Digging Deeper Using Artifact Bags

Hello fellow Bloggers!
I want to share with you the experience I had in my social studies methods class.  We were each asked to create and artifact bag that correlated with the lesson we taught in fieldwork.  You may be thinking to yourself, what exactly is an artifact bag???  This is a valid question and I found myself in your position prior to being asked to make one.  An artifact bag is based on a historic moment, place, person, event, etc.  In the bag there are clues.  Each clue helps the person receiving the bag to figure out what it is based on. I chose to base mine on a historical person that I discussed in my lesson, John White.  he was a colonist that settled on the Lost Colony of Roanoke and also was the one who  came back and found all the colonists had disappeared.  My clues were and old map of North Carolina, a picture of the Croatoan tree, and a picture of the English ships crossing the ocean with supplies.  I was glad when someone in my group was able to accurately put my clues together and come up with the person.  The process of making the artifact bags was harder than I thought it would be.  it was tough to come up with helpful artifacts that would help the students figure out the problem.  In the future if I use artifact bags in my classroom I would like t make the artifacts more authentic.  One girl in my group also had a map, but she made it look distressed and tied it with a rope.  Another person brought in real coins.  These are the types of artifacts that make the activity fun for students.  With more time and resources I would like to think I would have been able to make my own artifact bag more authentic.  I wish there was more time to got through my peers' artifacts and figure out what they were based on.  With the time limit some were forced to tell us what their bags were about.  Overall I like this project and think that it is a fun and interactive inquiry lesson that when given the time and resources could be very effective in the classroom!  Here is the slideshow for my artifact bag!

Thinking Thankful Thoughts

With Thanksgiving behind us it is important to continue thinking about the good things we have in our lives.  For many this is difficult during the holiday season.  However it can lead to living a more positive life.  After reading the article "Choose To Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier." by Arthur C. Brooks I was reminded how important it is to stay thankful.  He made the point that being thankful is easy when everything in your life is going well, but that is not when we should be most thankful.  We should be thankful for the little things in our lives when other everything is not as we wish it was.  It may sound obvious to say that thinking happy thoughts will make you happier, but it is one of those things that is easier said than done.  Being thankful year round is a conscious decision that people have to make and it is a worthwhile one in my opinion.  I am going to start appreciating the little things I have to be thankful for everyday and embrace the happy moments I get the honor of experiencing and I hope you all choose to do the same!  Here is the link to Brooks' article.  Wish you all extra happy holidays and keep thinking those thankful thoughts!

NY State Teachers Inquiry Design

I believe that using inquiry lessons in the classroom is an important part of making sure your students are getting a well-rounded understanding of the lesson you are teaching.  In order for them to understand the topic, it is important for them to explore it using their own skills.  There are times when we as teachers are expected to give our students facts and information, but it is also important for them to understand they can explore these ideas themselves and do not need to rely on us to teach them everything!  Teachers do not just teach their student, we are also responsible for showing them how to learn on their own.  This inquiry model is a way for teachers to organize their lessons for their students.  It helps them organize their ideas, follow the given questions, and see what tasks are expected of them.  In the future I would like to try this method with my students when doing inquiry lessons.  I feel that it is a wonderful way to either introduce or refresh students' memory about what is involved in the inquiry process. I would not rely just on this model for my lessons, but would definitely incorporate it my lesson plans!

 

Keeping Up With The Current Events

Another day, another new teaching experience! Today in class myself and a partner presented a lesson on current events.  We used an article from Newsela that discussed women in Pakistan who are not receiving appropriate education and what Michelle Obama is doing to help this issue. We had our peers debate the question "Is education important for everyone, including women?"  One side of the room was arguing for equal education, while the other side played the role of traditional Pakistanis and argued against women having the right to an education.  Prior to moderating this debate we went over the article and the rules and skills that are active when having a debate.  This was the first time I was involved in a debate or created one, so it was a new experience for me as well!  I enjoyed the lesson and feel that it was helpful for people to better understand the article. The reason for this is because in order to support their claims, they had to find evidence and facts in the text to back them up.  I would love to have a debate in my classroom one day.  I think it is an effective way for students to force themselves to see situations from someone else's point of view, like the people who had to pretend to be Pakistani.  It is a wonderful learning experience and am glad that we were able to do it with our peers!  Here is the link to the presentation that we used for our current event lesson!  We also used the chance to show our class about a wonderful sixteen year old girl from Pakistan who has been been bravely standing up for girls and women in her country for years.  Her name is Malala Yousafzia and she was eleven when she first started speaking out about women and girls' rights to education.  Since then she has been shot three times and attacked several others, both physically and verbally.  Her dedication and bravery was noticed when she won several awards for what she has done, including a Peace Prize and Global Citizen Award!  I was glad that we were able to make this connection for our classmates, there are also articles about Malala on Newsela!

  

Native American Tribe Lesson

Creating a lesson around one specific Native American Tribe was fun!  I have never learned so many specifics about one tribe.  Then each of the other groups shared what they learned about their own tribe.  My group was assigned the Muscogee Creek Nation.  I really enjoyed researching this nation and figuring out what their lives were like.  I was happy to hear that they are still around and were able to form a government of their own with their own leaders.  The process of putting this project together was easy for my group.  I feel that we are starting to understand what each off our strong suits are when it comes to working in groups.  It was also helpful to be able to divide the information into different sections.  I was in charge of finding the history of the Muscogee Creek Nation.  When the information is divided up between group members it also allows for the quality of the information and understanding of the material to be stronger.  I felt very comfortable and confident in my own understanding of the material.  Which made me more confident when teaching the lesson. I feel that this was also true for the other groups, based on my observations of their presentations.  Which made me excited to hear what they had to say and what they found out about their projects.  I also liked how my group was able to make the lesson interactive by wearing moccasins and doing the traditional dance with the class.  Here is a copy of our presentation on the Muscogee Creek Nation!

                                    

Creating Pre and Post Tests

For the my fieldwork my group had to create both a pre-test and a post test for the fifth grade class. This was new to me  In other methods classes we assessed students, but did not create a document for the class as a whole.  The creation of the pre-test differed from creating the post test.  The first one was mostly about finding out what the students already knew about the topics you were going to teach.  The questions we came up with were vague for the most part.  For example, we knew we were going to talk about colonists and Native American, therefore one of our questions was about where they thought the colonists were from, another was about who lived on the land.  As for the post test, we were more concerned with assessing how well the students understand the material we taught them.  With this being said, the questions we put on the post test were more specific.  They dealt with names of places or people that we talked about in our lessons.  During the process of making both of these documents I tried to find the most important pieces of information from my portion of our lessons and make a question for it.  Our group wanted to make sure that we were assessing students on the information that was most important instead of picking random pieces of information and putting it on the tests.
                

Fieldwork Feedback for the Future

The month of October was used for fieldwork in my social studies methods class.  The class was divided into four groups.  Within our groups we created three different types of lessons.  The first lesson  was a direct instruction lesson.  The second was an inquiry lesson, and the last lesson that we taught was a cooperative lesson.
The lesson planning process was different for this experience than past lesson planning because I was not creating the lessons alone.  I was working with three other classmates to create the lessons that we performed for the fifth grade class.  This was my first time creating a group lesson plan.  One of the biggest surprises to me was how hard it was to find time to meet with my group members.  Two of us lived on campus and two commuted.   Between work, class, and extracurricular activities we all were very busy.  Another difficulty during the lesson planning process was making sure that everyone was included in the process.  Since there were four of us, it was important to make sure that each of us contributed ideas to the lessons.  When there are several people working on one document simultaneously, it can be hard for everyone to get their ideas across and have the rest of the group understand.  However, we managed to come up with creative and engaging lessons for the fifth grade class!
Performing the lessons was also a very different experience compared to what I was used to.  I had never taught a lesson with my peers.  this was difficult for me because normally when I teach I am only trying to remember what I have to say.  In this case I still have to be familiar with the material I am teaching, but also with what my peers are teaching as well and how to transition from a topic I was teaching to what they were going to talk about next or before me.  This was an area in fieldwork that could be improved.  The transitions were somewhat unorganized.  I now see that we should have paid more attention to this during the planning and practicing sessions we had.  This was mainly a concern with the direct instruction, when the lessons were teacher based.  However, my group did a good job with supporting each other during the inquiry and cooperative lessons.  As one would speak, the others would stand around the room or scan the room to see if there were questions or students who did not understand.  Also, during the cooperative lesson, there was one teacher candidate at each table working with and overseeing how each group was doing.  There were a few groups that had trouble working together, but i feel that we managed to diffuse these situations in a quick and appropriate manner,