Week 4

This week our essential questions were How do I plan powerful and purposeful Social Studies? And how do I teach it? With my first "Wisdom from Experience" interview I found that not all teachers are planning powerful or purposeful Social Studies in their class. At first I found this discouraging but it opened up a lot ideas of what I can do. As a teacher I need to be a leader. It's also the first of the  NCPTS. I plan to integrate Social Studies into my lesson plans to ensure that my students get the education that I am obligated to. If I work in a school that is not integrating Social Studies I can advocate for my students and collaborate with other teachers and administrators, so that we all can teach it effectively. How can I do this effectively in class? When teaching literacy I can assign students to read a non fiction book set in a particular time period. We can openly discuss these events in class as well as new vocabulary. I recently been looking into new resources and came across Trueflix. This scholastic media reader is an excellent resource for students to watch for literacy. What I found interesting is that I could chose a topic from history or allow my students to pick a topic from it that relates to Social Studies. Planning my lesson ahead of time I could have my students write or create work based off what they just viewed. I want to be a teacher that thinks outside the box. I would like to be innovative and keep my students engaged in learning. I realize that not all students learn the same so when planning my lessons to be purposeful and powerful I will need to be able to reach each and everyone. I believe by listening to their feedback, their interests, and assessing their work I will have a better understanding of how to plan. I think it's our responsibility to our students to  not only challenge them to learn but ourselves. I think what I took out of my first interview was stagnation is not purposeful or powerful. I need to continue to challenge myself with new innovative ways to help my kids learn. There I said it "my kids" The students who's future learning Im responsible for. I hoping this blog will inspire you.