"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe." - Marilyn Vos Savant.

This week was filled with many useful observations of my peers (Monday and Friday) as they presented their lessons plans following the direct instruction, inquiry, and cooperative learning formats. I was also able to absorb new information by presenting a demonstration lesson to my peers about teaching current events to students through use of articles. By presenting to my peers, I was able to receive feedback about my lesson and teaching style.

Monday 10/28/13:

During today's class session, I was an observer of groups 3 and 4. Both groups implemented a direct instruction lesson plan using a PowerPoint presentation. I was able to take notes throughout this time in order to provide feedback to my peers. I will be presenting my notes in a "3 plus and 1 wish" format.

Group 3:
- I enjoyed the way you checked for understanding throughout the lesson (thumbs up/down/in the middle, "Stop and Check" slides on the PowerPoint, hands on head when students had completed the handouts that went with the PowerPoint presentation). I would suggest that rather than say "Okay" when clarifying directions and not getting a response, you should use methods like put your hand on your head if you understand the directions or encourage choral responding of "okay."
- I liked that your group worked collaboratively during the implementation of the lesson. When someone lost their train of thought, another teacher would jump in. If a teacher asked a question and a student didn't understand, another teacher would rephrase the question to help clarify. This made the lesson more seamless and cohesive.
- I think it was a good idea to assess the students prior knowledge before showing the correct answers on the presentation slides.
- I wish that you had connect the colonists gripes with paying taxes to a personal example for the students. For example, How would you feel if you had to give your teacher a dollar every time you sat in your seat? This would give the students a more personal example to relate their learning back to.

Group 4:
- I like that you had folders prepared for each student! This can make students have more ownership of their work and learning, as well as making them feel special and included.
- Katrina and Chrissy did a great job modeling the cause and effect activity. You both spoke loudly and clearly with your bodies facing the class. You not only modeled the behaviors you wanted to see from the students, but also the thought processes and collaboration the students should try to incorporate during the expansion activity of the lesson.
- Throughout the implementation of the lesson, you all either rephrased or restated your questions when you saw that students were unsure of how to answer, did not understand the question, or were not paying attention the first time the question was asked. I think that this is an effective teaching tool that will maintain the students' engagement throughout your lessons.
- I wish that you had more time for your lesson! The ending piece where students had to decide what phrase was a cause and what phrase was an effect was an engaging and effective way for students to demonstrate their understandings. I wish I had more time to see this portion of the lesson carried out all the way.

Overall, both groups did an excellent job on their first direct instruction lessons! I am excited to see and hear more from these two groups during our next few fieldwork sessions.


Wednesday 10/30/13:

During today's class, Ericka, Alex and I presented a mini-lesson to the class. 

The strategy we addressed was Listening for Details. To address this standard, students were asked to listen carefully to an article we read aloud. The article was read aloud a second time, and students were instructed to take notes about the Five W's (who, what, when, where, why) which would signal major details in the article. The students were then asked to record answers on a sheet (but we accidentally provided the answer sheet to our students). After the students individually recorded answers, they were broken into small groups to discuss their answers.

Here are the links I can provide for this lesson: 
Lesson Plan
Presentation

We also offered our classmates full class applications including, The teacher could model an article before breaking the students into groups, students could be assigned different articles. Students from each group could have a role (reader, time keeper, note takers) during the activity, and after the students have read, they can share their findings with the class. 

Overall, our classmates enjoyed our presentation. They felt that the article was interesting and relevant to the study of current events. Our classmates stated that they wished we did not provide the answers on our worksheet that way they could have experienced our lesson in its entirety. Our classmates also stated that they wish we chose a shorter article or only read the article once to be sure that students would remain on task and interested throughout the reading.


Friday 11/1/13:

During today's class session we observed Groups 3 and 4. Today, both groups created an inquiry lesson. Group 3 created a scavenger hunt, which asked the children to find missing museum artifacts by using the internet as a source. Group 4 created an artifact bag activity, which allowed the students to become involved with primary sources. Both groups did a nice engaging the students during the lessons, but time was an issue for both groups. During our fieldwork time, the fourth grade class is divided into two groups. The first group works with Group 3 for 25 minutes, and then switches to Group 4 for 25 minutes, and vice versa. This makes creating the lesson more difficult because all aspects of the lesson must be completed in a much smaller time frame. I would suggest that the groups meet before implementing the lesson in the classroom and conducting a "run-through" as a group. This will allow the group to establish what the most essential components of the lesson are, and what areas of the lesson can be cut back or removed for the sake of time within the classroom. 

 I was able to take notes throughout this time in order to provide feedback to my peers. I will be presenting my notes in a "3 plus and 1 wish" format.

Group 3:
- I enjoyed your pre-assessment of prior knowledge at the beginning of the lesson (Do you remember this picture? and the elaboration from students).
- I think that you did a much better job checking for understanding from students. You used methods like hands on head and saying okay.
- I liked that you modeled your inquiry activity, but I do have some suggestions. The way you were positioned made it difficult for the students to see what you were doing and to hear what you were saying. The modeling piece was also very long, so students began to lose interest and engage in negative classroom behaviors. I would suggest modeling at the front of the room with louder voices. I would also keep the modeling piece to 2-3 minutes. Another suggestion could be to avoid the modeling altogether. Each teacher worked with a group, so rather than use valuable time modeling, the students could access you as a resource throughout the activity.
- I wish that a teacher had announced that groups needed to be quiet while others were presenting. It is important to value and reflect on the works of others, so students need to be aware of this.

Group 4:
- I enjoyed when you clapped as a group to get the attention of your students at the beginning of the lesson. This set the stage for the students to focus on the teachers and the task that was going to be presented to them.
- I like that you all worked collaboratively as the lesson was implemented. When one teacher forgot what to say, another teacher jumped in for assistance. I think this made the lesson flow more seamlessly and made the lesson more effective overall.
- Your worksheet was so cute! I think it was an effective way to provide the students with guidelines for the activity. It also served as a way to assess the students' understandings of artifact bag activity and the steps for inquiry.
- I wish that teachers who weren't talking to the class would have walked around the room. This would allow teachers to address students who were not paying attention to the lesson or engaging in negative classroom behaviors.

"There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind." - C.S. Lewis

We hit the middle mark in our semester. Now is the time when we should reflect on where we have been, and plan for what is to come in the future. I am relieved to have completed my portion of the fieldwork teaching experience, and I am excited to begin learning from my peers as they teach their social studies lessons to the fourth grade class. I am looking forward to being exposed to new teaching methods, lesson plan ideas, and technologies as these new lessons are implemented.

Wednesday 10/23/13:

Today in class we participated in Group 2's demonstration lesson. Their demonstration lesson was focused on the use of debates in a social studies lesson. The introduction portion of their lesson assessed the prior knowledge of students by asking if students knew what a debate was, what pros are, and what cons are. Students were then introduced to the "Do's of Debating" for the exploratory introduction. I liked that Group 2 provided students with a list of ways to debate appropriately in order to establish what kind of behavior students need to have during the debate. After going over the rules for debates, students were divided into two groups: pros and cons. This was the development portion of the lesson. We discussed an article about mandating exercise within school and childhood obesity. We were given specific amounts of time to create opening statements, to rebut the other groups statements, and to create closing statements. The expansion activity was discussing the reasoning and evidence finding we did during this activity (inquiry) and working together (cooperative). The independent practice portion of the activity was filling out a self and group evaluation worksheet.

I thought this lesson would be beneficial to use in my future classroom. Debates provide students with the ability to express their opinions and learn to listen and respect the opinions of others. This will prepare students to live in a democratic world. I plan to use this type of lesson for my Mount Saint Mary College block lesson plan for the American Revolution. I will be dividing students into two groups: revolutionary colonists and British loyalists.


Friday 10/25/13:

Today we did not have regularly scheduled class because Dr. Smirnova and members of Kappa Delta Pi are visiting Texas for the Achieving Chapter Excellence (ACE) Award Convocation Ceremony. I am very excited to hear about what they learned at the convocation so I can apply it to my current studies and future teaching.

Rather than waste this time, I completed the Cooperative Learning Reflection rubric regarding my performance as a group member and the performance of my fellow group members. Below I have provided so excerpts of my personal reflections from the questionnaire. 


What I did to help my group’s success with the meeting/project: I helped my group’s success by contributing meaningful ideas for our lessons and working closely with my group members throughout the fieldwork process. Our group’s biggest strength was the amount of communication we had between our members. We consistently met after school and communicated through emails and text messaging. I feel that I helped my group become successful because I am efficient at managing time and managing events. As we created the lessons, I made sure the group stayed on task and met the criteria for each section of the lesson during the correct period of our lesson planning. I offered constructive criticism to my group members and accepted and corrected my own mistakes during the implementation of the lesson without complaints. I was agreeable and supportive throughout the process.


My suggestions, ideas on how to improve CL group work, comments on the group meeting and its management: In the future, I think we could work to better prepare our group members. Rather than wait for a group member to ask questions about how or why we made lesson plan choices, we could, as a group, discuss our reasonings or offer explanations as to why we made particular choices. I also think we should aim to have more frequent group meetings prior to implementing our lessons. We tended to meet the day before and would spend three to four hours working. Instead, we could have met on two separate days for two our increments in order to separate ourselves from the lesson plan, improve our ideas, and edit the lesson plans.

I appreciate being provided with the opportunity to reflect on my own work personally, as well as the work of my peers. I enjoy being able to give credit to my peers, who worked extremely hard throughout the process of creating, implementing, and reflecting on lessons. 

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. -Maria Robinson

Reflection is an essential part of any lesson plan. Maria Robinson's quote, "Nobody can go back and start a beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending," applies to the reflection process. We can't go back and change what we had done during our previous lessons, but we can start today and make "a new ending," or a better plan for future lessons.

Monday 10/14/13:

During today's class, we reflected as a class on our lessons. First, Group 1 discussed each step of our lesson: introduction (reflection of last class/Tagxedo), exploratory introduction (Google presentation), inquiry (artifact bag exploration), expansion (recording sheets), closure (sharing findings with the class), elaboration (independent practice homework worksheet). We discussed what we did during each part and critiqued ourselves. I pointed out that I did not transition properly from the introduction to James's exploratory introduction section. 

Overall, our classmates enjoyed our lesson. They thought that the use of the Tagxedo presentation was useful to assess prior knowledge and to transition into the new topic of artifacts. Other students said that the modeling of the artifact bags was most effective. A suggestion was to model an error or show hesitation to make sure students understood that it is okay to make mistakes or to be unsure during their explorations of the artifact bags.

Smirnova's Critique:
-Tagxedo- Use contrast to make the words on the Tagxedo more clear.
-Always allow time for students to answer. If students are not answering, rephrase the question and pause to allow time to think.
-Inquiry Steps: Split up list onto different slides. This would make this section of the lesson more engaging and more time for question/answer.
-Give each student in the group a job. Assigning roles will save time.


Wednesday 10/16/13:

During today's class, three of my classmates presented a mini lesson. Their presentation was focused around an article regarding the current government shut down. The rest of us took on the persona of fourth grade students. To begin the activity, we read the article. After this reading, we completed a graphic organizer that contained boxes for the five "W's:" who, what, when, where, and why. We each filled in information from the article that correlated with one of the five "W's." Once this portion of the lesson was completed, we switched papers with a classmate. Then, we were instructed to write a paragraph from the information our partners had filled in on their five "W's" graphic organizer. Finally, we shared our answers with the class.

I thought that this activity would be extremely valuable within my future classroom. This activity would allow me to incorporate current events into the classroom each day, without taking away too much class time. The presenters suggested that we could instruct students to look up and write about different articles and then have partners summarize based on the five "W's" graphic organizers. This would allow students to have more exposure to a wider variety of current events in a shorter amount of time.

Friday 10/18/13:

Today was my last day teaching a lesson at Bishop Dunn for Social Studies Methods. For this rest of my fieldwork sessions, I will be observing groups three and four. Because this was our last session, the other members of Group One and I did everything that we could to make this final lesson enjoyable, engaging and informative for our students.

To begin our lesson, we played a vocabulary game. Students were divided into groups of three to four students. Each student in the group was given a number between 1 and 3 or 1 and 4. We passed out different index cards with vocabulary words (artisan, merchant, manor, apprentice) on them. Students were instructed to put their heads together to come up with a definition for the word. We encouraged students to make sure that every group member understood and could explain the definition. Then we called on students randomly to share their definitions. We checked understanding by having the other students agree or disagree by a show of thumbs up or thumbs down.

We transitioned to the social skills portion of the lesson by reflecting on the process of working together. We asked students if it was easy or hard to work with other students. We asked if there was anything in particular they did to make working together more effective. We then explained that the students had been using their social skills, and moved on to a powerpoint presentation slide with helpful hints regarding how to effectively interact with one another.

After the students reviewed the helpful hints, we moved on to our "secret presentations." Each group was assigned a creative task (skit, advertisement, song, or acrostic poem) to complete. I worked with the groups that created advertisements. The first group was a rowdy group of boys. First they suggest that we advertise drugs, then weapons. I suggested that they explain why they would want to sell either, to which one student replied "To support the Revolutionary War. DUH!" I believed that this was a strong explanation and encouraged the students to prepare an advertisement about colonial weapons to support the revolution. The students quickly named different weaponry, created a mailing address, and a catchy slogan. The boys excitedly presented their project. The second group was much more serious about their task. They brainstormed ideas about what was useful during colonial times. The group finally settled on selling tea. They offered a variety of flavors, provided a picture and an address of where they could be found. Both groups were extremely successful in self-monitoring their group work. I was able to keep track of their individual achievements through use of a rubric sheet.

The students were asked at the end of class to complete a group and self-evaluation feedback form. This allowed students to reflect on their work as a group and on their individual achievements during this lesson. The students were also asked to write a brief letter describing their project and how the experience of working in a group to complete a creative task was.

Overall, this lesson went very well! My group worked hard to create engaging lessons, and it paid off! I am very sad that this will be my last time teaching for Social Studies Methods.

Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you’re going to do and just go do it. In one bold stroke you can transform today. -Marilyn Grey

There are only so many times we can practice our lesson plans. Sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet, instead of dipping your toes in the water to test it. "Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you're going to do and just go do it. In one bold stroke you can transform today"- Marilyn Grey.

Monday 10/7/13:

Today was my first day of teaching in a whole class setting! I have never been more nervous to teach in my life! I reviewed the script and order of events repeatedly until I had it memorized in preparation for the lesson. 

Group 1: New York and the New Nation, planned to start the lesson with a Tagxedo presentation of the vocabulary words for our unit. Unfortunately, the software within the classroom did not support this type of media. We waited for a few minutes, hoping the technology would work, but it did not. The current student teacher critiqued this piece of our lesson. She suggested that if technology does not work, or it something does not go as planned time-wise, as teachers we should always find ways to keep the students engaged. She suggested asking questions or having students make predictions about what will be coming next within the lesson. After overcoming this glitch, our presentation of the Prezi presentation commenced. This portion of lesson went extremely well, with the exception of occasionally using informal language like guys, wanna or gonna.Our group also needed to work on checking student understanding and participation. Many of the students were unfamiliar with the note-taking sheet we had passed out to coincide with our Prezi. The classroom teacher suggested that we walk around the classroom in order to be aware of our students needs. After the Prezi, Group 1 moved on to an interactive game using the SmartBoard. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to finish the game with our first section of the class.

Our second section of the class seemed to go a lot smoother. We implemented a check for understanding procedure; Students were asked to place their hands on their heads when they were on the correct Prezi slide or when they completed filling in the blanks on the note sheets. This allowed us to move to the students whose hands were not on their heads and provide additional assistance. We skipped the Tagxedo presentation, which allowed us to devote more time to the SmartBoard games.

For my future lessons,  I plan to pay more attention to my language usage within the classroom. I want to present myself as knowledgeable and professional whenever I am working with students. I also will implement ways of checking for understanding more consistently in order to provide assistance when necessary and allow student independence whenever possible. I also will videotape myself as often as possible to learn and take note of my strengths and weaknesses while teaching.


Wednesday 10/9/13:

On Wednesday, groups 1 and 2 reflected on our first fieldwork experiences. The members of my group are very much like me: hard on themselves. Each of us had a lot of things we thought we should work on during our future lessons in the classroom. After seeing our video, I definitely feel that I need to make a more conscious effort to project my voice. My voice dropped often throughout the lesson, making it difficult to hear from the back of the room. I think projecting my voice better would eliminate extra questions and confusion from students seated at the rear of the room.

I am very happy that we were able to videotape our lessons. This is a new factor, EDTPA, that I will be experiencing when I student teach next fall. By videotaping myself now, I will learn how to make every minute of the lesson count by using formal language, projecting my voice, and keeping students engaged. Another factor of the EDTPA is reflecting on the video and planning for future lessons. I like that Dr. Smirnova incorporated this reflection process into our lesson today.


Friday 10/11/13:

Today was our second day of fieldwork. Today we focused the class through an inquiry lesson. We began the lesson by reviewing what we had learned on Monday and viewing the Tagxedo presentation. During the first section of our class, I forgot to transition from the review to the new topic: becoming historians. My group members pointed this out to me during our second preparation period. I was aware of this mistake, and made sure to appropriately transition during our second section of class.

Next, we moved on to talking about historians, artifacts, and tips for using artifact bags. The students seemed engaged in this part of the activity because they were excited to participate in the following activity: artifact bag exploration. The students thoroughly enjoyed this part of the lesson. They explored their bags, wrote down their findings in the accompanying worksheets, and shared their findings with the class. 

Time is always a factor with our lessons. We also were unaware that Fridays are "no homework" days at Bishop Dunn. Our assigning of homework resulted in a lot of verbal protest from the students. Next week, we plan to incorporate our independent practice activities into the lesson in order to not give homework to the students on a Friday.

Overall, I am learning many interesting things while completing this fieldwork about myself, working with others, social studies instruction, and fourth grade students.