Chrissy+Gentry

My name is Chrissy Gentry and I am a social studies major, history minor. I really enjoyed my social studies and history classes when I was growing up because I felt like you could really do a lot with the classes. There are so many activities that you can bring into the classroom and so many different cultures you can explore. I would like to teach at a high school level, since the dialogue with the students would be stronger. I have two brothers and one sister, and I am the second to last born. I think it's possible that I have middle child syndrome haha. Over my summers I work at beach in Rochester Hills. I met some of my best friends there, and so it was a great opportunity and experience. I also work in the tech center in the College of Education, but I am not a tech wizard. I mainly trouble-shoot and explore different programs. Basically, I teach myself so I can teach others to use such programs. I hope to work as a teacher to help students progress through their tough times, and also give them interesting life long learning lessons. Students understanding is so important, so to understand the present we should dissect the past and learn through history and social issues. Student engagement and involvement is important to me, and I hope that with their trust I will be able to spark some classroom discussion and debate.



This is me and my best friend and roommate.

Outside of work and school I enjoy spending time with my friends and my boyfriend. I absolutely love puppies, I like to sing, and I was in spartan idol for two years, but never made it to the final round. I also love to act. I am pretty laid back and just love to laugh! I have really high hopes for everyone else in my classes, and hope that I will be able to go into my internship year and strive to the fullest. GO GREEN!



=**Lesson Plan on 9/11:**= Begin opening discussion (10 min): how many of you know what I mean when I talk about September 11th, 2001? The world is a place where many people have different ideas, beliefs and viewpoints. These do not always correspond with everyone else in the world. Often time’s people feel so strongly about what they believe, they act out in rage and despair trying to their point across. Sometimes, this leads to other people getting hurt. The definition of a terrorist is someone who frightens others. This would happen in an extreme way, such as a bombing, or in the case of September 11th, hijacking planes and flying them into the twin towers in New York City. This was believed to be done by an al-Qaida group that did not like the U.S. Many people died in this case, and the people that committed the crimes believed that they should have died, that what happened was part of Gods plan for them. These were Muslim men involved and there was a strong religious tie to their decisions. This leads to another important factor we need to discuss, the myths about the Muslim faith.

Extremist discussion (5 min) I want everyone to understand that the Islam faith is one that advocates peace. Being Muslim is not about terrorist attacks and committing suicide bombings. In fact, there are going to be people that are extreme in any group of the world and it would be extremely unfair to condemn people that are Muslim based off of the actions of a very small group of people. After these attacks many people of the Muslim faith were treated extremely poorly, and it was wrong and that should be known.

Thoughts about the attacks (15 min): Does this make you angry? Sad? Do you believe anything could have been done to prevent these attacks, and if the security of the country should have been more receptive and aware. Offer the students the opposing view to the attacks and ask for their responses, if they believe our government is capable of it?

Response (5 min): Have the students write down their thoughts on the attacks, how they might feel if they lost someone from the attacks, or if they did loose someone from the attacks. If they feel unsecure now, or any other feelings they may have. This will be private so in case they didn’t want to speak in class they can speak now.

Final Questions (5min): does anyone have any comments or questions?

=Unit Plan War of 1812:= Create a chart- have students write down what they think caused the war, Things they want to know about the war. Short lecture highlighting key points leading to the war. || Event: discuss the reasons the Britain’s were taking such extremes towards America. What sparked the conflict between the two nations. || Event: discuss the interior versus exterior factors that contributed to the war. Was there fighting within the Us that had contributing factors to the war or was it strictly foreign invasion. Work together in small groups. || Event: have students play a game such as risk, so they can see what control of power can make them feel like. The idea behind this is that the students will see that the longer the game is played, the more land they want to control. They will then discuss this and its importance to understanding the greed over land and power. || If and how the War of 1812 was resolved. Students will write a half to one page response paper on what they believe ended the war. Did it simply diffuse over time, or it was due to a settlement. || After the game is played have students have strong opinions of takeover and the importance of land. || Assessment: Students’ response as to understanding the ending of the war. ||
 * Day 1-introduction || Day 2 || Day 3 || Day 4 || Day 5 ||
 * Event: discussion of prior knowledge, assessment to see if people know the real cause.
 * Assessment: Students’ prior knowledge. || Assessment: End of the lesson quiz on some of the reasons the war started || Assessment: connections group discussion between the interior causes verses the exterior causes. || Assessment:

I would like to teach a career class. This class would really engage students into discovering their interests, and also allow them to discover ways that they could advance their learning, other than going to a university. I want students to get help before they go to college, and realize that they can go farther in life without going to a university. I came to college not knowing what I wanted to do, and never realized the options that were out there, so I would like my students to be able to see some of the choices. It would also build their skills in the work force. I would teach them how to create a lot of discussion, people would talk about what they like resume, and also search for jobs or internships.
 * History of Jobs from the past, present and future: up and coming careers. Elective Course **

There would be chat with one another, and could use the resources that we had available to look at the up and coming jobs. I would want my students to see that they do not need to go to a university in order to excel in the world. I also want my students to take a look at past trends in the history of the workforce, how have the fields changed and if the workforce seems more or less fair now. I want to engage them in the changing fields of today. They will look at why certain jobs have ceased and what creates new ones.

The first unit would be career options. During this time the students would explore descriptions of jobs and see if any of them interested them. They would go through newspapers or magazines or go online, if it was available to them, and explore careers they had never heard of. If they came across a career that they didn’t know they would have to look it up and get the description of it. We would work in groups to talk about what might be of interest to them, and look at the type of degree and school for it.

The second unit would be the past history trends in jobs, how they have changed overtime, and topics such as if technology seems to be a good or bad thing in the market today. We will also be looking at the changes in salaries and hourly wages, as well as the division between the top employee and the bottom worker. How certain jobs contribute to the economy and how the economy boosts when people have jobs. We would also explore other areas of the world, how their society works and work in capitalism on our society versus other parts of the world.

The third unit would be resume building and how to find internships. This section would teach students how to compose a proper resume for prospective employers. It would show them certain things that they could and should put on the resume, and it would also teach students about cover letters and message statements. In an effort to make a student look more professional and comprehensive of what needs to be done when applying for a job. I would also like to take this time to show students how they can find possible internships with the resources that they have available to them. This way, students could gain experience as well as delve into their interests early on. We would also research why the job market is so much more demanding today than it was years ago.

The fourth unit would be life after high school. During this unit I want to explain to my students that there are many options to further themselves after high school, and that you do not need to go to a university necessarily. I would still talk about colleges but would show other interests, such as trade schools or community colleges. During this time I would want to show ways to find scholarships and grants as well incase the students are not that financially well off. There are other ways that may be more suitable for students that just going to a university, and its important that student knows that. I also want them to explore why education after college is important, as it wasn’t a few generations ago.

I would purchase some books for the class that discuss resume building and career options, that way students could look at it during class. The newspaper is a great resource because there are always jobs in a section there that people can delve into. I would try and make time in the computer lab for students to search the web and go on career sites, as well as be able to print off pages for the students to look at for the top ten jobs or growing fields. Yahoo! News often has articles for jobs, and this could occasionally be a good source. Novels such as “The Jungle” would be a great book to let students get a glimpse into the old type of work, and its not a regular textbook so it should be more interesting to read. 1. The Jungle 2. Managing modern capitalism by Donald Hancock 3. Gateway to opportuity: history of community colleges in the US by J.M beach

Assessments will be journals that are based off completion. I just want to make sure that students are keeping up with their information and finding new jobs and researching interests. I will also grade them on their resume and the components that come with. There will be some quizzes based off what you should do in an interview and if I brought in an article they would need to write a written response on what are the main points. They would also need to bring in write-ups of their findings. They would need to write a book report on the Jungle, with a response at the end of how they felt about it. I would also want them to do a write up on a job they have never heard before, this can either be a paper for a presentation. If travel permits, I would want to try and let them visit a career fair.

=**__Study Guide: Chapter 3__**= -Briefly define the eight components of a lesson plan: -Create a sample lesson plan. -Define each of the following and explain their importance: 1. Reflection-in- action 2. Reflection-on-action 3. Reflection-for-action 4. Action research 5. Relational teaching -What motivates students to learn? What are some of the ways that students are motivated to learn?
 * 1) Lesson objectives
 * 2) Assessments
 * 3) Initiation or start of a lesson
 * 4) Teacher activities
 * 5) Students activities
 * 6) Closure
 * 7) Materials and resources
 * 8) Reflections

-What are some of the problems that keep students from staying motivated in class and learning?

-What is the difference between management and discipline?

-List the ten current truths about effective schooling.

-What are the approaches to classroom management? Know each model, and who designed it. Which one do you believe is the most effective, or is it a combination of a few? Explain your answer with reasons. - How can you be an effective teacher and make it work in your classroom?

= **Portland Middle School Lesson Plan**=

My colleague correspondent is My TE 250 teacher. She is someone that I can trust and I can talk to. After talking to her about how she creates unit plans she told me that she likes to work backwards. She looks at what the objectives are for the class, and then she thinks and determines how she will tackle the objectives. From there, she decides what the best lesson will be and how she can help her students really learn the material. Then, she hopes that the students will use the lesson to learn the objective, and that they can learn the things that she plans to assess. She has used help books that help her tackle her unit plans. I like her response because I feel that that is an effective way to create a unit plan. If you work backwards, than you can be sure to cover what needs to be covered by the end of the unit. It would be similar to teaching to the test, but thinking of ways to help your students learn. Unit planning can be tough, but I believe that it depends on the lesson choice. If I am going to be teaching a topic I am confident about and know a lot about, it is easier for me to come up with ways to make it stronger. If I do not know a lot about the lesson I think that I can be a bit more boring. When I break it down it helps me build my lesson and my unit. I make sense of it by tackling the topic, and breaking it down from there, finding one facet of it and thinking of ways to make it easier to understand, or grab the students attention.

=Halloween outline and lecture:=

=15 min lecture on the Civil War=



=Concept attainment:=

When I read the article about Segall, I must admit that it opened my eyes to the idea behind a map. When I had thought about maps I too never thought that it could be placed perfectly from the one who was creating it. I never thought about the idea of making a map represent certain areas in a demeaning or negative way before. It is true that maps create bias and assumption, but I think that area in in the world is directly related to a lot of people’s cultures and ways they live. If you think of the middle East as being a place that is hot and humid, than you can allow students to understand the style of dress that they wear there. I also found it interesting that American was more centered in the world according to Segall, which could lead to a sense of superiority. These are the subtle hints that I find really intriguing in the way that the world works. Different maps will certainly depict different things, but the engaging questions could really spark a lot of debate and discussion within a class. It would really require students to look beyond the surface of the layout. I liked the questions “if a different group mapped the same area, why are maps different?” In my opinion I think this would be a great time to bring up ethnocentrism and the idea of superiority and how it is promoted into students learning. I also liked his idea to have students create different maps of the same place. While doing this activity they will be able to see how information on maps can be left out because different people see the world differently and see what is important differently, so they will see bias and I can try and get them to understand that as a concept. They also need to understand the difference in maps, and that different subjects focus on different items, like politics versus land area.

I really enjoyed the article by Schmidt particularly because it wanted to use geography to understand people and culture, which I think is often missing in the studies of the rest of the world. If we are able to view geographic location as a problem to our students, than one day they may become more sympathizing to the rest of the world. The way that certain people are depicted can really alter the beliefs that people have about them, such as when people from Africa were shown as savage. This was not a correct depiction but it was enough to persuade people that had no idea that this was true. That is a huge problem today. People just don’t know and so they believe the rumors that they hear. Boundaries are often depicted with historical and geographical history, which can be important to discuss why we have them and why they are created. A difficult activity would be having students decide how to create boundaries by different groups of people. This could lead to a political discussion and the idea of the issues with territory such as the one with Palestine and Israel. It’s important to note the tension that arises with boundaries as well. Sometimes these divides and boundaries even lead to genocide and war. When you look beyond just land, divides happen for man reasons. This topic could go on to discuss the changing boundaries, and the causes behind them. I do agree, we need our students to understand the complexities of the world that may not be comfortable for their realm of thought.

The final article by Wasserman was also an enlightening article. I do agree with him that many people will probably think that more people is not a problem because we do have the space for it, but leaves out the other problems, such as resources and jobs. I think taking a look at numbers in certain areas would be interesting to spark conversation about why certain areas are underdeveloped and why others are doing so well. As the numbers increase the social divide increases, the world needs to find ways to account for the growing population, which is often a problem. Our decisions and the youths decisions affect how the world is going to change as the population increases and they need to be informed about what their decisions mean, and could mean.

I think that certain concepts would be easier than others to define in a classroom. It would also be based off of the age that you are teaching. When teaching younger students you need to be very straightforward for them to gain the knowledge, but older students tend to be able to think outside the box more often. I like the idea of creating a flow chart that students will be able to use because I think it allows them to break down a word in more than one way and that could give them a better grasp on the topic. I also would ideally like to use real life examples that they can relate to and help them adapt their knowledge. I honestly cannot think of a time where I had to learn a new concept, because when i think of this I think about learning a term and not a concept, which can become more challenging. The instructional strategies book really broke down the way you can create a concept as well. I think their are also negative concepts, like dictatorships or certain regimes. If I were to teach a lesson in an effort for them to gain more knowledge about a concept than I would want to use work sheets that allowed them to define the concept in multiple ways, I would also use different examples of the concept in my lecture so that they would get a feel from multiple perspectives. Working backwards can sometimes help students gain a better grasp as well. I would use a worksheet that divided up the concept into different meanings. I would also want to include things that the concept is not, to help students to not get confused.

=** Primary source with lecture and questions. **=