SSED Week Eleven

     As I am reaching the end of Spring Semester, I can feel all the deadlines nipping at my heels!  I will say that the most impactful thing I have learned in Social Studies Methods this Spring is how to manage my time wisely (and I am still definitely learning).  We are absolutely on the home-stretch and I can see the finish line.  BUT we still have lots to accomplish before we cross it.  Through my clinical experiences this week, I began to notice that I am learning how to interact with my students in a much more meaningful way.  Also, I am very excited to teach my Social Studies lesson to my students very soon!
     Flipped lessons are strange.  They are awesome and impactful for students, but they are completely unlike anything I have ever done before! I love the idea of them and I think I will love them as a form of teaching once I get used to recording myself teaching and explaining things to a computer screen.  The actual written part of the lesson was not extremely difficult for me (though it was still far from easy), but recording myself teaching the lesson is well beyond my comfort zone.  This has been my largest challenge yet.  I believe that in order to demonstrate leadership in my classroom, as a teacher should, I must be confident in my teaching.  By pushing me out of my comfort zone, this assignment appears to be developing me into a leader for my future students.
     In one of my classrooms at WES, Gabrielle and I discussed how great it was that we were getting to know the kids' names without peeping through their hands at their papers or using the famous "Now would you spell your name for me" line to figure out what it is.  The students are also beginning to tell us apart (which may not seem like a big deal, but Ms. Lindley and Ms. Lowman are apparently VERY hard to tell apart).  These connections that I have made with the students in the classroom have given me the ability to really offer them help in areas they need.  The students are beginning to trust me enough to ask for help and to admit when they don't quite understand something.  Teaching is SO relational and those relationships we make with our students are crucial to their learning!
   

SSED Week Ten

     This week we began our EdTPA bootcamp session! I think I am finally beginning to understand the difference between the three tasks (and also how the fourth one would work) and how they all work together and flow from one task to another.  We did an activity in class today that was super helpful!  This week we also have been asked to look at a "kiddie lit" book and start thinking of ways to integrate social studies into the reading and teaching of that book.  This week I have also been planning my social studies lesson for teaching, and my CE was kind enough to provide me with awesome materials!  My clinical experiences at WES this week were also great.  Working with small groups of students has taught me so much about how students learn and how to reach them.  I seem to learn something new about how to more effectively impact students' learning every time I work with them! 

     In Social Studies class today, we divided into four groups and each group went through a different task of EdTPA and pulled out what they believed were the most important parts of performing that task.  I was given task four, and honestly, prior to today in class, I have never even looked through task four.  I have briefly overviewed tasks one, two, and three and pulled out what I had to know to get by but never really dissected the document and annotated it the way we did yesterday.  We didn't get to task three and four in class today.  However, throughout task one and two, Dr. Parker had an explanation of how we would go about accomplishing each of the points the students pulled out of the document.  This was super impactful because I feel like now, at lest for task one and two, I have an understanding of not only what is asked of me but how I can go about accomplishing what EdTPA is asking me to do in my lessons.

     The "kiddie lit" assignment for this week was also rather eye opening.  I wanted to get my hands on a book that I knew was something kids will enjoy, so I chose to use one that the little girl I babysit brought home.  She selects a book from the library once a week to bring home and read, so I knew this would be something that at least looked interesting to kids.  The book she chose this week was called "If You Give a Pig a Party."  I was shocked that when I looked at the standards for social studies, they can so naturally be integrated into even the "silly" literature kids love so much.  This assignment has shown me that social studies integration can be fun and simple.  It isn't always a burden! 

     I was very blessed this semester to have received a CE who shares so many resources with me!  She has given me several books that include activities, games, ideas of integration, and much more.  She said she understands that I will only be teaching one Social Studies lesson but she wanted me to see some other ways to integrate Social Studies into everyday teaching, which is something we have focused on very much in Social Studies Methods this semester.

     At Washington, the teachers I am placed with typically use me and the other students who are in the room with us to break the class down into even smaller groups so that individual students are reached in a smaller student to helper ratio.  Every time I am with a group at WES, I learn something new about how students learn.  One thing that I noticed this week as I was doing a vocabulary activity with a group was that one student seemed to have some issues focusing.  I found out, however, that if I gave step by step instruction on even the most simple things such as "Place your pencil and scissors on the table and clasp your hands in your lap then put your eyes on me," and then made sure to make specific eye contact with that student every three or four seconds while I was explaining the activity or the next step, he was significantly more focused than before.  It is remarkable that we have twenty students in the room to teach and it will be our job to learn the best way to reach each individual student and keep him or her engaged at all times.  I absolutely learned much more about facilitating learning for each individual student this week! 

SSED Week NIne

     This week in Social Studies methods, we received some of the best news possible!  When we return from Spring Break, we are having edTPA boot camp!  (Which I know is exactly what I personally need to be proficient in writing these lesson plans.)  I changed my mind on my unit plan again, which I'm not surprised about.  However, the way the standards are beginning to align with the learning experiences gives me hope that I may have finally found what will click for my unit.  I also took a few more steps toward my PDP this week and some kinds of artifacts I would like to include in my final product.
     I have finally set in stone (well for now) the major parts of my unit plan, including the learning experiences.  I have finally figured out how to align  the learning experiences with the standards I chose.  I believe that I can still tweak my learning experiences to make them incorporate more technology, so I plan to be working on that over Spring Break.  I am excited that my learning experiences are now aligned with exactly what I have planned for my performance task.
     This week, after meeting with Dr. Parker about my PDP, I decided to create a blog site that will hold all my research and all my artifacts for goal one.  I was unsure of how exactly I could display this all this information, but I believe a blog sire will be the best option! I spoke with one of my teachers at Washington who has an ELL student, and she said she would be happy to allow me to interview her about how she facilitates learning for him and moves him towards thinking critically.  For my blog site, I plan to have an interview video, some links to effective resources for ELL students,  several infographics that explain effective strategies for working with ELL students, and an animated video that talks about how to move ELL students to thinking critically.
     For my second goal on my PDP, I began my observation of how teachers interact with students this week.  Prior to this week, I had conducted ample research about the most effective ways to interact with students, and I was surprised to see that many of the "best" ways to interact with students that I found were not implemented in the classroom.  Standard two states that teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students.  If there is not an open and effective line of communication between all students and the teacher, the environment is not meeting the standard.  My next step on this PDP is to find out simple ways to begin opening up communication in the classroom.  I hope that after my research on this topic, my classroom will have that respectful environment where all students feel open to learn, make mistakes, and talk to me about what they need every step of the way.

SSED Week Eight

     The knowledge I gathered this week from the overview and the videos Dr. Parker shared have helped me to even further see ways to present information to my students and allow them to show me what they know.  I enjoyed learning about both the TPACK approach to viewing knowledge and the SAMR model of technology integration.  After gaining a deeper understanding of knowledge through TPACK and the different levels of technology integration according to SMAR, I have decided to make a few small changes to my unit plan in order to reach students in the most effective way possible.
     Looking back on my notes from my clinical observations this semester, it has been interesting to see how the technology integration used by my clinical educator falls into a different category of the SMAR model each time.  For example, one way that she showed the first level (substitution) was by taking the chart students were asked to fill in about the article they read and putting it on the smart board.  The smart board was substituted for the typical pencil and paper alternative.  An example of a time I saw my clinical educator use a deeper level (modification) was when she allowed students to correct writing mistakes on the smart board and each type of writing mistake had to be corrected in a different color.  She modified her lesson on correcting writing in order to integrate technology.  Another thing I have realized after looking into the SMAR model is that technology is not integrated nearly as much as I feel like it could be and should be in classrooms.  Students are completely comfortable with technology due to the time period they are living in, so why not take advantage of this by pushing students to use technology as often as possible in our classrooms?
     The TPACK model gave me a new understanding of how I present information to my students.  I now see that there are ways to move from my own personal comfort zone (which I believe is TCK).  I have now started looking at my unit plan and trying to decide what would be the best way to incorporate the other branches of the TPACK diagram and even move several lessons over to the "sweet spot" that we see in the center of the diagram.  By keeping this model and these ideas in the front of my brain as I plan lessons and continue revising my unit, I believe I will definitely begin to see more differentiation and more creativity throughout my lesson planning and learning experiences.       The TPACK and SMAR models, when used, will ensure that I am facilitating learning for my students in a variety of ways.  I will plan appropriate instruction for my students while challenging them to think critically.  Along with knowing my future students well and a thoughtful planning, the TPACK and SAMR models will be great tools for creating lessons and learning experiences in my future classroom.