Week 3 SSED 307

Another week half way down.

This week my classes took our first trip to Washington Elementary which is where we will be spending Mondays and Tuesdays at during our class time. From what I saw just from the one visit it looks to be a great school. It seemed small and the teachers were great. I am really looking forward to spending time in the school with the students and learning from the teachers.

For Social Studies Methods this week we are going over generalizations. Generalizations are summary statements that talk about the relationship between two or more concepts, or summarize cause and effect. We have also started working on our PDPs or Personal Development Plans. I am working on coming up with two SMART goals for me to work on and achieve. The goals are to help me develop as a teacher, who meets and goes over and beyond the NC teacher standards. According to these standards, as a teacher, I should demonstrate leadership, be able to institute a comfortable and respectful environment for diverse students, know the content, be able to promote learning in my students knowing and understanding what they need so that they can learn to their fullest potential, and to be able to reflect back and revise.

Something I do outside of school is I volunteer coach a middle and high school NC Wildlife team. One of the things they have to do for competition is orienteering, which is where they work with a compass to find a certain point in the woods. Another piece of this orienteering part is they have to take a test on NC hunter safety and wildlife. These two things are what I coach. It is getting close to Regionals for them so I have been doing a lot of research on classroom games to do with them to help them review. I have found some pretty cool things to do with the team and I thought I would share a few of them. 

This is a link to how to make a life size board game for your students. I did this one a few weeks ago and it worked out great. I think it would work for almost any age students.

http://www.thereligionteacher.com/the-human-board-game-to-review-for-exams/ 

This is another game I found, which I think could be fun to try but I have not yet had a chance to implement it.

http://www.bainbridgeclass.com/scootgame.pdf 

Week 2 of SSED

       This week has definitely been a hard one. I am still trying to get my head wrapped around all of my classes and the expectations for them. It is still pretty overwhelming but I am getting there. 

       This week I have been studying up on how to use Twitter. Since I am not much of a social media butterfly it is taking some getting used to. Something I also learned about in class was Plickers (plickers.com) which is an app that everyone should check out for themselves because it is a little hard for me to explain. I will be using this app this Friday for my middle and high school students, but it is good for almost any age.

       Something else I have been reading a learning about is ways to incorporate social media in the classroom. A great article about this is https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-social-media-tools-john-mccarthy . There are many different opinions about using social media in the classroom, but I think it can be a great advantaged if used correctly. This article also contains a link to an on going list of social media tools that teachers can use. I think that one big thing for me is that social media provides an easy and effective way for teachers to get parents involved in what their students are doing. This is something that is highly important. Teachers need to make sure to work with parents and families of the students in their class and social media can help with that. I know that this is something I will use to help keep my future students’ parents updated.

My First Blog: The Importance of Social Studies

        Alright guys, this is my first ever blog post, which me luck.

Today was my first day of my Social Studies Methods (SSED 307) class, and as a requirement for the course I am supposed to post regular blogs as I prepare for my career in teaching. Please bear with me as I go through this new process of blogging. There was a lot of new information for me today since it was the beginning of my classes. Not only did I start Social Studies Methods, but I also started Fine Arts Integration (EDUC 311). It was a bit of an overwhelming day with all of the new information and with me trying to get acclimated to these classes. However, I am hopeful for this semester. 

For SSED I read an article today (http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/powerfulandpurposeful), about the importance of social studies to students. A lot of this information was already kind of in the back of my mind but this article really brought it to light and clarified things for me. First of all social studies is a huge part of our lives and we do not even realize it. It impacts us everywhere, from our day to day interactions to the whole world around us. It is important for students to get this in their learning. In the small scale it helps with their critical thinking and problem solving skills. And helps them to learn to be responsible and respectful people. On a larger scale it helps them to understand the world and be more informed about it. This way they can be better participants in it. As teachers we need to make sure this is apart of students education. I learned that social studies is getting pushed into the background and schools are not putting much focus on it. This is an injustice and this is why we have so many people who do not know or understand their world and what is going on in it. Students need to be taught this and we as teachers need to take our leadership role seriously and advocate for social studies for the betterment of our students.