This journey may be over, but a bigger one awaits!

Just on Friday was our last Social Studies Methods course. Looking back on the class and going back down this road has made me realize, even though I am not nearly done with this course (yet) when it comes to getting all of the work submitted, I realized that I learned a lot regardless. Unlike my other education or methods courses, I actually got the opportunity to teach a whole class. In my others courses, I only got to teach a couple of students  or observed a class. Even though I did not teach by myself, I still got the experience of what it is like standing up in front of a classroom. I also got to see my progress and growth throughout the course. I went from being completely nervous on the first day to "I think I can do this" on the last day. While I am no where near the type of teacher I want to be, I know that I am getting there, one stride at a time. I also realized that being a teacher is something I really want to be, and not only for  my students, but in life. Being a teacher inside of the  classroom is so much more. I want to be more than a teacher for my students, but a facilitator, s guider, a supporter, and helping hand, and even a friend. Being a teacher is never enough, and this s something I have learned from this fieldwork experience.

Aside from the actual experience, I have learned many concepts and ways of teaching that I can take on with me to me my other classes  and into the future. I learned how important cooperative learning is, and it is my favorite type of lesson to use inside of the classroom. I have also learned the importance of direct and inquiry. 

I have also learned the importance of working with other people, even if they are not necessarily your friends. When it comes to my fieldwork group, I worked with three hard working and dedicated future educators who brought so many wonderful and new and exciting ideas out into the table that we used when teaching. Although I was not friends with two of them prior to teaching, I thought that we all worked well with one another, which is a crucial part of teaching. You need to get along and work with the people  who you will be teaching with in the  future. Teaching is not an individual process, it is a group process. You need a support team. I would like to think of my whole social studies course as one big support team, since we all got  closer as the semester came to a close. We all encouraged and helped one another  from day one, and I believe that makes for successful teachers and leaders.






Now that the course is over, there is still the e-folio to complete, which includes the edTPA and the Unit Plan. While I know that mine will not be completed by the expected due date, I am working as  hard as I can on it, in order to get it done! I think that it is a great experience and an opportunity for us to be get to work on one and complete it, especially since we will need to complete one  during student teaching. Dr. Smirnova is giving us a great opportunity for us to become familiar with the edTPA tasks so we know what to expect when we go into student teaching.

Until this  edTPA is submitted, I refuse to accept the fact that I am going to be a senior. Thus, starts another chapter in my life, another journey that I must complete. I will be student teaching in a year. As nervous and as excited as I am, I like to look at this  as a new experience, a different road I have to go on.  I am almost there... we all are!

Distinguishing between Concepts and Generalizations

I really wanted to make a blog on the differences between concepts and generalizations, since this is something that I still need more understanding on, and is important for students to know and teachers to be able to teach! The textbook helped me understand the differences more clearly.



When it comes to generalizations, the definition that the textbook gives is that they are relationships between concepts.  In order for students to be able to understand generalizations, however, they must be able to construct concepts accurately. In other words, generalizations are the big ideas students get from reading.

However, it is still difficult to distinguish between generalizations and concepts. Therefore, it is important for students to learn and teachers to be able to understand that generalizations differ from facts and concepts because they:

Identify relationships between two or more concepts. 
Construct explanations of cause and effect. 
Enable predictions of future occurrence of the relationship stated in the generalization. 
An idea expressed in a complete sentence while a concept is expressed as a single word or as a short phrase. 
Are stated objectively and impersonally and require evidence to be gathered to support them. 

Here is an example of a generalization: "Revolution's change people's way of living because different opportunities for them to earn money become possible."

This generalization can be broken apart by the specific concepts that are included in the generalization. In this example specifically the concepts include: "revolution," "people's way of living," and "earning money." By using this generalization, students can examine the American Revolution to see if it can be supported by thus statement, and even other Revolutions in other countries such as Russia and France. If there is evidence in each of the cases, then the generalization becomes well-supported and accepted. If the generalization does not match what they have found, then it must be revised so it matches what the student has found.

What is great about generalizations is that it can be used among various social studies concepts and can be used to make predictions. This makes generalizations more exciting and interesting for the students.

Let us take a look at another example: "Text messaging encourages a sense of communication but also encourages isolation, because we do not need other people to be physically present while we communicate with them." From this statement, students can make predictions such as teenagers, who text more than older people, may have less desire to meet with their friends. since technology encourages communication more than face to face interaction does. In order to see if their predictions are true, they can interview teenagers of different ages to see how many of them text and how many of them prefer face to face interactions. Obviously this type of generalization may work better with middle school students, but could be used for elementary students as well.

Other than teaching students generalizations, students should be  encouraged to write their own. Students can be given certain concepts such as "George Washington" and "Colonists" and be encouraged to write their own generalizations tying the  concepts together. This encourages creative thought and individual understanding. From their own generalization statement, students would get more out of it too!

By reading the text chapter entitled "How are Social Studies Concepts and Generalizations developed?" it helped give me a better understanding of what generalizations are and how they are important.

 (Sunal, Haas 2011)

This video explains why generalizations are important and how they can be used inside of an elementary classroom. The concept learned is "spelling" and the generalization is plurals and how it helps students with their reading and writing skills. 

We practice by learning: Teacher Interview

During Wednesday's class, we role  played job interview's which turned out to be a great learning experience for me. How this happened is four of our peers, Jean and Felicia among them, pretended to be principal's at made up elementary schools. The rest of the class were potential candidates trying to interview for a position. I was among the candidates. In the beginning of the interview, all of the "principals" stood up and read their philosophy of education statements and what they are looking for in a teacher. After that, the principals took turns interviewing us in our fieldwork groups. To be completely honest, I was not sure what to except when it came to the questions. I tried to treat it as a real interview, and my peers as actual employers.



Some of the questions that were asked were harder than others. For example, one of the "principals" asked me what color reminded me of cooperative learning. Another asked me the first animal that came to mind when I think of a teacher. Questions like these, creative, caught me off guard, but really made me think. Up until then, I did not know what color or animal I would associate education with. However, I thought I gave good answers. For the color question and cooperative learning, I associated them with light and Easter colors such as green, yellow, and blue because those colors are opening and friendly. For the animal question, I chose a lion because they are brave, fierce, but protective which is what teachers have to be, not only inside of the classroom but outside of it as well.

                   

To be honest, even aside from these questions, I felt as if all of them were challenging. All of them required critical thinking skills. A few of the questions even had me consider a few scenarios. For example: "How would you use cooperative learning inside of your classroom? How would you use inquiry based learning for social studies or math even?" Additionally, at the end of the interview, we got to ask our interviewer questions.

I thought that this was a great learning experience because it felt authentic. I went through all (or at least most) of the motions of what an actual interview would be like. I dressed in nice clothes, I shook the interview's hand, and I even prepared a resume. While an actual interview would be more serious and more intimidating than this, I am glad we had the practice!

This is old news (literally!)

As I am trudging through this semester, well more like crawling at this point, I am working on my lesson plans and activities for my e-folio and unit plan. One of the activities I am proud of, that I have been working with Felicia, is another activity on cubing, but instead of the article being "current," we decided to date our articles back to the American Revolution. Yes, Felicia and I created two articles. While she wrote a newspaper article from the colonists point of view why they should be free from the British, I wrote a newspaper article from "The English Quarterly" entitled Long Live the King on why the colonists should be respectful to the British. Both of these articles lead up to the American Revolution. By having some students read the article from the colonists point of view and the other half of students from the British point of view helps them understand perspective, when it comes to point of view in general. It also gives students different perspectives on both sides (colonists and British) and why the war happened to begin with.




This whole idea of "cubing" when it comes to this activity works like it did for the current events activity. The PowerPoint would mostly be similar. It would explain the six perspectives and how to cube. However, instead of focusing on six of the viewpoints, we would only focus on three, for the purpose of this activity. For the "Long Live the Colonists" article, one group would read the article and respond to it using the viewpoint description. The second group would read the article and respond to it using association. The third group would read the article and respond to it using application. For the "Long Live the King" article, students would analyze it using the same three perspectives. At the end, each group would present their responses and then tape them down on the "super cool class cube."



The activity does not end here! After all groups are done presenting and their responses are taped down on the cube, we would compare and contrast the articles as a whole class. Some essential questions we would explore is:

What is comparing? What is contrasting? 
How did the Colonists feel about the way that Britain was treating them? 
How did the  British feel about the way that they were treating the colonists? 
Was there anything they both agreed on? 

By discussing these questions as a whole class, students would get to share their opinions, thoughts, and feelings about the colonists and British. In order to help students organize thoughts, I would use a Venn diagram. This would also help students understand the difference and similarities between the two: Colonists and British.






The end we would go over point of view and how it influences our personal lives, school, and community. Students would also create a journal entry on:

"Do you agree with the viewpoints of the British or Colonists?" 

Students would use the information from the articles and the Venn diagram to support their thoughts. Overall, this activity is great because it teaches students about the American Revolution from both sides. Students will understand the positives and negatives of both sides, as well as the similarities and differences of both sides as well!

This will be a great activity to introduce students to the American Revolution!




All for the U.S.A.! 

Link to the PowerPoint (which also includes the articles): 

PowerPoint :]