103 Creatively Simple Ways of Teaching Geography

I recently read the presentation titled 103 Creatively Simple Ways of Teaching Geography. Reading this presentation took forever but really opened up my eyes on the different ways you can teach geography. I never knew there could be 103 different ways! While reading it three ways stood out to me the most.. 

The first one is "Adopt a rock".  Students are asked to identify the rock's name, where it may have come from and what processes have shaped it. This helps students with geography because the students are asked where the rock is from and how it was formed. Students are even allowed to take the rock home and take care of it. This also shows students responsibilities. 

The second one is "Sing it". Students are asked to adapt lyrics to a song to fit the information given. This is a great way because songs are catchy and we tend to remember songs better than we are to retain information. I can still remember all the words to "Barbie Girl" but I can't remember what flip teaching is. With sing it, you can also use this for any subject/topic.

The third one is "A-Z". The students brainstorm words that start with the certain letter that has to do with geography. I think this is a great activity because it makes students think outside the box and work together.

Learning geography can sometimes be challenging. However, after reading the presentation I have now learned ways to teach it so that it is fun and engaging. 

Jigsaw Learning

In class we learned about a new cooperative learning technique called jigsaw learning. This technique is a good way to avoid conflict among school children. The way jigsaw works is the students are broken up into smaller groups that contain 3-5 students. Once these groups are made, these groups are considered "home groups". While the students are in their home groups, they are assigned a different aspect or topic within their group. For example, while we were in our home groups we had to sign up for a Native American tribe. Once we signed up, we met up with different students from different home groups, who had the same topic as us. We worked together to research the topic, once we did that we returned to our home group and explained our topic. I really enjoyed this experience and can't wait to use it during student teaching and/or in the future. It was fun and engaging. It kept me on my feet and helped me be more social with people in my class. 

Current Events

Our Time to Present!

Over the last couple weeks, each group would present a short lesson on current events. This week it was finally my groups turn. My group chose the article, "In dispute over coal mine project, two ways of life hang in the balance" by William Yardley. My group got our article from a website called Newsela.com. This website was new to me and was pretty neat. I think this is a good website to use in a classroom. It is kid friendly as well. One thing I really enjoyed about this website was that after you read the article there was a short quiz you could take about it.

Once my group figured out what article to use, we had to decide how we would be teaching it. While talking to Melissa, she had the idea of doing a Pro vs. Con poster using Glogster. I thought this was a great idea because you can have mix feelings about this topic. The pros were arguing that they should use mine for coal and the cons were arguing the opposite. Once my group created the PowerPoint presentation, we decided to email the article in advance to our class and have them answer a few questions along with it. At first, we were going to have the students pick what side they stand for. But, I decided to go against that because people would pick groups with their friends in it and also some groups would be stuck with people who didn't know how to work Glogster. Now it was to present to the class. We started off by introducing ourselves and article. Once we finished that section, one of my group members went over what a pro and con was. We also discussed political posters. Once that was over the groups split up as well as the teachers and started creating the political posters. At the end of the 20 minutes, we shared each groups posters and they were pretty unique. 

  Overall, i think that the current events project was a unique activity to do in class. However, I would make minor changes. Some of these changes consist of more time being allowed while teaching it. Each group was given 10 minutes to teach their current events and it wasn't enough time. Next time I would give up to 30 minutes. I would also assign this as a solo project. From previous experience, it is very hard to meet up with my group. Also, my group chose a topic based off of Native Americans because that was their fieldwork topic.I was the only one left out and students wouldn't have this problem if they did the currents event project alone.

Here is the link to my groups current events project.

Artifact Bags

What time is it? Summertime.. 

Just kidding it's time to write about my favorite activity I did and learned in class.

What's in my bag?

This week in class, we focused on artifact bags.This type of activity works best in an inquiry lesson because you have to follow through the inquiry process. In fact, during my fieldwork experience my group did an artifact bag for our inquiry lesson.

We weren't allowed to pick any topic. Instead we focused on the lessons we taught in fieldwork. My group taught about the thirteen colonies and how they gained their independence. So for my artifact bag, I decided to do Paul Revere. He was very important during this time period because he was a patriot leader and symbol of the American Revolution. For my artifacts inside my bag I included the following:

1. A man riding a horse. 

2. English tea bag.

3. A sign that said "The British are coming!"

I chose these artifacts because Paul Revere was known for his midnight ride. This means he was riding a horse through the village screaming "the British are coming, the British are coming!". I also chose the English tea bag because he was in Boston where the Boston tea party occurred. With all three artifact bags inside the bag and a picture of a patriot uniform on the bag, I would hope that my group would come to the conclusion that my person is Paul Revere. Here is the best part, they guessed it correct!

When creating this presentation, I also included a link to a website and book I would use to elaborate more on Paul Revere. The website I used was a virtual museum on him. I think this is a cool and different approach to a website because it isn't boring with all information. Instead, it is taking you around and talking about Paul and the American Revolutionary War. The book I would use would be Who Was Paul Revere by Roberta Edwards. This is a great book because it brings Paul Revere's ride back as it is explained through text and illustrations.

I think this activity works best for any grade level. I would not make any adaptions expect have the inquiry process sheet half filled out for either first or second grade. Other then that I would leave this activity alone. I think students would really enjoy this activity because they would learn a lot through a fun and engaging activity. Beside using this activity for social studies, you can also use it for different topics/subjects.  

Overall, I think artifact bags are a great way to learn about a certain topic, time period, and/or person. When I become a teacher I will most definitely use this to help expand and challenge my students knowledge. 

Here is the link to my presentation on artifact bag.

Designing Assessments

Assessments. A word I hate the most. Why do we have to do it? Don't teachers know that assessments give students anxiety. I know I get shaky just by hearing the word. The worst part is we had to create one to give to our students.

Before heading into our fieldwork, we had to design a pre-assessment to test our second graders knowledge. Each group had to come up with 4 questions on their certain topic. Our topic was colonies gaining their independence. It was a bit difficult because we didn't know if our questions would be to easy or difficult. Originally we had different forms of question but once we saw the pre-test, we noticed that they were all changed to multiple choice. This taught me that when creating a pre-test I should focus on multiple choice types of questions. However, the pre-assessment didn't go so well, but it helped us figure out what we needed to teach. For example, we noticed that many of the students knew who the first president was, so as a group we decided not to spend to much time on it. However, one thing we noticed was that majority of the class didn't know anything about the thirteen colonies. As a group we decided to spend more time on this and even introduce it with a song. 

Once all the groups taught their lessons, we had to create another assessment, the post-assessment. As a group we had to come up with 5 questions this time. This helped us figure out if our students grasped the information and retained it. Creating the post-assessment was much easier than creating the pre-assessment. 

How Finland Broke Every Rule

WOW! Reading this article made me want quit school in America and move to Finland to become a teacher! The most powerful thing that stood out to me in the articles was "Instead of control, competition, stress, standardized testing, screen-based schools and loosened teacher qualifications, try warmth, collaboration, and highly professionalized, teacher-led encouragement and assessment." I think America has a lot to learn from Finland. For starters, their students are ten times smarter than the students here. They also don't focus on state testing and homework, instead they have fun with the kids and teach them real life things. I remember sitting in my high school desk and thinking when the heck am I going to need to know this stuff in the real world? The answer was

NEVER!