I am always amazed at how creative my classmates are in their unit plans. The unit plans that were presented so far have been truly inspiring! I am definitely going to use many of the ideas of my classmates' lesson plans in my own teaching. I love how everyone used such a variety of resources to present their lesson plans from music to documentaries. I especially liked Jacob's idea of the two versions of the Justin Bieber song. I'm sure that students would thoroughly enjoy that exercise!
As for my own lesson plan, I thought my strengths were in the hands on activities that I created and the multiple primary sources integrated into the lesson plans. In my fourth lesson I planned for students to participate in a mock peace conference that occured between the British and the Americans after the American Revolution. The students would be divided into two groups and asked to make a list of demands to the other side. They would have to work together in order to come up with a peace treaty at the end of the lesson. Students would then compare the peace treaty they made with the actual Treaty of Paris of 1783. I was the most proud of this activity because I think it will truly be effective in the classroom for students to understand really the basic arguments of each side during the war and which direction both countries would go after its conclusion. Another hands-on activity occured in the first lesson for my unit in which I planned for students to participate in a debate so that they could understand again the opposing viewpoints and arguments of each side of the war.
I also really liked my idea for students to work on a journal, pretending that they were a colonist in America during the American Revolution and to describe what this person's life might have been like throughout the war. Students were given a prompt at the end of each lesson in order to reflect on what they had learned and also as an opportunity for them to be creative. They could create a character for their journal and have that character progress as did the war. At the end, the students could review their journals to better understand the war and its overall impact.
I thought this lesson plan was easier to accomplish than the first simply because I knew what to expect. In my first unit I spent a lot longer time just figuring out how to plan my lessons using the provided frameworks. I tried to pair my lessons with the frameworks before truly knowing what I wanted to cover or do in the lesson and that turned out to be a disaster. This time I had a relatively basic idea of what I wanted to do in each lesson and then chose the framework that would best match that idea. This worked out much easier. Overall, I was really happy with this lesson and I cannot wait to be able to teach it in a classroom one day.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Week 13: A Better Way to Use PowerPoint
As much as I enjoy making a prezi presentation, it still cannot beat a traditional PowerPoint. Though the PowerPoint presentation is abused and often used poorly in the classroom, it is the best and most efficient tool that can be used to teach a lesson if used properly. A prezi presentation is visually appealing ... so too can be a PowerPoint presentation. A prezi presentation is nonlinear... so too can be a PowerPoint presentation. A prezi presentation is also animated ... and so too can a PowerPoint presentation. There is truly nothing that a PowerPoint presentation cannot do in comparison to a prezi.
Whenever I make a PowerPoint presentation, it generally takes me hours to complete it because I thoroughly enjoy making my presentation as visually appealing as possible. The various PowerPoint presentations that I created for the last unit were designed to enhance the lesson in some shape or form rather than to be a monotonous bullet list of information that students would be required to write down. Due to this purpose, I think I spent more time creating my Power Points than writing my four lessons. Now that I have been introduced to even more functions of PowerPoint, I am truly excited to take my PowerPoint presentations to another level for unit two. With a topic like the American Revolution, it should be easy to find primary source backgrounds and sources to enhance the topic of the lessons. I am especially excited to use PowerPoint for my propaganda lesson. My only concern for teachers would be the time that it would take to create these visually powerful presentations. How can teachers find the time to make the most out of PowerPoint?
Whenever I make a PowerPoint presentation, it generally takes me hours to complete it because I thoroughly enjoy making my presentation as visually appealing as possible. The various PowerPoint presentations that I created for the last unit were designed to enhance the lesson in some shape or form rather than to be a monotonous bullet list of information that students would be required to write down. Due to this purpose, I think I spent more time creating my Power Points than writing my four lessons. Now that I have been introduced to even more functions of PowerPoint, I am truly excited to take my PowerPoint presentations to another level for unit two. With a topic like the American Revolution, it should be easy to find primary source backgrounds and sources to enhance the topic of the lessons. I am especially excited to use PowerPoint for my propaganda lesson. My only concern for teachers would be the time that it would take to create these visually powerful presentations. How can teachers find the time to make the most out of PowerPoint?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Week 12: de Bono's Thinking Hats
In my limited experience in the typical American classroom, I have noticed a lack of red and green hats in everyday instruction. The white hat is perhaps the easiest one for a teacher to place upon his or her head and it is used in a classroom every single day through lectures and PowerPoint presentations. Both the yellow and black hats are often used simultaneously in instruction usually through comparisons and the blue hat is also used generally at the end of a unit or lesson to reiterate the main ideas of the day to the students. When it comes to creativity and emotions, many teachers fall short of this kind of instruction.
In the classroom that I am currently in for novice teaching, emotion is perhaps the least used hat of the entire bunch. I think this is a result of the subjects that my CT teaches: government and psychology. The government classroom is the least likely to have emotion placed into the curriculum because most of the instruction is rather dry rules and procedures of the federal government. Similarly, in Psychology a lot of the instruction is explanation of an experiment or a description of a process of the brain. These are very scientific like subjects than generally appeal to the brain rather than the heart.
In history, however, the red hat is perhaps the easiest hat to achieve in the curriculum. History is all about people and their stories. How can emotion not be a part of a person's life story? I think one of the most emotional stories that could be told in a history classroom is one about a mother with every male child off to war (kind of like Saving Private Ryan). You would have to be a robot not to have so kind of emotion disturbance with that type of story. There are countless of other examples throughout history that can be presented to students in such a way that would allow them to feel a part of the historical character's life and empathize with their situation. That is why primary sources are absolutely critical to a social studies classroom. They help students to better understand the story or viewpoint of a historical person.
In the classroom that I am currently in for novice teaching, emotion is perhaps the least used hat of the entire bunch. I think this is a result of the subjects that my CT teaches: government and psychology. The government classroom is the least likely to have emotion placed into the curriculum because most of the instruction is rather dry rules and procedures of the federal government. Similarly, in Psychology a lot of the instruction is explanation of an experiment or a description of a process of the brain. These are very scientific like subjects than generally appeal to the brain rather than the heart.
In history, however, the red hat is perhaps the easiest hat to achieve in the curriculum. History is all about people and their stories. How can emotion not be a part of a person's life story? I think one of the most emotional stories that could be told in a history classroom is one about a mother with every male child off to war (kind of like Saving Private Ryan). You would have to be a robot not to have so kind of emotion disturbance with that type of story. There are countless of other examples throughout history that can be presented to students in such a way that would allow them to feel a part of the historical character's life and empathize with their situation. That is why primary sources are absolutely critical to a social studies classroom. They help students to better understand the story or viewpoint of a historical person.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Week 11: Chapter 12 Lowen and Junior Achievement
"The highest result of education is tolerance" - Helen Keller
Loewen in chapter 12 brings up the issue as to why our Social Studies textbooks are lacking any kind of controversy or alternative points of view. One of the major reasons, Loewen discovered, was that people in the U.S. believe the purpose of educating students in Social Studies is to instill pride in our country. As I was reading this chapter in Loewen, I asked both of my parents whether or not they believed that the United States was the best country in the world and they both replied in the affirmative. Though my parents were in high school decades ago, they still retained the same message that kids are being taught today: America is the best country in the world because of the American dream, democracy, freedom, etc. Its almost as if democracy does not exist anywhere else in the world or that every other country in the world is evil and dictatorial. Even though the American system of government was rather unique in the eighteen century, it does not mean that it is the best form of government nor the only form of democratic government.
I am not saying that as Americans we should not be proud of our country or that we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back for the freedoms and liberties that our citizens enjoy. However, I think that by constantly repeating the message that the United States is the best country in the world and that we do no wrong is not only extremely misleading but it paints other countries in a negative light when we do so. There also exists large contradictions to the arguments of American democracy and freedom. Throughout history, the United States has violated its most basic freedoms but yet our students are never informed of those instances (such as Japanese internment camps during WWII). I say we can instill patriotism without false information and the alienation of other democratic countries.
Helen Keller once said, "The highest result of education is tolerance". In Social Studies classrooms, we have the responsiblity to teach our students that there are no correct viewpoints in life. The beauty of our world is that everyone is different and views life each a little bit differently. We shouldn't brainwash our kids into thinking that there is only one way of looking at things or only one way of doing things. This will only lead to further problems in society like hate crimes. The United States is an amazing country (the only country I want to live in) but it isn't the best country in the world. There are no superior countries in the world. All countries have made poor decisions, they have restricted the rights of their citizens, and they have progressed and degressed over time. The United States has had both its heroic moments and also its blunders. As educators, we have to teach tolerance or else we have failed to truly educate... we have instead forced a singular opinion on the suspectible minds of our children.
Last week, Meghan and I went to meet with our cooperating teacher for Junior Achievement, Mr. Pantages. He was extremely kind and accomodating. He gave us some ideas about what will most likely work in his classroom with his students and those things that probably would be too difficult or not interesting to the students. I felt much better about teaching economics after our meeting, since economics is not a subject that I know very much about. It also helps that there will be another Bradley student with me so that I will not have to teach it on my own.
Loewen in chapter 12 brings up the issue as to why our Social Studies textbooks are lacking any kind of controversy or alternative points of view. One of the major reasons, Loewen discovered, was that people in the U.S. believe the purpose of educating students in Social Studies is to instill pride in our country. As I was reading this chapter in Loewen, I asked both of my parents whether or not they believed that the United States was the best country in the world and they both replied in the affirmative. Though my parents were in high school decades ago, they still retained the same message that kids are being taught today: America is the best country in the world because of the American dream, democracy, freedom, etc. Its almost as if democracy does not exist anywhere else in the world or that every other country in the world is evil and dictatorial. Even though the American system of government was rather unique in the eighteen century, it does not mean that it is the best form of government nor the only form of democratic government.
I am not saying that as Americans we should not be proud of our country or that we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back for the freedoms and liberties that our citizens enjoy. However, I think that by constantly repeating the message that the United States is the best country in the world and that we do no wrong is not only extremely misleading but it paints other countries in a negative light when we do so. There also exists large contradictions to the arguments of American democracy and freedom. Throughout history, the United States has violated its most basic freedoms but yet our students are never informed of those instances (such as Japanese internment camps during WWII). I say we can instill patriotism without false information and the alienation of other democratic countries.
Helen Keller once said, "The highest result of education is tolerance". In Social Studies classrooms, we have the responsiblity to teach our students that there are no correct viewpoints in life. The beauty of our world is that everyone is different and views life each a little bit differently. We shouldn't brainwash our kids into thinking that there is only one way of looking at things or only one way of doing things. This will only lead to further problems in society like hate crimes. The United States is an amazing country (the only country I want to live in) but it isn't the best country in the world. There are no superior countries in the world. All countries have made poor decisions, they have restricted the rights of their citizens, and they have progressed and degressed over time. The United States has had both its heroic moments and also its blunders. As educators, we have to teach tolerance or else we have failed to truly educate... we have instead forced a singular opinion on the suspectible minds of our children.
Last week, Meghan and I went to meet with our cooperating teacher for Junior Achievement, Mr. Pantages. He was extremely kind and accomodating. He gave us some ideas about what will most likely work in his classroom with his students and those things that probably would be too difficult or not interesting to the students. I felt much better about teaching economics after our meeting, since economics is not a subject that I know very much about. It also helps that there will be another Bradley student with me so that I will not have to teach it on my own.
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