MY FINAL BLOG POST (in regards to my experiences within the course):
Participating in the Social Studies Methods course has allowed me to learn a variety of things about education in a general sense and about myself as a future educator. This course provided me with opportunities to develop lesson plans, to develop a unit plan, to work collaboratively with my peers, and to implement my lessons on a whole class scale.
In regards to lesson planning, I learned the differences between direct instruction, inquiry, and cooperative learning lessons. By studying and creating these three major types of lessons, I gained the knowledge and experience to implement them all in my future classroom. I was also able to study each lesson plan type in depth in order to understand the importance of each as a lesson format and as a mode of reaching students. Direct instruction allows a teacher to be the center of the lesson, providing information to the students in a brief amount of time. Inquiry lessons give students an opportunity to explore information and concepts in order to form their own opinions and generalizations. Cooperative learning lessons give students a chance to develop social skills, which in turn, prepares them for their futures as citizens of a global community. In my future classroom, I plan to incorporate all three of these lesson plan techniques. Direct instruction, although it is not my favorite method, benefits students because it condenses information and teaches the main points. Inquiry lessons and cooperative learning lessons will be the bulk of my teaching technique. I feel that both lesson techniques will prepare my students for a world that is full of questions and diverse people.
Furthermore, my skills of lesson planning increased because I not only created a direct instruction lesson, inquiry lesson, and cooperative learning lesson, but I also had the privilege of creating a unit plan. The unit plan built from the three aforementioned lessons and added three mini-lesson activities and a culminating project. Although I did not have the opportunity to implement these mini-lesson activities and the culminating project within a classroom, I see the benefit in creating these additions. By doing so, I experienced what a true classroom teacher would experience. In keeping with this thought, I also experience a true education environment by working collaboratively with my peers. Our lesson plans were developed and implemented within small groups. We also participated in group discussions throughout the semester, provided feedback to one another on our lessons and questions, and communicated with one another through our blogs. I liked the collaborative nature of this class because it allowed me to gain insight into other view points, displayed different teaching techniques of my peers, and further my resources for future teaching.
My personal growth surpassed any of my expectations. At the beginning of the course, I was soft-spoken and nervous. I did not want to teach in a whole class situation and I was skeptical of using technology within my lessons. As the course progressed, I learned to find my voice as a teacher. My group encouraged me to break out of my shell and I began introducing the lessons. Having the support and guidance of my peers, and close friends, made the transition from one-to-one instruction to full class much easier for me to handle. I began to become more confident with my abilities to instruct a class and in my abilities to be myself, while still remaining professional. Technology has also become my friend! I am now well aware of SmartBoard technology, the different aspects of GoogleDocs, Voki, Animoto, Prezi, Tagxedo, Wordle, and countless others. I am happy to have acquired this knowledge because our society is becoming more and more technology based. To be an effective teacher, I will need to be up to date with current technologies in order to reach my students. I know that my experiences within this Social Studies Methods course have helped shape me into an even better future educator and I am thankful for all of the experiences I have had throughout this semester!
MY FINAL BLOG POST (in regards to my fieldwork experiences):
My experiences at Bishop Dunn Memorial School were incredible. This was my first opportunity to teach a whole class, rather than one-on-one or small groups. By participating in this fieldwork experience, I gained the knowledge of how a full class would feel, before student teaching. The major difference between one-on-one/small groups and a whole class is the idea that you, as the teacher, will not and can not know everything your students are doing. This is somewhat scary because you may not be reaching your students during a lesson, no matter how much time you out into it and how engaging it may seem. I learned this fact through use of video recording. Dr. Smirnova encouraged our fieldwork groups to request help from our peers. We asked other groups to videotape our lessons in order to reflect and critique our teaching. While reviewing a video, my group realized that some students toward the back of the classroom were disengaged. This could have been due to our voice volume or lack of interest in our planned activity, but regardless, we were not reaching our students. After realizing this, our group was able to better project our voices throughout the lesson and we aimed to include those students we saw disengaged. We directed questions toward then an checked for understanding of the material more frequently. This method of videotaping and reflecting benefitted us during our time at Bishop Dunn Memorial School, but it also helped prepare us for the edTPA tasks we will need to accomplish during our student teaching placements.
During this fieldwork experience, I had the opportunity to create direct instruction lessons, inquiry lessons, and cooperative learning lessons. Each of these teaching techniques serve a purpose within the classroom and are beneficial tools for me to use during my future teaching experiences. Direct instruction will be the first way I will introduce a unit. Direct instruction is a teacher-based lesson that will allow me to provide students with an overview of our unit, focusing on key terms, dates and other factual information. Following direct instruction, I would move to inquiry lessons. Inquiry lessons provide students with the opportunity to consider the facts, explore the information more in depth, form opinions about them, and then form generalizations. Cooperative learning lessons would be my final choice for the lesson plan sequence because they allow students to apply what they have learned in a group context. Students need to express their opinions, respect the opinions of others, communicate effectively, and draw conclusions through cooperative learning lessons. Overall, I feel that I contributed to each lesson plan creation and implementation.
Throughout my fieldwork experience, I reflected and critiqued myself and my peers. I am my hardest critic, so after each lesson I would write down how I needed to improve for future teaching. The commentary of my peers on discussion forums, brief discussions, and blog postings also helped to further my improvement during the course. The insights of my peers were some I had not previously considered. My use of informal language was a big sticking point throughout the semester, as well as my apparent nervousness. I learned to let loose and focus on the task at hand, rather than worry prematurely by working with my wonderful group! Throughout this course I also learned a lot from my peers. I learned new technologies like Voki and Animoto, which I plan to incorporate into my future lessons. I also got new ideas for lessons plans including a debate and timeline. Both ideas address Common Core Standards and New York State Social Studies Standards.
Overall, my experiences through Social Studies Methods at Bishop Dunn Memorial School have helped me become a more engaging, more aware, more tech-savvy educator.
