Discussing Social Studies

    Overview of the Semester      I learned so many new and exciting things this semester.  Fieldwork was truly an eye opening experience.  I loved every second of it, and learned so much stuff from the class itself.  While student teaching I worked in smaller groups of the classroom to help the students, my particular group had a tough time with the assignments.  Even though this was hard I feel like it was good for me to go through to get a good experience because not every classroom and every student is going to be easy and simple.  I never really knew that there was several different types of instruction like direct inquiry and cooperative.  This really opened my eyes because not all students learn the same and you have to understand your students to know which instruction works best for them.  

    Group 4 Cooperative Lesson Plan        This was the last lesson for group 4 to teach as well as the last lesson with the Bishop Dunn 5th graders as well.  Group 4 defiantly came through some struggles and disadvantages during this lesson because thanksgiving break was in between lesson 2 the inquiry lesson and the current lesson, the cooperative instructional lesson.  They pushed through and created an assignment for the students.  The students were defiantly not 100% engaged in the lesson like they usually are, they kept repeating question several time even when other students already asked them, as well as taking longer to finish assignments.  In a way this was good for Anthony and Rebecca to go through because not every classroom setting will be perfect.  This gives us all a true rounded experience.

    Group 4 Inquiry Lesson Plan      Like I said in past blogs inquiry lessons is when you analyze historical things to create an answer to something.  This was Rebecca and Anthonys second lesson plan.  They did something that was slightly different then the other groups.  They split them up into groups of 5 instead of 4 so there was an uneven number.  They gave them an example of the assignment then put them into their groups to work.  The students were given 25 minutes to complete the assignment.  After that they were told that they were going to present what they had just worked on but they were running out of time so Anthony would present some of their work to make sure that the students didn't go over there time slot.  In the future I would try to plan this out better because the students get excited to present what they did, they look forward to it.    

     Group 4 Direct Lesson Plan  Group 4 was the last group of students to student teach this semester.  Group 4 consisted of Anthony and Rebecca.  There direct lesson plan was very good at teaching the lesson while keep the students engaged.  Anthony specifically was very good at making sure all the students had a chance to talk.  Rebecca was sharing the screen so she would present the slide while Anthony called on students to see of they were understanding the material.  Rebecca was very good at "staying in character".  She made the students really feel like they were part of the age of exploration.  I really liked the knowledge check that they provided. This ensures that no student is falling behind and doesn't understand the material.  

  Overall Reflection of Student Teaching How did my student teaching experience go? I feel that it went very well, of course their is always room for improvement but overall I think it went better then expected.  Living in covid times its a lot harder to get in person work and experience so I thought that trying to teach over zoom would be very hard.  I was surprised by how well it went.  There were of course some struggles, some being the group work.  It was hard to work with the students over zoom because we were all on the computer even though all of the students were in the classroom.  This made it hard to communicate with the students while in broken up group work.  Some positives of my experience was how much the students participated.  Every week the students were excited and eager to learn something new.  This made it so nice and refreshing to teach, because most students much prefer playing and slacking off of their work.  Somet...

        My Last Lesson Student Teaching Cooperative Lesson Plan      For our last lesson student teaching we did the cooperative instructional lesson plan.  This as said in the past is mainly student based.  We gave them the tools now its time to see if they understood it and can put it into an assignment with out our help, or very little teacher help.  We had the students broken up into groups again for this assignment.  The students had to create a poster about the civilization that was given to them.  We gave them a template of categories and the students had to fill in each section.  We also provided them with a completed example, as well asa rubric for them to follow.  Just like the last lesson we also paired up college students with each group so that if they did need help the college students are there to support them.  After they completed the assignment we had them each share their screen and present. ...

     My Student Teaching Inquiry Lesson Plan     My second lesson was the inquiry instructional lesson plan.  For this assignment we broke the students up into groups of 3 and each gave them a partially filled in chart with three artifacts, the students task was to fill in the rest of the chart and try to figure out what civilization was given to them.  We made it more fun for them by saying that someone from the museum called and said that there was a robbery, and they needed the 5th graders to help them reorganize there civilization section of the museum.  We gave the students around 30 minutes to complete this assignment.  Each group had college students with them to help them if needed.  Once all of the groups completed the assignment we had them present what they had found by filling out the chart.  After that we had them write a tweet about what they learned in this lesson.   

        My First Lesson Teaching 5th grade !     Today was my first day of student teaching.  I worked with Emily, and Olivia, we were group 3.  Our direct instruction lesson plan went very well.  Before we had our lesson we met with our teacher Dr Smirnova, she gave us some corrections as well as suggestions to fix before we taught.  Those improvements defiantly made our lesson so much smoother and came across very nicely.  We just like group 2 used pear deck for our direct lesson.  This was a great way to gauge if the students are following along with our lesson, and what to change if they are not.  The students were very active and defiantly participated with us which made it so much easier to teach.  We went over the five civilizations as well as explorers and artifacts.  The students had some prior knowledge about the topics, because they would jump in and add facts as...

      Group 2 Cooperative Lesson Plan      The last lesson of group 2's unit was the cooperative instruction lesson plan.  As said in previous blogs cooperative instruction should be solely student based.  The student should know and understand the material by this point in the unit.  They start the lesson with review the work from the last week.  After that Carissa and Mikaila split the class up into groups.  This is where it is important to know and understand your students.  Because not each student is going to work well together so it is important to group the students up very specifically so the class can work most efficiently.  The groups were split up in 4 group 3 people per group.  The cooperative assignment was to Create a timeline of the explorer that is given to you.  The teachers provided the students with the template so that all the students had to d...

     Group 2 Inquiry Lesson Plan      Racing to Discovery, that is what Carissa and Mikaila named their second lesson the inquiry instruction.  What did they have the students do? They had the students watch a video then answer some questions about it.  After that they had to complete an assignment.  The assignment was to fill out a chart about a specific explorer.  The students had 20 minutes to complete this assignment.  The student teachers also provided slides about each explorer so the students could reference back to it.  Once that is complete they showed the students another video and had the students take notes while watching.  After that the students had another assignment to complete during class time.  They had to write a journal entry.  This assignment was a little more extensive then the first one.  They again had 20 minutes to complete this assignment. After that t...

               Group 2's first Lesson      Just like group 1 group 2 started out by introducing themselves.  Group 2 consisted of Carissa and Mikaila.  They also did direct instruction first.  So this is mainly lectures and very little student interaction.  Group 2 used the website pear deck.  This I feel like is so convenient.  This allows for student interaction even though the direct instruction does not allow for it.  Some things that they did with pear deck was to star they had three questions to answer.  1 being to write 3 thing that explorers were looking for on their journey, 2 being what does it mean to be an explorer, and lastly what explores do you remember.  They also had check ins throughout the lesson like: how is learning so far, too hard, just right, too easy.  They also had so many of pear deck question throughout the less...

                                                                                  Group 1's Lesson 3        This is the last lesson for the Jessica, Emmalyn, and Nayely.  This is the cooperative lesson plan.  This is solely student based.  The students had two lessons to learn and understand the material.  Now it is time to have the students complete one last assignment for group 1.  They started this lesson with questions to review the previous week.  Like I said in the last blog this is crucial for students to ensure that they remember the information from the week before, because in between lesson's 2 the inquiry lesson and 3 the cooperative lesson there was a...

  Group 1's Lesson 2!     What is a inquiry lesson? This is where students must analyze work in order to come to a conclusion for something.  This was the type of lesson plan that Jessica, Emmalyn, and Nayely did for their second lesson plan.  They started off by discussing what they learned in the previous lesson.  This is defiantly smart for the student teachers to do.  The students learn a lot in between each lesson, so it is very good that they review the last lesson because they might have forgotten stuff in between the week.  They had 5 questions to review with the class.  After that they go into the lesson, their assignment was to imagine that they are  cartographers during the age of exploration. They had about 10-15 minutes to complete this assignment in groups. After that they went onto do another assignment, the students had to create a map of exploration routes taken by countries during th...

     First Week Of Fieldwork !     This week we started student teaching at Bishop Dunn.  We are going to be working with the 5th graders for the next several weeks.  Group 1 which consists of Jessica, Emmalyn, and Nayely started first with there direct lesson plan.  They had a very thorough google slides presentation.  They begin with doing quick introductions of themselves, then follow with classroom rules and expectations.  This is very important especially with students around this age.  Because by grade 5 they start to become rambunctious if you do not set ground rules for them.  Also knowing that we are still students ourselves they might not want to listen to us.  Direct instruction is very lecture based and I definitely noticed that in this first group.  They did a lot of the talking through this first lesson.  The students were only speaking if they had questions about the material. ...

  Midterm Project reflection !  For my midterm for my methods of social studies class was super creative.  Dr. Smirnova gave the class two options which I really liked and appreciated, I liked that I could read the directions for both and have the choice of what I wanted to do. I chose the first option, Mid semester bingo.  This is where I chose two technology tools that we have used in class and got to share what I have learned and accomplished throughout the class so far.  I really enjoyed doing this project, its rare to find a midterm that students enjoy rather then stress about.  I used google presentation to make a slideshow about what I have learned, then used iMovie to create a 3 minute and ten second video of me discussing what I created in my google slide.