The End to a New Beginning

I would like to begin this blog by Thank Dr. Smirnova for challenging me in a way that I have never been challenged before. I would also like to thank my colleagues for being the support system that was necessary this Fall semester. I think we learned the true meaning of collaboration. "We work hard today so that we can play later."We all have the same end goal with the same joy in our hearts. It was great and we have achieved so many things individually and as a group. So, I say Thank You.

Social Studies! What can I say, we have a love-hate relationship. This semester I have learned why it is greatly missed in classrooms. As future teachers, we have to push and fight for what we believe and what we believe is important to our student's development. This is our time! This course has provided each and every one of us with the tools to become effective teachers in the future. We have never used so much technology in one classroom. Again, I must say thank you.

This blog has been the journal to my semester as well as my colleagues and I hope that we all can look back on each of our blogs and be proud of everything that we have accomplished and the knowledge we have gained and shared. It was great to read my colleagues' blog and smile and laugh about their experiences. It was great because I was there too. 

The dinner at Dr. Smirnova's house was the perfect ending to our chapter. We have all taken so many classes together for a few years and now we are getting close to the end. I have never grown so close with my classmates this much. It has been a true blessing to be apart of the next generation of great teachers. 

Technology!

So I decided to write a different blog post on some of the technology I have observed or used in the course. I used Kahoot for the majority of my assessments in our Henry Hudson unit plan. Plickers was used by some of my colleagues. I created a Glogster for my economics project. And added to Dr. Smirnova's voice thread of many courses. Our instructional videos were uploaded and made accessible on YouTube. And LAST and MOST BENEFICIAL GOOGLE. I have written my lessons, assessments and unit plan all on Google Docs. These materials can be accessed by ANYONE with the click of the share button. And all of our presentations were created on Google Slides. These are tools for EVERYONE, but most of all these are tools for students. Teachers, please take the time out to explore these tools. 

Teaching Philosophy?

What is my teaching philosophy? This is one of the most difficult questions I have ever had to answer. I thought if I had a post on my uncertainty that it would help me to develop some clarity. Here are a few things that I believe as a teacher: 

I believe that teachers, students, staff and parents have to work together as a team. 

I believe that teachers should have knowledge of ALL contents they are teaching. 

I believe that teaching is about making a difference in every child that enters a classroom.  

I believe that teaching is about personal and professional legacy.

And that is what I have so far...

My full philosophy is yet to come. 

Piece of Native American Tribes Reflection

I decided to share a piece of my reflection because I enjoyed working on this project and learned significant information. The Native American Tribes project was an activity that required critical thinking and taught myself and my colleagues how to use the Cooperative Learning Instructional approach and required everyone to work collaboratively. I believe that Cooperative Learning is a great instructional approach to educating students on various cultures similar to Native American Tribes. For this assignment, each group was assigned to conduct research on one Native American Tribe. After our research was conducted, we worked collaboratively and planned how we would present our findings to the class. My assigned tribe was the “Tlingit” tribe. My partner and I created a PowerPoint presentation on the Tlingit culture. This assignment helped to develop my teacher  knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge

Preparing for edTPA

For the past few weeks, I have been working on my Efolio which will help me prepare for my edTPA. After taking this course with Dr. Smirnova, I feel a bit more comfortable about what to expect in the future. During my fieldwork experience, we have planned each of our lessons, provide students with instruction to deepen their thinking and we have also assessed students learning. We provided students with feedback and I hope they will use our feedback in the future. Overall, this experience has helped myself and my colleagues to prepare for student teaching. 

Mock Interview

Today, I participated in a mock interview with my colleagues. I was a little worried about the questions and if I was prepared. Surprisingly, I knew the basis of each question. I was aware of each of the teaching models and how they should be implemented in a classroom. During the interview, I wondered if I would be prepared for teaching interviews in the future. How would I answer the questions? How would I respond to questions that I do not know? Overall, I think this mock interview helped me becoming aware of tings to come in the future and now I question if I am ready? Hopefully, after my student teaching experience I will become more prepared. 

Native American Tribes Project Reflection

The Native American Tribes project was an activity that required critical thinking and taught myself and my colleagues how to use the Cooperative Learning Instructional approach and required everyone to work collaboratively. I believe that Cooperative Learning is a great instructional approach educating students on various cultures similar to Native American Tribes. For this assignment, each group was assigned to conduct research on one Native American Tribe. After our research was conducted, we worked collaboratively and planned how we would present our findings to the class. My assigned tribe was the “Tlingit” tribe. My partner and I created a PowerPoint presentation on the Tlingit culture. This assignment helped to develop my teacher  knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.

Economics

First, I must admit that economics is a strand of Social Studies that I have very little knowledge of. When we were given the assignment, I was nervous about how I was going to present my topics to the class. After doing much-required research, I realized how important it is for teachers to educate students on economics. Why? Because students grow up to become adults like myself who cringe at the topic of economics. I had the topics of microeconomics and macroeconomics which sound similar but are very different and similar. Here are two images to get a sense of what each concept involves. 

Microeconomics involves individual labor market and, of course, supply and demand. 

Macroeconomics involves economic growth, globalization, and international trade.

Overall, this assignment was interesting and I learned new information on economics.

Current Events

The current events project was an assignment for myself and my colleagues to explore various activities that can be used to teach current events in the classroom. The first and second groups focused on the 5W's (Who, What, Where, When, and Why) while incorporating Newsela. I enjoyed both activities and thought we should use a different activity to teach current events. Collaboratively as a group we decided to teach current events using a debate. Each group was assigned an article and given the assignment to take a position on the topic, develop their argument using facts from the text. The goal of the lesson was to teach students how to engage in a debate while making them aware of current events in the world.    

Choose to be Grateful.

Choose to be Grateful.

After reading this article by Arthur C. Brooks, I took a moment to actually think about the things in my life that I am grateful for. Similar to Brooks, the first thing that came to mind was my family and friends. I agree with Brooks in regards to people learning how to be naturally grateful. I think that the  only time people talk about things they are grateful for is during Thanksgiving, which is disappointing.  I think people should talk about the simple things they are grateful for every day and I also think that people should show their appreciation to everyone around them every day. Instead of talking about the things we are thankful for at the Thanksgiving table, we should talk about the simple things we are thankful for all year round. 

Reflection

Thinking about the past weeks of fieldwork, I can say that I have learned several things about the importance of reflection and constructive criticism. Our unit plan on Henry Hudson was a good topic and the students enjoyed learning about Henry Hudson. Lauren and I hoped that things would have gone a little better. Our Direct Instruction lesson lacked content and could have been more detailed. I learned that the Direct Instruction lesson sets the tone for the unit. The Cooperative and Inquiry lessons build on the content that is taught in the Direct Instruction lesson. During, the moment we were receiving feedback, it appeared as though we did not care or did not want the feedback, but we listened. At the end of the day, I want to be the best teacher that I can be for all of the students that I teach. In terms of planning, I think that we did a good job planning how we wanted to teach Henry Hudson and his journeys. I think if we had more time we could have really expanded and included more of his voyage of the Hudson River. 

Overall, I enjoyed our fieldwork experience. I was grateful to have Lauren as my partner. We spent a lot of time working on our unit and we shared our ideas and discussed various ways to engage the students.  

Working to create something Meaningful...

After my teaching experience last week, I was looking forward to seeing the third group's lessons. Unfortunately, they were unable to present their lesson. Instead, we were given the opportunity to work with the students on creating a brochure of Hudson Valley. Together we helped the students to research what we taught them and new information on the Hudson Valley. I think it was a great learning experience for the students and teachers. The best part was watching the students present their final work. 

Henry Hudson Unit

Today was our big day. We spent numerous hours working on our Henry Hudson unit and we felt we were prepared to teach it. We were anxious and eager to present our lesson with the hopes that it would be as good as we planned. The students were excited and eager to learn. Unfortunately, our lesson did not go as we planned. Our lesson was incomplete and lacked content. The assessment tool we used to formally assess the students had technical difficulties as well. This was one of the toughest experience I have ever faced as a future teacher. Overall, I learned that constructive criticism can be brutal, but it can also be essential. 

Day One of Fieldwork

Today was the first day of fieldwork. It was great to see my colleagues teaching the students of Bishop Dunn. Prior to this, I was looking forward to seeing what they had planned for students. I believe that the students were engaged in each lesson especially the Cooperative Learning lesson. It was great to see my colleagues working together. The hard work and effort they put into presenting the lessons definitely showed during fieldwork. I believe that it is important that we learn from one another, because we can learn various ideas by simply collaborating with our peers. I look forward to teaching during the next fieldwork session and I enjoyed being an observer in the classroom of my colleagues. 

I found the readings for week one to be interesting and imperative for all teachers. I think that Elementary educators on occasion overlook the significance of teaching Social Studies. When I think of Social Studies, I immediately think of History. After reading, What is Social Studies? I learned that Social Studies is more than History and it is designed to promote civic competence. The term civic competence is a new term for me. When I learn a new term I often research the term to gain a better understanding. Although, I am aware of what I work for me to build a “deeper understanding” of a concept; the reading has taught me how important it is for teachers to teach for deep understanding. The elements of powerful Social Studies program requires time, public commitment, and resources. I agree with the article that all of these aspects are important. Educators have to make time to teach Social Studies, show their students the importance of Social Studies programs and fight to get current materials for Social Studies programs. 

Here we go again! This is my last semester of classes until Student Teaching. I wonder if I should be excited. First class, I learned that technology is going to be very important this semester in Social Studies. I am excited and I look forward to blogging about this journey.