Ready to Embark on the Next Challenge

The sixteen weeks of social studies methods has now come to an end, but I will carry all of my experiences with me when I go into student teaching and in my future endeavors in my own classroom. Right at the start of this course, I quickly noticed how fast paced it would be. This was very difficult for me and I struggled to keep up through the entire semester. As far as a life-long skill, I have learned how important it is to time manage my time. I am a slow worker, however I have always managed to get my work done on time. For this class, it was a constant struggle and I should have made a schedule for myself as to what needed to get completed each day in order to not feel like I was in such a rush towards the end of the semester.

Based on the learning outcomes for this course, I feel that I have come close to achieving most. The third learning outcome on the syllabus is one I really feel I have mastered through my experience in this class. This includes planning lessons and getting materials ready to engage students in inquiry learning. When I first came into this course, I did not have any idea what inquiry learning was. In fact, a few days before I had to teach an inquiry lesson in front of an entire class I met with Dr. Smirnova a few times. I was so nervous she even gave me a hug. She explained what this method was to me and helped me find an engaging tool to use with the students. By the end of teaching my own lesson and watching my peers teach inquiry lessons, I had a concrete understanding of what it consists of, how it is implemented, and different ways to do so. With technology, Dr. Smirnova introduced me to QR codes and I thank her for doing so. This lesson helped me realize how important it is to use technology in the classroom at this day and age. The students enjoyed taking turns scanning the codes with the cell phone and working together to solve the problem.

Learning outcome number five of understanding the role of technology in social studies today does not end there. Throughout the course, Dr. Smirnova introduced us to a new form of technology basically every single week. My favorite use of technology with students is kahoot. I think its a great way to pre-assess or post-assess students on material in a way that its not so much a test. The students get to interact with one another, communicate, and review the information they just learned. Even though Kelli and I had difficulties, I think move note is also a great website. Students love to watch videos, so I would be very interested to see how playing a voice recording and having the students watch it would be like in the classroom. Several other tools were very useful such as symbaloo, socrative, wordle, and even Skype.
Thinking about my teaching experience, I had successes and failures. I know one improvement I need to still continue to work on is speaking up. My partner was very good at controlling the classroom when the students were not listening because she would project her voice. I will be working on being more firm with the students in order for them to pay attention and understand what is to be done and what is not tolerated. Also, I learned how important it is to really study and practice teaching the information to the students before teaching a direct instruction lesson. I kept reading off of my PowerPoint presentation and I wish I had not done so. The teachers need you to explain information and not just read one sentence about it off of the slides. I was very nervous, since it was my first time, but will need to improve with that as time goes on. Lastly, academic language is a must! Dr. Smirnova would inform me when I would say "guys" or "gonna." The more aware I am of saying it, the quicker I will be able to get rid of the habit.
As far as successes, Nicole and I planned lessons that the students enjoyed! Our "Who Am I?" guided practice activity was interactive, which the students loved! The difference in enthusiasm between that activity and the timeline activity on the Smart Board was very big. The students would look at all of their pictures and then on the count of three lift the correct picture up and shout the person's name. Knowing that the fifth graders enjoyed this and were practicing the leaders of the American Revolution will encourage me to use this again in my student teaching placement with fifth graders. As mentioned above, the inquiry lesson was much more exciting than I had expected. I did not know how much the students would like the iPhones. The students were engaged in solving the mysteries as well. After a clue was answered, the students would all be talking to one another at a fast pace. They were so enthusiastic if the clue helped confirm someone or led them directly to another person. I loved the use of a real-life situation for the cooperative learning lesson. Students love to play games and I felt they would understand how to create a game board through their own experience of seeing so many and using them at home. There were a few groups that had difficulty getting everyone to agree on ideas and everyone carrying out only their role. For the most part, I saw positive social interaction and the boards were so creative it was rewarding to see how into the creation the students were. Having the students excited to play them during recess made it even a better feeling.

Comparing myself to the beginning of the course, I feel prepared to go into student teaching in the fall and at the beginning I felt very unprepared. I now know what direct, inquiry, and cooperative learning lesson plans each entitle. I thought there was only one type of lesson plan before this class. Through my successes and failures, I have learned some aspects of what makes a good teacher and what does not. For example, the twenty-first century is having a huge advance with technology. If I still used an overhead projector I would be boring the students and they would not be learning the material. I also grasped a good idea of what the Ed TPA questions look and are worded like and what specific parts they are asking about. Having practiced doing Ed TPA will help me when I create my lessons, record my videos, and go to actually answer the questions.

In the future, I will definitely be incorporating social studies through other subjects. The blog on the 103 ways to teach geography showed me how you can use geography with so many different aspects. Even just reading the students an informational text on an economics concept is an excellent way to integrate two subjects and have the students learn some social studies content and vocabulary. When teaching lessons, I am going to incorporate the artifact bag lesson. I feel it is so engaging to involve the students in the learning and fun when the students have to use clues to form a conclusion. When the students are not participating in a cooperative learning lesson or a inquiry lesson, there will be interaction with the Smart Board or with the students to keep them awake and paying attention. My social studies classroom will include the five elements of cooperative learning when appropriate and the five elements of teaching social studies during lessons.

~ Christine Brown

What does T R R F C C mean to you?

The beginning of the "What Else is Social Studies?" project was a bumpy road, but had its advantages in the long run. My partner and I thought that we were assigned global education as our area of study and research. At the end of two days, when consulting with a few classmates, we realized that they were creating their project on global education. Also, when Kelli and I started to work on character education, we were using a presentation site called biteslide and it was not advanced enough. Between our topic changing and our form of presentation changing, researching and creating our project was very eventful.

Biteslide is a website that allows you to create as many slides as you want to present to an audience. The backgrounds that could be chosen are a lot more colorful and have a variety of designs compared to most presentation templates. I liked this better because it draws the audience's attention to the screen. It also allows pictures to be researched on the side and dragged onto the slide like Google Docs. This is much simpler than having to save images to the desktop and upload files. Another interesting feature is that the creator of the website will answer any questions you have as you create your presentation. Kelli and I asked him if there was spell check or hyperlinks before we decided not to use this to present our project. We asked around ten o'clock at night and he answered around six o'clock in the morning. The individual is very quick in responding to his users. Lastly, he provides websites to use as helpful research tools and tips on the side of the page. The websites may be something never used before that

require exploration and the tip could be that the students can use specific websites only the teacher allows when creating a project. This is managed in the project settings. For our specific project, we needed to be able to use hyperlinks to show the different research tools we used as well as refer to lesson plans and social studies standards. The presentation would be too confusing and not flow nicely switching between the slides and all of the websites on internet tabs.

As I said above, this website not working out for us had an advantage. I was able to learn about a tool called MoveNote that has you present in a different way than just reading through PowerPoint slides. Instead, Kelli and I created a script and recorded our presentation on a webcam. The  class got to listen to our presentation through a video. When recording, we were able to explain everything we wanted to about one slide, pause the recording, and then continue talking about the next slide. One problem with this is that if you mess up on the eighth slide, there is no way to delete and re-record just that specific slide. Our presentation had several small imperfections because we were not able to edit our video without starting all over again. We did not realize that as we recorded our video, we were supposed to switch the slides. When we played the video for the class, we thought we would be able to click the arrow and move the slides. This made us have to go through our PowerPoint after the video played in order for our classmates to see the material we were talking about. I felt that being assigned MoveNote was an excellent learning experience. We had to figure out how to use the tool, how we were going to present our information, and learned another way to incorporate technology into the classroom.

When we started to create the presentation on character education and values/moral education, we were going to start out with the components of character education. Dr. Smirnova brought to our attention that we should ask the students what character is. We had not even put into thought that people may not know what this word means or may believe different views that it is either developed or something everyone is born with. This small discussion gets the students’ minds thinking, allows for different perspectives, and has the students come up with a general definition. 

We began exploring the general idea of what character education is. When we first researched this social studies idea, we thought the components consisted of an individual being loyal, patient, compassionate, diligent, forgiving, responsible, and more.

Through further discussion with my classmate, Kelli, and Dr. Smirnova, these adjectives were discovered to be traits an individual can have to describe his or her character rather than components that make up character education. We should have done more research on our own, but instead assumed the website Cite given to us as a reference displayed the components. This observation helped me realize how important it is to always consult more than one resource when learning new information. Dr. Smirnova showed us the graduate students Prezi presentation that stated the six pillars of character education to Kelli and I. As I began to read through different articles on the pillars, I found an excellent website. Cite The six pillars include, trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. As described, these are “…values that are not political, religious, or culturally biased” (“The Six Pillars of Character,” 2015, p.1). Trustworthiness is about being honest, loyal, having courage to do the right thing, and standing up for your friends, family, and country. The key to respect is following the Golden Rule as well as being considerate, tolerant and accepting of differences.

To have responsibility means persevering, doing your best, setting a good example for others, being self-disciplined, and planning ahead. Taking turns, sharing, not taking advantage of others, listening to others, and being open-minded all fall under the pillar of fairness. An important pillar is caring by being kind, forgiving, helpful, and compassionate towards others. Citizenship defines the last pillar of cooperating, volunteering, obeying laws and rules, getting involved in the community, and protecting the environment. 

The different pillars are each described by multiple phrases and the various ways of viewing each are displayed to give a well-rounded understanding. 

The most important activity cite having to do with including character education in the classroom is having the students construct banners representing the six pillars of character. In order for students to not be arguing over or upset with the pillar they receive, a game can be played to choose the groups through kahoot.it. This game will be an excellent review of character development with the students before they begin the activity. In this case, the students will be answering questions based on what good character is and the six pillars of character education. This game is social, enjoyable, and keeps students on their toes in order to answer the questions quickly to receive more points. On the final score, the teacher will read off the six pillars rotating them in the same order. The students are assigned their specific pillar this way.

The students split into their groups around the classroom. Before constructing anything on the banner, it needs to be cut into the shape of a pillar. Parents will be invited in on this day and can help their children do this, especially since most elementary students are not familiar with what a pillar looks like. On the banner, the students are to use black construction paper and cut out the letters spelling their pillar. The students will be given large letter stencils to do so. The students are to discuss with one another and figure out what type of characteristics should be displayed that go under their pillar. The parents can help give the students suggestions if they are stuck. When the students come to a consensus, they are to look through magazines and find pictures and phrases that match what the pillar is known for. I think it is important for the students to lay out their pictures, phrases, and letters that spell their pillar. This allows the students to see how much room is left and what qualities are missing that define the pillar. Everyone is to work together to glue everything on the pillar. Each group will present their pillar. Every student is to talk about what the pillar means and why a phrase or picture was chosen to represent the pillar. As written, “…each must be held individually responsible and accountable for doing his or her own share of the work and for learning what has been targeted to be learned” (Stahl, 1994, p.3). Each of the students contributed in creating part of the pillar and is to participate in the explanation of what he or she found. The teacher is to hang the pillars up around the classroom as reminders to the students of what having good character looks like and ways in which one can develop it. This activity is engaging and interactive for the students to remember the qualities of their pillar. Even though the students only focused on one pillar, their peers presented the others to the students to understand how to display the other parts of good character. As mentioned, they can always be referenced, as they are located around the classroom.


The misconception Kelli and I had of thinking our topic was global education was helpful in knowing even more information on top of what Nicole B. and Ainsley spoke about in their presentation. Doing research on my own allowed me to see my own perspective of global education and my peers perspective. One Youtube video I found really showed me how global education is incorporated into the classroom using technology. I became more aware of how interested the students are and how eye-opening it is to see how another part of the world performs day to day activities. Through all of the information gathered on the topic, I connected global education to character education.

I discovered that there is an actually character counts week in schools. When I presented this information to my classmates, several of them did not know that this existed either. Through my research, I figured out that schools devote the third week in October to learning about what good character is and what each of the six pillars of character education entitles. As written, “Global education emphasizes he unity and interdependence of human society, developing a sense of self and appreciation of cultural diversity, affirmation of social justice and human rights, as well as building peace and actions for sustainable future in different times and places” (“What is global education?” 2012, p.1). The biggest global perspective present in character education is identity and cultural diversity. To incorporate global education in the classroom, students can first be informed that several different countries around the world are also participating in character counts week. In advance, the teacher could try and set up a Skype date with a teacher in another country. The students would be able to talk to the other students and hear how they are developing character. This gives the students awareness and a different perspective of how students miles and miles away are learning the same content in a different style. 


The WESS project has taught me that the more research I do, the more ways to incorporate ideas in the classroom, technology, information, and clarifications I will find. It is better to explore several ideas and programs before settling and choosing just one. Character education is not a topic I thought would fall under social studies. My project and my peers' projects have expanded my horizons to realize how many aspects are incorporated into the social studies curriculum.

~ Christine Brown

References

Build Future Leaders of Character. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2015, from    http://characterfirsteducation.com/c/curriculum.php

Stahl, Robert J. “The Essential Elements of Cooperative Learning in the Classroom.” Educational Resources Information Center. Used with permission.

The Six Pillars of Character. (2015). Retrieved April 27, 2015, from https://charactercounts.org/sixpillars.html

What is global education? (2012). Retrieved April 27, 2015, from http://www.globaleducation.edu.au/global-education/what-is-global-ed.html

Worldwide Character Counts! Week. (2014). Retrieved April 28, 2015, from http://charactercounts.org/pdf/ccweek/resources/2014/4-2014-Lesson-Plans-for-Elementary.pdf