Social Studies Lesson Reflection

Hello! Last week I implemented my Social Studies lesson in my clinical classroom. I did a geography lesson on landforms for 2nd grade. The students were going to be "geologists" and research a landform. We briefly went over the definitions of each landform, and then I explained to them what they would be doing. They were going to be placed into groups of three and each person would have a specific job. The higher level children were the researchers, or the ones who read the material to the other group members. The middle level readers were the recorders, or the ones who were in charge of writing the information on the poster. The lowest level readers were the artists, and they were in charge of drawing the pictures on the poster. Each group would get one landform to research. Then, they were going to make a poster about that landform. It had to have a title, a picture of their landform, the definition of the landform, where they might find their landform, and one interesting fact about it. Overall, I think the lesson went great :-)

Here's my full reflection with more detail about how it went!

Social Studies Lesson Reflection

Overall, I felt that my lesson was very strong and went very well with the children! The activity was very engaging for the students and covered necessary content for their learning. It flowed nicely with what they had learned in first grade to a deeper understanding of the material when they learned more about it through this lesson, and the learning objective required them to have a deeper understanding of the material in order to achieve that objective. I felt that this lesson allowed the children to achieve this higher level thinking learning objective in a fun and appropriate way, and they were all able to do it. A part of the reason I believe they were able to do it was because of my differentiation technique. Each student was able to achieve the learning objective in different ways.
The hook of my lesson grabbed their attention right away, and the rest of the power point and pictures kept their attention. They were all very excited about the different landforms and most of them were willing to answer questions, even ones that I normally do not see raising their hands. They were also all very excited to engage in the actual activity; there were initially a few arguments over who would have what job, which is why I was extremely happy that I had pre-picked the groups and the jobs to avoid this conflict.
I felt that my formative assessments throughout the lesson were very strong; I was walking around to each group as well as constantly checked in with the students as a whole group while they worked and had them do turn and talks throughout the lesson. In the future, I would probably implement even more because it is an easy tool for me to see that I am teaching in a way that they understand. The overall summative assessment was strong as well; I was able to tell which children understood what they were doing, and which children did not. I used a rubric format and assessed their posters after they were completed. I also wrote comments down while they were speaking to help me remember their presentation so I know what I need to explain more thoroughly in the future.
My formative assessments were extremely helpful when it came to adjusting my instruction. I could listen in on their turn and talk about whose job it is to read the landform packet and see if they actually know the answer. If they did not, which they did not, I explained it to them again in a different way and reassessed to make sure they understood. However, I should have explained and modeled in some other way, because the children still did not fully understand their roles in the group once they actually got into their groups. I was able to see this through other formative assessments. I asked them to give me thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, or thumbs down for how they feel their project was going and I could see which groups were having problems and fix them.
My formative “checks” throughout the lesson were definitely a plus because they allowed me to catch problems and fix them before they got out of hand. However, some of these problems could have been avoided had they had further instruction and example of exactly what they were supposed to do. This group of children is not used to working in small groups, but I think I made it work and I think if there had been more guidelines and explicit instruction, there may have been fewer issues to solve. For example, one of the issues my CT and I both noticed was that as soon as they got their posters, they rushed off to color a picture of their landform instead of following directions and reading about their landform first. In order to avoid this in the future, I would keep the posters until after they had finished reading and highlighting the important information in their landform packet. This way, they are getting the important content from this lesson. I felt that doing this type of activity with this content in groups was great because they could each focus on a specific landform and learn about it in detail and then teach their classmates about it, which will also help the students retain the new material.
The way the students were grouped with one high level reader, one middle range reader, and one low level reader was a great form of differentiation, and it worked very well in this classroom. The jobs were then assigned based on their reading level. The higher level children were the researchers, or the ones who read the material to the other group members. The middle level readers were the recorders, or the ones who were in charge of writing the information on the poster. The lowest level readers were the artists, and they were in charge of drawing the pictures on the poster. Many of the children did not fully understand their job or they did not follow the directions and I had to re explain the jobs a few times to a few different children. This could have been avoided had I done a better formative check to see if they understood because even though they said they did, they did not or they did not remember what they were supposed to do. It also would have been helpful if this was posted somewhere for them to see.
There were a few arguments between the classmates, but I think that that is a big part of learning your students and learning who can work together and who cannot. It also would have been a great opportunity to implement some problem solving techniques, such as the bugs and wishes, the peace table, or the choice wheel. Having those previously in the classroom and using them as a way to solve their own problems would have been a great way for them to practice problem solving and would have allowed me to focus on helping each group with the content, so that is something I will definitely consider for the future.

Have a great week :-)
Jessa

Social Studies Work Jobs

Here are some fun little activities that I have created as part of an assignment for my social studies class this semester. These activities are individual activities that can work great as an "I'm Done Early" activity that relates to what they're learning in social studies!

This is a 3rd grade history work job that I created called "Our Fight for Equal Rights." The students should read each little paragraph and put them in order by their date on the time-line. Then, they should match the person in the paragraph with their picture on the timeline, and then they check their answers on the back!

This is a 2nd grade geography work job titled "Learning the Map." The students will learn to read the map using a letter, number coordination system. They will place the pictures at their correct places on the map, and then they can check their answers on the back.

This is a Kindergarten work job called "Jobs in our Communities." This is one page of six. The children will take out all of the outfits and then match the out fits to the person that has the same background. This one is an artist and the child would have to place the smock on the woman. The others are a firefighter, soldier, doctor, construction worker/handy man, and a chef/cook.



Enjoy :-)

Social Studies Focus

SOCIAL STUDIES FOCUS
At this point in the semester, you have been learning the components and importance of social studies in ECE in TCH 277. Additionally, you have considered when and how you will conduct your social studies lesson in your clinical classroom and may have observed social studies practices there. Draw on this knowledge and these experiences in this discussion. 

What have you noticed about social studies instruction and assessment in your setting?

·         When does it take place? Does it take place? Think critically.

·         What does it encompass?

·         During social studies instruction, what does your CT do/ say?

·         What do students do/ say? How do they respond?

·         What are your opinions/ feelings about this?

·         How does what you observe about social studies at this site connect with past clinical experiences/ early childhood theories/ and or social studies practices you have been learning about at ISU?

·         How does knowing this inform what you will do when teaching and assessing social studies (either this semester, next semester in student teaching, and/or next year)?

What other additional reflections/ concerns/ questions/ musings do you have after spending these last few weeks on the site? Use your own experiences, especially those from your activity log for the last few weeks.
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After being in my clinical placement for a few weeks now, it is nice to be able to reflect on some of the different things that I am seeing. One thing that I am SO happy to say that I see in my placement this semester is the teaching of social studies. As a child, I LOVED social studies. I found that history was my favorite and learning so many different things that people did in the past really intrigued me.

I relate this to myself because the children in my classroom have just finished working on what seemed to be their history unit. They focused a lot on famous people from the past, such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. This was deeply integrated with literacy. For the most part, what I saw was that they were given packets about these famous people and a worksheet that matched it. They had to read the informational packet and then answer the questions.

 My CT was having them focus on pulling important information from the information text, a very important common core standard. However, I felt that it could have been implemented differently to maximize the learning for all of the children in the classroom. I noticed that these assignments were assigned at the same time as a handwriting assignment, and they had to finish both of these assignments before they were free to go to centers. Well, from what I saw, only the higher leveled students finished their work in time to go to centers. The middle level children finished right on time, and the lower leveled students did not finish at all and they had to take it home for homework. The lower and middle leveled children were very upset, because either they had lost their center time, or they had both lost their center time and now they have more homework.

While I am ecstatic to see that the children are at least learning social studies, I feel there are better ways to approach it. So, for the lesson that I am preparing for my class, I decided to approach it differently. I will be starting the next unit focusing on communities, and my lesson focuses on geography. I will be teaching them about landforms, and they will be researching and creating their landforms in small groups and then presenting to the rest of the class about their landform. While working in groups can be stressful on the teacher, I think that it is very beneficial for the children’s learning. I am excited to see how it goes!

Another way that social studies that I have seen taught was through guided reading. The stories that the children read were biographies of famous people. The lower leveled group that I taught read a story about a famous Olympic athlete. They really seemed to enjoy it because it was very relatable to them. The story made it seem like anybody could be an Olympic athlete if they tried really hard, and one boy actually told me “I’m gonna make it to the Olympics in basketball, just wait, one day you’ll see me with that gold medal around my neck and I’ll say I told ya so!” It was so cute. The highest level group that I taught read a story about President Theodore Roosevelt and his impact on the environment. They also seemed to enjoy the text too. I actually learned quite a bit from that story myself! J 

From what I have learned in my own social studies course so far this semester is that differentiation is key. Children do not all learn the same way, therefore we as teachers cannot teach the exact same way to every student. It isn’t developmentally appropriate, and it really doesn’t benefit anybody but the teacher, just because it is easier. Another thing that I learned from my course is that social studies can be combined with just about every single other subject area. My CT decided to focus the integration on literacy, however there are many other ways that we can do this. Our next science unit is on dinosaurs, which also integrates well with history in social studies as well as geography a little bit as well, so I am excited to see how those are implemented in the classroom.

Overall, seeing any social studies is very beneficial for me. I really have a passion for social studies, so I know as a future teacher that I will find integrations within the curriculum to teach it. Seeing it implemented is very good experience for me, but I will probably have a higher focus on social studies in my classroom in the future because it is SO important. I really feel that social studies and science get totally thrown away now that the new common core standards are in place-teachers feel there just isn’t enough time to get through all the material, which I TOTALLY understand. Maybe teachers working together across grade levels and schools to create a curriculum for social studies that aligns with common core is the best option? Who knows? I will have to wait and see what my future school district has to offer.

Here is a cute video that I found that I think would have been better way to learn about Abe Lincoln- still integrates social studies with literacy and probably great alignment with common cores speaking/listening standards!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3vFA8Pp5k

Well, that’s all for this week J

Jessa