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.