1.25.16

This week as I was looking on Twitter, I found an article entitled "Making Learning Last: How Diverse Learners Can Process Their Understanding."  This title really caught my attention because we can talk to or at students all day long but the goal of teaching is for students to learn and transform the information we give them into an understanding that lasts much longer than the time they are in our classroom.

The article began by describing a fitness instructor leading an exercise class.  The fitness instructor must realize that each participant is at a different skill level of strength and conditioning and then provide an experience that challenges each participant based on their own personal level.  After all of our discussion on differentiation, this jumped out at me immediately as an analogy for differentiation.  As classroom teachers, each of our students will walk through the door on the first day of school with a wide range of educational strengths and weaknesses and it is our job to find ways to challenge each student.

The article defines differentiated instruction as "instructional planning based on content, process, and product."  Typically we plan lessons where we teach or share content with our students and ask them to create a product to practice and demonstrate their learning, but we leave out the "most important element in the learning equation; process."

"What do we do about this?  How can we allow our students to process learning?  How do I plan for processing?"

These are all questions that popped into mind (and hopefully yours) when you read this.  It is really quite simple.  If we are teaching content for 30 minutes we should allow three to four carefully, thought out, pauses during that time for students to reflect on what has been said.  During this time students should be encouraged to reflect and share what they have gained from the teaching and what is still foggy.  This allows the teacher to answer questions and provide the support for understanding before  moving on to the next piece.  These pauses should last from one to five minutes and should be enough time for students to truly process what they have just heard.  The article suggests that this think time could take place in the form of silent reflection, journaling, or partner conversation.

The article also suggested using tech tools such as Plickers, Kahoot!, or Poll Everywhere to provide a short, immediate check-in response to see areas that students may need extra support.

I found this article really made me think and again tied in to our differentiation discussion as well as my PDP goal of technology integration.   I feel that this article pushed me to reflect on my practice (NCTCS #5) as well as showed me how to facilitate the learning and understanding of my students (NCTCS #4).

The article also contained a link for tech suggestions with differentiation that I will definitely be checking out!

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/diverse-learners-process-their-understanding-john-mccarthy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow%20&utm_campaign=Scholastic

1.21.16

This week in class we discussed our PDP and some of the goals that we may have for the semester.  One of my goals is "I will learn one new technology piece each week that I can incorporate into my future classroom."  One technology piece that I recently learned about is Google Cardboard.

For those of you who don't know, Google Cardboard is a virtual reality and augmented reality platform developed by Google for use with a fold-out cardboard mount for a mobile phone.  They can be purchased fairly cheap on Amazon but come from China (mine took 3 months to get here!).

With Google Cardboard you can use the Google Street View app to virtually visit almost any location in the world.  This is a unique tool for the classroom because when using it students feel as if they are actually there instead of when you just put up pictures on a slide show.  The other really cool thing you can do with Google Cardboard, is that you can add your own locations.  You would use the Street View app and your camera to take 360° photos of the location and then save them to the app, making this technology tool useful for virtual field trips and learning about other states or countries.

Using Google Cardboard directly relates to NCTCS 4.d "Teachers integrate and utilize technology in their instruction. Teachers know when and how to use technology to maximize student learning. Teachers help students use technology to learn content, think critically, solve problems, discern reliability, use information, communicate, innovate, and collaborate."


I also found a really cool article that we could share with our class to teach them how technology can be used to solve problems.  This article, titled "How a Google Cardboard Virtual Reality Device Helped a Surgeon Operate on Infant's Heart," comes from abcnews.com.  The infant, who's life was saved because of this operation, was born with only one lung and a heart defect.  The doctor and his team found that the CT scans of the baby's heart and lung could be translated into a 3-D image viewable from the Google Cardboard device.  Dr. Burke said "it changes when you see something in a different way...it gave me the information in my hands on demand."  Burke used this information and the Google Cardboard images to plan the surgery step-by-step.  He credited the images on Google Cardboard for helping him through the tough surgery.
By teaching and showing our students how technology can be used not only to learn but also to solve problems and innovate, they may become doctors using technology learned in our classrooms to save lives!  How awesome is that?



http://abcnews.go.com/Health/google-cardboard-virtual-reality-device-helped-surgeon-operate/story?id=36167944

1.11.16

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically...Intelligence plus character- that is the goal of true education." -Martin Luther King Jr.

This quote is from a great article that I found entitled "A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civil Efficacy" (that's a mouthful, I know!).  I was going to save the article and use it next week in honor of MLK day, but it was too good not to share with you now.

If, according to a great American leader, the purpose of education is to train students to think intensively and critically which leads to intelligence and character, why do we then take social studies and put it on the back burner?  Social studies is the core to developing an "enduring understanding of civics, economics, geography, and history, and assures the readiness of students to assume [the responsibilities of citizenship]."  

It is time for the pot on the back burner (social studies) to boil over.  We have left it back there unattended for too long now and the result is a generation who is apathetic to the rich history of our world and how to function in their own society.  

In order to rewrite history (see what I did there), we first and foremost must know the content (NCTCS #3).  For some of us this may mean reviewing or taking more courses so that we can be prepared to not only supply our students with accurate information but also be ready to correctly answer their questions.  Once we are up to date on the content, we are ready to teach "Powerful and Authentic Social Studies."  

The article states the qualities of "Powerful and Authentic Social Studies" in five bullet points: Meaningful, Integrative, Value-Based, Challenging, and Active. The three qualities that I liked most were meaningful, integrative, and active. 

-->Meaningful social studies is described as something that "builds curriculum networks of knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes that are structured around enduring understandings, essential questions, important ideas, and goals."  I connected this to the idea of concept based instruction that we started discussing this week.  By using a concept to guide instruction, rather than a topic and facts, we are able to supply our students with bigger ideas that they can then use to form beliefs and attitudes toward a topic. 

-->Integrative social studies focuses on "the core disciplines, it includes materials drawn from the arts, sciences, and humanities, from current events, from local examples and from students' own lives."  I related this directly to standard 3.c of the NCTCS.  By realizing and believing in this aspect/quality of social studies, we are becoming teachers who "understand how the content we teach relates to other disciplines in order to deepen understanding and connect learning for students." 

-->Active learning in the social studies classroom (and any classroom for that matter) is "not just hands-on, it is minds-on."  This really grabbed my attention and immediately made me think of standard 4 of the NCTCS- "Teachers facilitate learning for their students."  If we create lessons that require students to stop, process, and think about what they are learning then we are most definitely "engaging our students in higher level thinking." 

What a "Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning" in regards to social studies.  I don't know about you, but I am most certainly ready for the social studies pot to boil over.  I'm excited to begin our concept-based unit in which we will be able to incorporate all of these new ideas into our lessons.  I can't wait to see how the five qualities found in this article are going to take shape in my social studies instruction.  These qualities will definitely be a guide for the lesson planning of my future classroom.  I don't know about you but, I want to be a teacher known for Powerful and Authentic teaching and learning in every subject that I teach.

http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/powerful

1.7.16

     Welcome to Teaching "On Fleek."  Sit back and buckle your seat belts because we are beginning the roller coaster ride of what it means and looks like to teach and learn Purposeful and Powerful Social Studies in 21st Century schools.
     As a future teacher, I am in the process of learning what it means to be a teacher who engages and prepares students to actively participate in the world in which we live.  It is up to me to educate the future generations of our society what it means to be a citizen and what it looks like to be an active citizen.  This task can be aided through the teaching of Social Studies in the classroom.
     I came across an article called "Treasure Mountain Teacher Breathes Life into History."  This title caught my eye.  I can remember thinking as an elementary student "Why do I need to learn about the past?"  To me, this teacher truly exemplifies what it means and looks like to be an effective Social Studies teacher.
    Mr. Bald says that teaching is all about the energy.  He said he thrives on being that someone who gives students insight on something they have never thought of.  His primary aim as a Social Studies teacher is "to help his students become what he calls "smarter global citizens"."  Mr. Bald pointed out that it can be tough to understand what is going on in the Middle East without understanding the history of the groups living in that region or knowing the treaties of World War I and II.  This really grabbed my attention because I don't even know much about the treaties of World War I and II, let alone the history of the people groups living in the Middle East, which is why I do not understand many of the issues going on in the Middle East.  If I do not know this history how can I give my students accurate answers to their questions about these topics?  History is so important in understanding the world around us not necessarily because "History repeats itself," but more because "History explains much of what is happening in the present."
    Mr. Bald creates a love for history, current events, and the connection between the two in his students.  He even has former students who email him about a current event that they have come across and how they think it relates back in time to a historical event.
    To me, Mr. Bald seems like the type of Social Studies teacher that I want to learn to embody this semester.  I want to teach students to look for the history in the present world around them and I want to create an energy and excitement in my classroom when it comes to thinking about Social Studies.

http://www.parkrecord.com/ci_29347345/treasure-mountain-teacher-breathes-life-into-history?source=rss