A New Blogger has been Born!

When we first began our blogs at the beginning of this six-week semester, I was excited but thought that maybe I would just blog to fulfill the assignment for the class. After having been through the semester and having experienced blogging, I have to say that I think I will continue to use this very blog to record my experiences and reflections as I go through my internship and as I enter the career as a teacher with my own classroom. Blogging has made this semester interesting in many ways. Not only did it allow us to reflect on the readings and our experiences in the classroom, but it taught us the ins and outs of an excellent tool that we can use in our own classrooms. Class blogs are a great way for students to get acquainted with technology and using technology for reflecting, reporting, etc. Reflection is a necessary thing for all teachers to do and a blog like this is the perfect way to do that.

Before taking this course, I viewed social studies as one subject in and of itself, that would be taught separately. That is because I understand the importance of social studies and feel as if it should be given more weight in elementary classrooms. However, after having taken this course, I am left with the knowledge that social studies, in order to be given any weight at all, must be integrated into other subject areas. Interdisciplinary learning is important because it allows a teacher to not only teach two subjects together when there is not enough time in the day, but to also help his or her students make connections between the different subject areas and understand that it can all be integrated. When social studies is integrated, there is a higher probability that it will interest students who like math, science, reading, writing and the arts, rather than seeming boring. In addition, in this course I learned so many great ways to teach social studies such as going on fun field trips, having students role play, writing letters to elected officials, etc. This class taught me a lot that I will be able to take into my future classroom.

History: Points of View, Biases and Perspectives

Although I cannot say that I have many personal experiences with different points of view, biases and perspectives on history, I am able to reflect on what I know about differences in the way people perceive history. In this day and age, students in every classroom will be extremely diverse as a result of immigration and large socioeconomic gaps. Since different countries and cultures view history different for many reasons, I can foresee it being sometimes difficult to reach all students on the same level in terms of history instruction. For example, what native born Americans think about Independence Day and the American Revolution might not mean a lot to a child born in another country, other than the fact that they are now living in a free country. Students of Native American heritage may view the Trail of Tears and Indian Removal Acts differently than students who do not have the same ancestry. These are just a couple of examples that we, as teachers, must understand because we may not view history in the same light as our students who come from different backgrounds and cultures.

Having said that, it is important that we keep an open mind when teaching history and understand that historical facts do not waver, but perspectives, biases and points of view differ widely. It is important that we do not voice our own personal opinions about certain events in history to our students, because our job is to teach them the facts in order for them to form their own opinions.

Social Studies Lesson 2 Reflection

Last Wednesday, I taught my second social studies lesson at Salem Elementary. The lesson I used, Web of Life, was one that I found and adapted from the software that the Population Connection representative provided us with when she came to speak to our literacy class in the Spring. The software, entitled Teaching Population: Hands-On Activities, is an outstanding resource for finding great, interactive lessons and activities for K-12 students. The CD included the complete lesson plan and materials for the Web of Life lesson. I chose to use Web of Life, since it stresses community and how the different parts of a community are connected and interdependent. The representative who presented these materials to us had us engage in this activity, and I felt that it was an excellent way for students of any age to realize just how connected everyone and everything is in a community.

To adapt this lesson to the third grade classroom I taught in, I incorporated discussion questions relating to their classroom community, school community and town/city community. Using the forest community really helped the students to understand that there are all different kinds of communities, but they all have similar characteristics. The discussion with the students went quite well, and I was excited that before I even mentioned the fact of there being different types of communities, one student in the class brought this up. When he did, I was thrilled, because this led right into further discussion of different types of communities and the students came up with many great ideas.

The activity where we created the web was a hit. The students loved getting out of their seats, moving around and being able to take on a role other than 'student in a classroom' for a brief time. As the web came together and I read the story, the students were observing the creation and I was delighted to hear "oohhs" and "aahhs" as they began to realize just how connected their roles were. All of the students were engaged and seemed to be having a great time.

If I were to change one thing about this lesson, I would have asked the teacher beforehand if I could arrange the room in a way that students had more room to form a circle. Since the time I had to complete this was only 35 minutes, there was not much time to move desks and chairs around. The students were not uncomfortable, but if we could had a little more room, we could have spread out a bit more. Because there was a lack of room, I had the students stand up instead of sitting down, which may not have been the best for third graders. They kept wanting to close in the circle, and at times the circle was very oblong and misshapen. Although this did not hinder the students' understanding or the success of the lesson, it would have been nice to have students sitting down in a proper circle with more room.

Overall, this lesson proved to be an excellent choice for this particular class. The discussion went well, the students were excited, and the purpose of the lesson really hit home and allowed the students to understand the interconnections of communities.

"If the textbook contains the answers, then what are the questions?"

Some textbooks contain lots of valuable information, also known as the content that we will be teaching our students in several different subject areas. Ensuring that our students learn this content is crucial, but it is important to first consider backwards design and the concept of identifying the big ideas and questions that we want our students to think about before we equip them to explore the content. The "questions" are the big ideas that we want our students to think about and ultimately take away from the instruction that we give them. Before consulting the textbook or any other resources identifying the answers and the content, it is important that we design our questions in terms of what we want our students to learn. For example, essential questions are developed at the beginning of a unit, and they are broad, philosophical questions that will address many sub-topics within the unit. The questions help guide teachers in planning units and they help students to know the focus of what they are learning.

Annual Plans

There are so many advantages to creating annual plans before the school year begins. Annual plans are plans that teachers devise for each subject area (or as one large plan combining all areas) to know when they will be teaching each unit of study. Using school calendars is a great starting point for creating an annual plan, as this helps to visualize which days will actually be instructional days and which days will be early release, teacher workdays or holidays. Creating annual plans from these school calendars help to create a plan based on "reality."

Since each year, students in any given teacher's classroom are different and very diverse, it is important that annual plans be created in a way that they can be revised later, based on the actual pace of that particular classroom of students. Since there is no set way to create an annual plan, it is an advantage that they can be flexible. Annual plans have many advantages, and they can be very beneficial through the planning processes for teachers who choose to use them.

Resources are the building blocks for planning a unit. There are several types of resources that can be consulted when planning a unit such as the Standard Course of Study, educational websites that include lesson plans and assessments, museum websites, colleagues, professional development opportunities and other educational resources. Consulting several resources when planning units is so important, because oftentimes, these resources are where we get our great ideas as teachers!

Reflection: Teaching Lesson One

Last Monday, I taught a short social studies lesson about Habitat for Humanity in my third grade classroom at Salem Elementary. I had mixed feelings before teaching the lesson and while planning, and I have mixed feelings after having taught it.

My teacher only reserves 30 minutes for social studies, and this is not even every single day. So, when she told me that I would have from 3:00 to 3:30 to teach a lesson, I was nervous about designing a lesson for this class that would be interesting and interactive while only been a half hour lesson. The week before teaching my lesson, I observed her class for a few hours to fulfill an assignment for another class. During that time, I also observed a short social studies lesson. The lesson was focused on "the common good" and what we can do for our community. They were reading out of their text book, and a small part of the chapter on Habitat for Humanity seemed very insignificant. Then and there, I decided that I would use the thirty minutes I was given for my lesson to expand a little bit on Habitat for Humanity and get the students talking and thinking about this organization and other ways they can help their community.

I decided that if I went into the lesson, activated their prior knowledge by allowing them to discuss what they remembered about Habitat for Humanity from the textbook and had a discussion with the class about how they help their community, I would have a little bit of time left to have them examine some photographs of Habitat volunteers in action. I didn't feel as if I would have time to have the students engage in a writing activity, since there are several students in this class on different levels and I was teaching the whole class. However, I thought that the students would benefit from looking at several photographs of volunteers doing different jobs and collaborating to build houses. I would then have the students discuss what each picture was depicting and how those people were helping their community. I would wrap up the lesson by asking the students how they thought they could help in their communities.

On Monday, I taught my lesson, and overall it went VERY smoothly and the students were very cooperative. Everyone was engaged for the thirty minutes that I was teaching. One thing that I would change if I were to teach this lesson again would be to have several MORE photographs instead of just one per group. Although the students were talking for the entire five minutes that I gave them and they were on task, I feel like they would have benefited from seeing several more photographs. If I had more time to teach, I would have them write about how they could help in their communities in addition to having them discuss it.

When planning this lesson, I had intended to use a visual arts objective since I was having the students interpret photographs. When I was looking for a 3rd grade visual arts objective to fit this activity, I could not find one that sounded right to me. So, I decided to use a language arts objective for oral communication in order for my lesson to still be interdisciplinary. If I were to teach this again, I would try to integrate more objectives from the arts. Another thing I could have done would have been to integrate technology somehow and show students the interactive student website for Habitat for Humanity. This site offers several games and activities for students.

Considering the fact that I only had thirty minutes to teach, I think my lesson went well. It could have been improved in the different ways that I mentioned, but overall I felt comfortable teaching and did not have any issues.

Diving into the Oily Gulf

Earlier today, I saw a news broadcast of an underwater video of the oily Gulf of Mexico. Seeing this, on day 81 of the disaster, made me think really hard for the first time since the first week of the spill. How significantly has this already affected wildlife and how will it continue to affect wildlife? Just how much will this disaster affect society and the generations to come?

Although this is a morbid disaster, children need to be aware of its impact on communities. The oil spill provides great fodder for integrating social studies with science (particularly environmental and health sciences) and math. A few essential and other questions I thought of to begin thinking about teaching this topic include:

1. How has this oil spill already affected marine and other wildlife? How many millions of fish have been killed (math)? How many more fish and other animals will be killed?

2. How does this affect society as a whole in areas where the oil has travelled?

3. How does this disaster affect marine sports, fishing, boating, and other aspects of coastal culture?

4. Does the oil spill affect inland states? If so, how?

5. How does this affect our health? Will we still be able to eat fresh seafood? Will our drinking water still be safe?

6. What long-term environmental and health affects do you think this spill will have on our Earth?

The New York Times' Education page features a section on "The Gulf Oil Spill in the Classroom." This page includes several ideas for lesson plan ideas on the oil spill. You can visit the page at http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/the-gulf-oil-spill-in-the-classroom/

Photo found at http://ootp.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/louisiana-oil-spill_100406.png

Educating Children about History at the NC Museum of History

Yesterday, I had the privilege of joining my class for a field trip at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. Having gone through undergraduate school thinking that my calling was the field of public history (educating the public about history through museums, historic sites, historic literature, memorials, historic buildings, etc.), I felt a little bit nostalgic visiting the museum that I had been to so many times while a student at UNC. Nonetheless, this trip made me very excited on getting to teach students about social studies and different cultures.

We began our visit to the museum by being introduced to Debra Nichols and Jessica Pratt, two experts working in the Education and Outreach departments of the museum. While a classroom was being prepared for us and a computer presentation was being set up, Mrs. Nichols took us to the third floor of the museum, where we explored a photo exhibit that portrayed North Carolinians during the Great Depression. The exhibit featured photographs of children of all ages, workers in different trades, and people of all socio-economic standings. Students can listen and watch a video and they can explore all of the photos. I think that allowing students to explore this exhibit would be ideal in educating them about children their age and what they were going through during that hard time in our nation's history.

After viewing the photograph exhibit, we went back downstairs to the classroom, where we listened to a presentation about the educational resources available for teachers and students. We learned about a resource packet that is available online that makes many resources and information about field trips and tours available to teachers. We were also shown kits that can be mailed to classrooms that include lesson plans, artifacts and other activities for students to engage with in their own classrooms. One opportunity for students that I found very fascinating was the TarHeel Junior Historian program. This program invites students from 4th to 12th grade to enter into essay contests, art contests and other contests. It directly involves students in the museum and they have a conference for all members where they recognize the participants of the many different contests. Assuming I will be teaching 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, I plan to adamantly advertise this opportunity in my classroom and get all of my students involved in the contests. Later during our tour, we viewed an exhibit of all of the students who had been awarded in the different contests. In fact, the "Chapter of the Year" for the program just happened to come from the elementary school that I attended, Morehead City Elementary School!!

The exhibits we explored during our tour were excellent and enthralling. One that stood out the most to me was the Native American exhibit that featured a re-created Indian woman whose remains had been found and transported to Chapel Hill so that museums could create molds of her actual skull. This model was so life-like, and it would give students a feel of what Native Americans in North Carolina actually looked like. The clothing and jewelry she was wearing are also indicative of Native American life. Other exhibits we were able to view were the sports hall of fame, a 1920s drug store, an extensive exhibit of Thomas Day's historic cabinets and furniture, and a Jewish North Carolinian main exhibit. Each of these had so much to offer to young students; each provided interactive pieces such as tapes that students could listen to or videos that they could watch. In fourth grade, learning about the history, geography and people of North Carolina is key, but it is very important in other grades as well, as they learn about their community, their civic rights, the economy, and history in general. I thoroughly enjoyed this trip the the North Carolina Museum of History, and I will definitely be taking my future students there.

Components of an Outstanding Social Studies Lesson

Having majored in history in my undergraduate schooling, I have looked forward to the day that I would learn to teach social studies and the social sciences in my own classroom. According to a 2006 Jennings and Rentner report, mentioned in our text 'Dynamic Social Studies for Constructivist Classrooms, ' "To find additional time for reading and math,...71% of districts are reducing time spent on other subjects in elementary schools...The subject most affected is social studies." Unfortunately, many teachers have joined the migration away from meaningful social studies instruction in the name of standardized testing of math and language arts skills. On a brighter note, there is a way that social studies can still be integrated while focusing on language arts and math. According to our text, "referred to as integrated learning, the practice of joining together elementary school subjects is based on the idea that the real world doesn't compartmentalize life into subject matter categories: life demands that we all must use a complex network of entwined skills and information to take on real issues." The practice of integrating social studies prevents the discipline from being ignored in the elementary school classroom.

We can integrate social studies into language arts by having our students read and write biographies and historical fiction, for example. There are also several ways that science can be integrated into math, such as interpreting graphs and data that show social statistics, measuring distances between places on a map, or creating a time line, among many other activities. Social studies can be integrated into science through activities such as environmental awareness projects and how the environment affects society. Of course, social studies goes hand in hand with the arts, since interpreting and exploring the arts give students a first-hand look into cultures they are learning about. So, an integrated social studies lesson is key in making sure that social studies exists in the classroom. In addition to integration, there are several other components that make up a good social studies lesson, such as:

1. Incorporating as much culture and art as possible, such as music, creative movement and dance, and drama;

2. Making sure that students have access to several types of literature; not only text books, but different types of trade books such as informational books, historical fiction, biographies, and folk literature;

3. Providing a hook to draw students into the subject matter and pique their interest;

4. Ensuring that your lesson coincides with national and state standards and objectives;

5. Ensuring that students' individual levels of development are addressed;

6. Providing hands-on learning experiences for children such as allowing them to manipulate maps, globes, compasses, computers, timelines, charts, graphs, timing devices, cameras, calculators and realia of cultural objects that the students are learning about;

7. Creating opportunities for children to extend their learning from the classroom into the community through field trips where they can speak with and listen to historians, artists, scientists and experts on many different topics;

8. Allowing students to use computer based multimedia such as the internet to supplement their learning in the classroom (the internet provides students with opportunities to conduct research on any topic of interest related to social studies);

9. Allowing students access to hypermedia and other presentation software to create presentations;

10. Implementing effective projects that engage students in social studies for long periods of time throughout the school year;

11. Presenting the material in a meaningful way that engages students and allows them to make connections to their own lives.

These eleven items should be components of a successful and well-planned social studies lesson. Social studies should be hands-on and meaningful for students in order for them to enjoy it (and not think of it as boring!). Knowing how to teach meaningful social studies lessons that incorporate other disciplines is key in being able to implement this subject in the classroom.

Integrating the Arts: North Carolina Museum of Art

This past Thursday, July 1st, I had the opportunity to visit and tour the newly redone North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC. One of my classes, Integrating Social Studies and the Arts, took a field trip to learn ways that we could use the museum as a resource in our classrooms and for field trips. To kick off the visit, we were given a presentation by the education director on two educational kits that can be reserved by teachers to use in classrooms. The first kit was the Art Detective Discovery Kit, which is available for grades 3 and 4, and allows students to use their critical eye to explore art. The second kit was Rainstorm Brainstorm, available to grades 5 through 8. The Rainstorm Brainstorm kit involves designing a pond as a "work of land art," which incorporates science and the arts into an engaging and fun activity for students.

Following our session in the auditorium where we learned about these educational kits, a docent took us to the galleries, where we toured galleries which were separated according to the artist. The first work of art that we observed was called "Eye of the Pyramid" by Libensky. This piece of artwork is simply two pieces of green glass positioned together so that it seems as if there is a pyramid carved into the center. This piece of artwork, as well as many others that we saw, are windows into the kinds of art that people of other cultures and time periods created. Viewing and exploring art allows students to think about the kinds of things that other cultures valued and thought were important to represent through their art. Cultural understanding is an integral part of any social studies curriculum.

We also observed several works of art that could be easily integrated into a math lesson. These types of pieces allow students to think mathematically.

Several galleries dedicated to individual artists revealed the types of art inherent to certain time periods as well as certain cultures. Our docent, Harriette Weinstein, was very helpful and told interesting stories about each piece of art that kept us enthralled and enabled us to understand the types of things we could teach our future students about these pieces.

We ended our trip by picking up several brochures on resources, site maps and membership applications, as well as visiting the museum gift shop. The museum gift shop features several small souveniers such as pencils, magnets, erasers and postcards as well as smaller versions of the pieces of art that we observed throughout the museum.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome, readers of Sarah's Educational Musings! I am excited to say that I am new to the world of blogging and look forward to sharing many of my experiences, thoughts and interesting findings with all of you. Please stay tuned for many blogs about what inspires me, what does not, and everything in between! Thanks for stopping by!