When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

I definitely have been feeling overwhelmed with my course load lately. Balancing the work of five classes, having a part-time teaching job and maintaining a social life is close to impossible. I have to be honest, I broke down a bit this weekend, but thankfully I had my mom to help me get my emotions and thoughts back on track. Her words of wisdom: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." (I know she didn't coin this phrase, but it certainly did help!)

Monday 9/23/13:

In preparation for today's class, Dr. Smirnova asked the class to read Chapter 8 from our textbook: How are Powerful and Meaningful Social Studies Units Constructed? This chapter contained A LOT of information. To help better organize our thoughts, Dr. Smirnova suggested that we create visual maps. Madison shared that she worked with Cacoo, a visual representation site. My visual map for chapter 8 is provided below and you can view it larger by clicking HERE. This site was very useful! It allowed me the option to choose from pre-made templates or to create my own map. I opted to create my own map because I could not quite find exactly what I was looking for to incorporate all of the chapter's information.

I think that using Cacoo in the classroom would be beneficial for students. This serves as a graphic representation of the most important points for a lengthy chapter. Students could study from a pre-made visual map provided by the teacher or they could create their own maps to study from. These visuals could also be used to teach a lesson within a classroom, whether it was teacher or student-led.

Here are some additional notes from Dr. Smirnova's PowerPoint and our class discussion that may clarify some of the items in my visual map:
UNIT PLAN- is the largest segment of teaching a key idea, a skill, an attitude or a value. May consist of 4 weeks to a semester. 
EVALUATION CRITERIA- Significance (content taught is important to the discipline and to the students' need for powerful social studies), Relevance (questioning/investigative nature of social studies cuts across all parts of the unit and curriculum), Coherence (content, activities, and breadth of experiences in the social studies unit reflect the students' life, goals and aspirations).
Convergent Questions- who, what, when, when questions: factual, knowledge-based questions
Divergent Questions- what if?: need basic knowledge combined with reasoning and creativity

Wednesday 9/25/13 and Friday 9/27/13:

During today's class, we focused on cooperative learning. According to chapter 7, cooperative learning is defined as "an approach and a set of strategies specifically designed to encourage student cooperation while learning" (p. 204).

To further our understanding of cooperative learning, Dr. Smirnova had us participate in a Jigsaw learning activity. To participate in this activity, our fieldwork groups became "experts" on a particular element of cooperative learning. The five elements of cooperative learning are: positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, social interaction, and the cooperative learning lesson plan. Each of the elements moved into a "base group" where we researched our topics. We collaboratively decided how we would present the information and then moved back to our field work groups to present. After we completed our presentations, we were asked to complete two surveys about the activity as a whole and about our group members' performances.

I was not proud of my presentation. I did not follow my base groups lesson structure: opening question, video, direct instruction, reflection, assessment. Rather, I moved directly into direct instruction, asked a few questions, and showed a brief portion of the video. I was not focused on the task at hand. This experience helped me understand that as a teacher my personal business may interfere with my teaching. In the future I hope to be better prepared for this type of situation.