing that there is someone to hep me and answer any questions I may have. It will be challenging to use and integrate technology in lesson planning, but I know there are many resources and help when I need it.