Course Summary: Final Post of The Semester

It has been an interesting, yet productive semester in ED3120 at Mount Saint Mary College! 

Like a lot of my colleagues, I was not very technologically advanced when the semester started. I wouldn't call myself a pro just yet, but this class has helped me gain knowledge as well as confidence in using technology, but also sharing my knowledge of technology with other people as well. 

This class has also given me the opportunity to partake in my first whole class instruction lesson. I was so nervous at first, but once I was done I couldn't wait to get back up in front of the classroom and share more knowledge and interact with the class some more. I have wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl, but that experience made my drive to achieve my childhood dream become so much more real. 

I know I have a lot left to learn, but this class was so helpful and I feel like I gained so much knowledge in how to teach lessons, make assessments, how to work with colleagues, how to bring technology into the classroom, and how to be a more professional teacher. 

I cannot wait to continue the path to my dream of being an elementary school teacher. It has been an awesome semester and ended with positive vibes from this class. I can't wait to bring those positive vibes over to Science Methods next semester! 

I am proud to say that I survived Social Studies Methods 

Mock Interviews

I think the mock job interviews was the best activity we participated in this semester. It was very eye opening. I have been to a few job interview but they were very informal. Having this experience really opened my eyes to how formal a job interview for a teaching position is. 

I loved the question "If you could relive one moment in history, what would it be and why?" I thin the answer to that says a lot about a person and what they believe in. I also liked having to think on my feet about inquiry, direct, and cooperative learning lessons. As each "administrator" played the role of a person advocating for each different kind of lesson, it was interesting to see how whether I actually like that style of teaching or not, I was able to talk about it with positive comments only. 

I also liked that answering the questions really made me evaluate what I think I am going to prefer to do in my future classrooms. I did not like that it was done in groups but I made it work. On top of being nervous, I felt very intimidated by having three other people listen to what I say. By the end of the experience I was definitely glad to have partaken in it. It definitely opened my eyes to what a real interview in the future could be like. 

Don't Be Afraid Of Teaching Economics!

For me, teaching economics is a scary thing. I don't have much background with it. Having to do a lesson about it in front of the class made me a little less nervous to have to teach it in the future. 

In my slides, I had to teach how economics effects people, communities and the nation. 

I do think that economics is important in the classroom because parts of it are crucial to success in the future generations that we are teaching. Economics can be a fun topic if taught correctly. There are many different fun games and activities that can be used to teach economics even to young children. These games will plant the general ideas in their minds and they will be able to use the knowledge from these games and actives in their future studies, as well as through life. 

Choosing To Be Grateful

Upon reading the New York Times article "Choosing to Be Grateful", many components of the article stuck out to me. In my opinion, the most important one is that most people are thankful for the big things in life such as the basic necessitates and important relationships in their lives, but it is important as well to be thankful for the little insignificant things that make a person happy. 

Personally, having issues with anxiety and depression, I make it a point to find big and little things that bring joy to my everyday life. Some of these things are old songs, pictures, or small incidents that happen throughout the days that bring a smile to my face. I also make it a point to be thankful for these things all year, not just around the time of thanksgiving. 

When it comes to connecting the article to my professional life, the author talked about happiness and gratitude coming from the inside, out. I immediately related that to education and my fieldwork experiences now, and the ones to come. Just like happiness needs to be intrinsic before it can be extrinsic, the knowledge that is being taught to students needs to be in your mind and in your spirit and truly understood before you pass it on to students. 

This article was a great reminder of ways to keep my spirits up and always remember to look at the bright side of things. There is always something to be grateful for. 

Native American Tribes - Muscogees

Above is the link to my group's Native American Tribe powerpoint. 

We were assigned to explore the Muscogee tribe. 

We found out about their history, hard times they faced, how they built a new life from those hard times, their government, geography, habitat, famous leaders, culture, food, and clothing. 

It was fun to present our findings to the class an compare our tribe with other tribes that our classmates had to present. I think that I would use this exact assignment in my future classrooms. It promotes cooperative learning and it also gives students a chance to get creative with how they present their findings to the class. It is also interesting to see how these native american indians made use from what was available to them on the land and how it impacted the life that we know today. An assignment like this could also be used as formative assessment to see where the students are at as far as research skills or general knowledge of the tribes. It could also be used as summative assessment. It could be a final project in a unit that contains native americans.

 This picture shows the different types of houses that the Muscogee tribe lived in when they lived in different parts of the nation.

This is the typical cloak that a man would wear as part of the Muscogee tribe. 

What's New With Current Events?

What is a current event? 

A current event is a contemporary development in local, national or wold affairs. 

We see current events on the news every single day. Some impact our lives and beliefs, while others are just news to pass the time. Current events can range from the latest fashion trend to more serious incidents such as the recent terrorist attacks that have been happening.

I believe that current events are a huge part of the environment around us; especially in the ever changing society that we live in. Some teachers believe that current events should not be in the classroom, but I disagree. I think that there is always news for students to be informed of. 

I had to do a current events presentation. My group's current events presentation was focused on the parts of speech. Before we even gave the class an article to read, we went over the parts of speech. 

The parts of speech are: 

• Nouns: a person place or thing  
• Pronouns: a word that takes place of a noun
• Adjectives: describing word
• Verbs: action word 
• Adverbs: words that modify a noun or adjective 
• Prepositions: describes the relationship between other words in a sentence  
• Interjections: a word used to express emotion. 
• Conjunctions: word that connects a group of words 

We went over these and then had the students read the article. In groups, they had to find 5 nouns, 4 verbs, 3 adjectives and 2 conjunctions. They were to add their findings to the powerpoint and then share them with the rest of the class.

I really liked using the parts of speech with current events. It shows how easy it is to combine subjects to enhance learning. Current events is something I will most definitely use in my future classrooms. I think that they broaden the knowledge of students and prepare them for the real world that they will one day be entered in to. 

Artifact Bags

It is true, artifacts are everywhere. They surround us and most of the time we aren't aware of it. Artifact bag projects are a fun way to bring awareness to the artifacts that exist in an area of study.

To start my artifact bag project, I asked my students, in this case my fellow classmates, to define the word artifact for me. They were spot on with the definition.

Artifact is an item made by a human being, typically an item or historical or cultural interest.

Next, I went on to explain to them that an artifact can be a primary or a secondary source. I then had them define for me, primary and secondary source. Again, they had the definitions perfect.

Primary source: an artifact, source, or document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study.
Secondary Source: documents written after an event has occurred, providing secondhand accounts of that event, person, or topic.

I then went on to show them my artifacts.

Artifact 1

This is a letter from Sebastian Brandt to Henry Hoverer. It was written January 13, 1622.
Before I told my students that information I asked them questions such as, What do you think this is? What do you think the purpose of it is? When do you think it was from?

They replied: a letter, about life in either the new colony or life in an old country, sometime in the early 1600's or 1700's. I assured them that their answers were pretty close. I then went on to tell them the story behind the letter.

Artifact 2

These artifacts are dice that have been discovered around the areas of the original Jamestown settlement.  They are made of bone, ivory, and cast lead.  They were used for child and adult gaming back when the colony first settled. 

I asked the students what they thought they could be used for and what they were made out of. Their answers were close to what the correct answers actually are. 

Artifact 3

This is a quartz crystal point. These belonged to indians who inhabited the area of jamestown before the colonists. They were used in bow and arrow hunting. They could also be given as gifts to the settlers by the indians who roamed the land before the settlers. I asked the students what they thought the quartz could be used for and all 4 of them said the thought it could be used for hunting. 

A fun website that has a game about jamestown is historyglobe.com In this game, the player is a jamestown settler. The settler has to make choices regarding their colony and at the end, depending on the choices the player makes, the colony either fails or thrives and it shows the player the data at the end. 

The rest of my artifact bag powerpoint is linked below. 

I like doing artifact bags I would definitely use them in my future classroom because I think that it brings insights of colonial life to the students and they are able to see how the indians and early settler really lived and how it is different from our life today.