Collaboration and Planning

These past six weeks have been a whirlwind and I am so surprised that I made it through. I am also incredibly thankful that I was able to take this course. Even though the unit plan was tedious and took what felt like a million hours to complete, it was such a wonderful opportunity to learn. I can now say that I know how to write an integrated unit plan. I think social studies is such an important topic and invaluable to students. It is a subject that I do not want to put on the back burner. Now I know how to successfully implement social studies throughout core subjects of my classroom. I also have strategies for implementing the arts; which to me is something I thought impossible. I could not have expected anything more from this class.

My expectations were far surpassed. I also was able to effectively collaborate with a classmate. Through this collaboration experience, my partner and I were able to identify each others strengths and build off of those strengths. We were able to break up assignments easily based on our strengths. We also learned how to compromise and manage our time together.

I hope that I am able to create many more units with other grade level teachers and have a classroom full of authentic learning experiences that maneuver through multiple subject areas. This does not seem like an impossible task anymore!

REWARDS

I used to be somewhat against rewarding children for positive behavior. I thought that students are expected to act in this way, why should they be rewarded? However, Meredith has taught me differently. Rewarding students for positive behavior makes the focus of a classroom on the positive, rather than the negative. It shows students that if they want to have the attention of the teacher, they better act appropriately.It also enables the teachers to set their expectations high. A teacher has the ability to reward students that go above and beyond by encouraging others, sticking up for others, etc. It gives the teacher ample opportunity to give his/her focus on this type of behavior.

My only hesitation in regards to rewards is the type of rewards given. In a middle school that I used to work at students were being rewarded with McDonald's gift cards and/or iTunes gift cards. I had issues with this because it took the focus of the behavior away from the school body and placed it in material, fleeting, insignificant rewards. I believe the rewards should be 1)Individualized and 2) School related. To individualize and make rewards school related, I think doing a menu board would be effective. A teacher could really get to know her students and create a menu board of rewards that she knows will address the interests of all her students. Also, the rewards will be academic/school focused. These will vary depending on students but a few suggestions are: extra recess time on Fridays, computer privileges, opportunities to run morning meeting, etc. The key is to really know the students in order to create items that actually are appealing to them.

To conclude: Rewards are awesome! The classroom needs to reward positive behavior. However, rewards need to appeal to students and they should be oriented towards the school.

Self Efficacy

This is a hard blog prompt for me to write about. I struggle with confidence in myself and have a hard time recognizing my own talents. I am very much my won worst critic.

Despite my previous caveat, I have strong self efficacy in the area of reading. Throughout my entire life, I have always been successful in reading. I was always well above grade level for reading and my teachers always encouraged me in my reading endeavors. Because of this, I have confidence that I will be a successful reader. I also really enjoy reading and understand the practice of reading to be an ongoing learning process. I will never master the art of reading, it is always something that can be improved.

The main contributors to my self efficacy in reading are definitely the encouragement of teachers and my success in the classroom as a reader. This makes it so apparent how important it is as a teacher to create a classroom that enables students to be successful in all subject areas. Students need to gain their confidence in themselves to learn and have academic strengths. They need to recognize their own self efficacies. I hope to be a teacher that encourages and enables students for success.

HOOK EM

For my hook lesson I am going to engage my students in thinking about the values and principles of American democracy. To do this, I am going to read a short narrative of the state of America post Revolutionary War, but before the Constitution. I am going to highlight that America was free from Britain, and how has to discovery and establish itself as a country. America needs to figure out who it is as a country in terms of what it cares about; what is important to it. I will then have students break into groups of 3-4 and write their own version of a Preamble to the Constitution. They will think through what is important to America and Americans. I will then conclude the lesson by explaining that the students are going to spend time over the next few weeks discovering what it is to be an American and what it was like for other major historical figures.

I haven't had much time to think through this hook lesson. I still have some major things to think through and think of ideas to really engage the students in a meaningful way. This is just the nutshell of my lesson. I think it is appropriate because it gets the students thinking about what it means to be an American. It gets them thinking about the idea of a country having values and principles. Also, according to our annual plan, the students will have already studied the history of America to the point of the  Revolutionary War and they will have learned about the structure of government in America. This will be a good way for them to get thinking about values and principles of American democracy.

Impossible to Escape

It is impossible to completely do away with biases and perspectives. Everyone who writes, creates, records, etc, comes from a specific point of view with all the baggage of presuppositions and bias. This is why I desire to create a classroom that is aimed towards thinking critically. I want my students to KNOW that biases exist and I want them to be able to think for themselves and make their own decisions and come up with their own opinions. If I am forced to use a text book that only comes from a white man's perspective, I'll use it as a guide for discussion. I can use it to ask questions such as "Where is this point of view coming from?" "Whose story are you not hearing about?" "Can you think of any other perspectives?" It is impossible to have the perfect text book that pleases every student, every parent, every principal. This is why you guide your students in engaging with the text critically; teaching them to have their own minds and opinions. Thankfully, there is an abundance of resources for children to use online. The text book is not their only source of information.

In regards to students with disabilities and ESL students, they can be an aid to the classroom in discussing points of views and biases. Ask them for their point of view on topics. Ask an ESL student to share how an American text book makes them feel, as someone who is not native to America. Students with disabilities are capable of also engaging with the text critically and offering their own unique perspective to a situation. Text books will never be the only source in my classroom for information, so even students who have disabilities in reading can still learn through other resources, such as recordings/videos. By including ALL students in the classroom, it teaches  the class the importance of diversity and recognizing that there are multiple points of view on all topics. It also creates a classroom that represents diversity and tolerance, because the classroom is actually diverse and must learn to be tolerant and accepting of one another.

Integrated Curriculum

My biggest fear with integrated curriculum is TIME. It is as simple as that. I am afraid I will not have enough time to do it. However, I know how necessary it is. I do not want to create a classroom that throws important, yet somehow peripheral subjects, by the wayside because of the high demands on math, reading, and science. I find social studies to be very important and I want to make time to implement social studies into my curriculum often. There is so much rich material to teach; there is no way it can be done in a few 30 minute lessons every other week.

I think that integrated curriculum is not used because teachers are so concerned with these high stakes testing and they think that by integrating the curriculum the content for subjects like math and reading is being compromised. Even though research says otherwise. Integrating curriculum takes time and practice, and teachers probably feel they do not have time to learn and properly implement an integrated curriculum that does not compromise the value of tasks and lessons.

Even though there will be the pressure of testing on my back, I will not allow this to deter me from integrating my curriculum. I really believe, if done correctly, an integrated curriculum will strengthen my lessons in a way for my students to be even more successful academically.

P L A N

Upon reflecting on what the attributes are for a "thoughtful, well planned, social studies lesson", I started thinking through ANY lesson plan for that matter. While there are many attributes I think a lesson plan should contain, I'd like to spend this time highlighting the most important.

Considerate

A lesson plan should be considerate of ALL students and their individual needs. When a lesson plan is considerate, it not only takes into account the needs of the students, but it also implements practices and strategies to address each individual need. For social studies specifically, when teaching about culture, history, economics, etc., it is of upmost importance to take into consideration the cultures of ones students as well as their socio-economic background.  

Engaging 

A social studies lesson should not be something that is mundane and unrelated to students. No longer should a lesson plan simply be reading a social studies text book and answering the questions in the back. This is a sure fire way to make a child hate social studies and not care for his or her learning in this subject.  A lesson plan should build upon a students background, and implement ways and strategies in which to engage a student in the material. 

Effective

A lesson plan that is engaging is not enough however. There needs to be actual learning taking place. The lesson needs to be effective. Clear goals need to be set in place that necessitate higher order learning and after establishing those goals, the content of the lesson should support those goals in order to ensure that learning is taking place. 

Assessable 

In order to gage a lesson plan's effectiveness, it needs to be assessable. A teacher should have activities in place that not only support the learning goals, but can also be assessed. This means that the activities will have meaning behind them in which students will be expected to use their skills to create, analyze, discuss, experiment, etc. All of these verbs are assessable with the right lesson plan and a willing teacher. 

Integrative

Last but most certainly not least, social studies lesson should be integrative. There is so much to social studies that spans across content areas. English language arts, math, science, and art (as well as other subjects) can all be integrated into a social studies lesson. Or a social studies lesson can be integrated into one of these subject areas. As George Maxim(2010)  puts it, "Social studies is integrative by nature; by definition, it is the school subject that synthesizes the social sciences." (Pg. 25). 

While I find all these attributes to be important for any content in the classroom, I find them to be especially fitting for social studies.  I believe with these attributes, a teacher will have a lesson that sustains learning.