Friday, April 8, 2016

Historians in the Making

This past week we worked on teaching history for elementary students. 

Teaching history is extremely important in an elementary setting because 
most of the time history is one of the only things that primary and some 
secondary classes focus on. I feel that my knowledge on teaching history 
and geography has deepened thanks to the enriching activities from class. 
On Tuesday, we enjoyed our first Current Events Project, from Group 1. 
Group one consisted of Erin, Christina, and Lauren. unfortunately Lauren 
had gotten sick so she was not there to present, but he group did a great
job! The presentation was tastefully done and it made sense. I also 
enjoyed the group's project.Group one used the JIGSAW method for 
their method and it was tastefully done. I feel that I learned something 
new about working with my groups. The tool that they used was Linote 
and I really enjoyed using a new tool because it is widening the amount 
of tools I feel comfortable using for my one classroom. On Tuesday we 
also started and of rhte most part finished out Native American Tribe 
projects. The Native American Tribe project was a lot of fun for me as 
a student, as well as, a teacher. I thought that learning about the 
Mohawk tribe was one of my favorite projects. My group also worked 
extremely well together. 

Our homework, for Thursday, was to familiarize ourselves with the 
different contents and resources for teaching history. Even though we 
began history a little bit on Tuesday, for the most part we did not really 
start it. For homework I familiarized myself with some of the tools listed 
above. Two tools that I would like to use in my own classroom would be 
the QR Code treasure hunts and the bringing history to life tool.
choose to use the QR Code treasure hunt because I feel that this is 
extremely fun for students and it gets them enthusiastic about learning! 
The second tool that I decided I would use is the Bring History to Life 
tool because I feel that bringing students real-life or life-like tools from 
history will help the students be more engaged. Also, in preparation for 
Thursday we were asked to read an article on Social Studies strategies. 
A few strategies that I had not heard of are: the Bransford and Stein 
IDEAL model, teaching concepts, and community based instruction. 
The Bransford and Stein IDEAL model is a problem-solving method. 
I enjoy this model because it has an easy acronym for students to 
remember. Also, a poster could easily be made with this acronym. The 
next strategy that I like is the teaching concepts strategy because I 
feel like this is a difficult thing to teach to some of the younger 
elementary students. It was helpful for me to read about how to use
them in the classroom. The last strategy that I enjoyed learning about is 
the Community Based Instruction. I have seen this strategy in use, but I 
never knew what it was called. This strategy to me is very interesting 
because it is getting the students involved in the community, while they 
are learning a valuable lesson. One last article that I would like to 
mention is the reading like a historian article. This article to me was an 
extremely interesting and beneficial article. I really enjoyed reading this 
article and I will definitely be putting it to use when I am an elementary 
teacher.
Reading Like a HISTORIAN:

Establish relevant background info

Pose essential question
Students read
Answer guiding questions (graphic organizer)
Whole class discussion

On Thursday, we had another Current Events presentation from 
group two. Group two consisted of Samantha, Jenna, and Paola. 
Group two had us do a different activity than what the first group 
had, they did a debate versus the JIGSAW method. I enjoyed
group two's debate, I thought it was fun and the teachers were
great at time management. After group two presented, we broke
into our base groups for the NAT Project. This was okay, I thought
it was poorly constructed. My base group only had three people 
the day of presentations so the QR Code Treasure Hunt at the 
end of the presentations was a little hard. I feel that this was 
extremely unfair to the groups who had less than five people. 
Otherwise, I enjoyed learning all about the different Native 
American tribes.
Overall, I think that this week was great in the area of 
knowledge that I can use in the future. I am just excited for
classes coming to an end because there is a lot of work in 
this class particular. It is extremely stressful and I cannot wait
until the end!





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