Brent+Newer

3/19 - Student Directed Investigation:

2/27 - Debate:

2/13 - Simulation:

1/30 - Cooperative Learning Lesson

TOPIC FOR LESSON: Ancient Chinese and Japanese Civilizations Date: 1/30/12 Grade Level/Course: 7th grade world HST Unit: Ancient China and Japan

 - Students will understand the differences between ancient China and Japan as well as the importance of both. They will be able to recognize the influence of both in modern times.  - Students will be able to study two different topics and compare them, finding similarities and differences between the two.

Assessment Tools: Two sets of questions per student.

Activities: -Create 3 sets of questions; one for China, one for Japan, and one that compares the two. -Give directions -Ensure that students are all putting forth effort. -Divide students -Create rules to ensure that all students work. || Students’ Activities -I will divide students into pairs, selecting the pairs myself so that work actually gets done. -Half of the pairs will answer questions that I have written based on ancient China and the other half of the pairs will answer questions based on ancient Japan. -For Day one, these pairs will work on answering these questions using the textbook as the main source of information. || Time: 1 class periods || 1 class period ||
 * Initiation/Opening/Hook || <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Have a brief discussion over what the students know about China and Japan today. || <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Time: 5 min ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Teacher’s Activities
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Closure || -On day two I will create groups of four with two students who worked on Japan and two who worked on China. In these groups the students will teach each other about China and Japan. On day two I will also hand out a different sheet of questions that compares and contrasts China and Japan to be answered individually after the groups of four have taught each other what they have learned. These questions may have to spill over to day three or I could have the students complete them for homework. || <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Time

11/30 - Respond to how well it fits you and if you think it is helpful in understanding how you learn.

According to the survey, my top intelligence is interpersonal, next comes body movement, social, and logic. Number one didn't really surprise me too much, according to the site, I "have a very good sense of self. You like to spend time by yourself and think things over. You will often take in information from another person, mull it over by yourself, and come back to that person later to discuss it. You like working on projects on your own. You often prefer to learn by trial and error. Effective techniques to enhance your learning include keeping a journal and giving yourself time to reflect on new ideas and information." I would say that this is a pretty accurate description of who I am and how I prefer to learn. I know it's boring but I have always enjoyed being in lecture style classes more than anything else, I really do like to just sit there and take notes while in class. I didn't really expect to see body movement at number 2 because like I said I would rather just sit and listen while in class rather than getting up and doing fun activities. I was also expecting logic to be a little bit higher on the list and I'm really not sure why body movement and social came before logic. Anyway, I think that at this point in my life I have been in school long enough to know how I like to learn and even though I really did answer the questions of the intelligence assessment honestly but I didn't get a whole lot out of the results.

11/16 - Looking back on my time as a student I can think of one teacher that I was closest to. She was my British Lit teacher in my junior year and then my world lit teacher my senior year. She is one of those teachers that has been around for a long time and basically does nothing wrong. She cares about each and every one of her students and she never lets any of her students get away with slacking off. She knows exactly what each of her students are capable of and she is incredibly good at getting the most out of her students. I really feel lucky to have had her two years and I think she might be the biggest reason I am pursuing teaching. I would say that she was one of those teachers that was also a friend but she was always a teacher first and I think this is key. You have to be a teacher first and if you can be a friend with some of your students that's fine too.

11/9 - I really enjoyed the visit to Ben Pineda's class and was really impressed by his teaching. The thing that I enjoyed most about his style of teaching was his spontaneity and enthusiasm. I find his style of teaching much more entertaining than teachers who use powerpoint as their main source of teaching. Even if he never had his students do any activities or simulations his class would still be extremely fun and a great learning experience for any student. I loved his conversational style of teaching because it gets the students thinking and learning and most of the time they probably don't even realize it. I know who I am and I will never be as energetic as Ben but I can use some of the things that we saw.

Describe crucial (memorable) aspects of the hidden and null curricula that you experienced in secondary school. (ie what did you learn from school that was not academic, or what did you understand to be important or not important based on what you were taught or were not taught)
 * 11/2-**

When I was actually a student in middle and high school I definitely never noticed any hidden or null curriculum, but looking back on it I can think of a few things that I may have picked up on. One thing that I picked up on that was an example of hidden curriculum was that with each teacher, as a student you tend to figure out how they act and react to their students. After some time, it was pretty easy to figure out what kinds of things I could get away with in class and what kinds of things I couldn't. By the end of high school I could have given a freshman a list of names of teachers that you could sleep in front of and a list of teachers that you couldn't. As far as null curriculum, I think that there are countless examples of things that weren't mentioned. Some topics that I would have liked to see more thoroughly covered would have been things like the Cold War and all of the conflicts connected to it, the gay rights movement, and women's rights movements. Learning about hidden and null curriculum has helped me to realize that I need to be extremely careful and aware of everything that I am doing as a teacher. I need to understand that how I act and teach really matters and what I choose to teach sends a strong message to my students.


 * 10/26 -**

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<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 80%;">**The most surprising thing about the reading for me was that the origins of social studies are so racist. Whenever I think of social studies today, I think of a subject that teaches students to be better citizens. I think of a subject that teaches equality, and not a subject that was built on racism.** ======

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%;">(B) What would you argue were the strongest influences on how social studies began?
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">From my understanding of the reading, social studies were started to help people to understand why they are where they are in society. It was to teach the people stuck in manual labor that they were in manual labor not because of social prejudices but because of "scientific realities of evolution". Obviously these are not origins to be proud of but I am glad that I now know it origins because it is important that we not ignore our history. ===<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">(C) In what ways might the foundations of social studies impact what we do or don’t do today? (reference the last full paragraph on pg 91 as well as the one that follows it) ===

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The origins of social studies may cause teachers to have different expectations for different students. This may or may not be something that we consciously think about but the origins of social studies are certainly part of why we may have different expectations.======

How will you teach about Columbus after our discussion the other day? Why?
 * 10/19** -

For Columbus I would find two articles about his encounter with the Native peoples. The first article will talk about how his encounter was a positive experience for the America; the second will talk about how his encounter was a negative experience for the natives. Because like we discussed in class, there is always more than one side to a story. By doing this I will expose my students to more than one viewpoint on Christopher Columbus. This is assuming that they are old enough to comprehend the gravity of the Columbus exchange while still seeing the positives in the situation. Perhaps after they read the articles, I would have them write and essay using the articles as resources. In the essays they would make an argument in favor of or against the Columbus Exchange.

10/12 - For me, it was definitely easy to come up with the goals for my professional growth and development plan. Accomplishing these things will be the hard part. But, if I do really work on these goals it will definitely be worth it for me. I do actually think it is a useful task because I came up with honest goals and if I achieve them, it will be positive for me. It could have usability in a secondary classroom as long as the students are honest with themselves. They would have to be honest while coming up with goals and while working on them.

October 5 - Like everyone else, I really enjoyed the speech by Ken Robinson. I liked the story of the dancer that he told and I think he definitely brought up some great points about how we discourage creativity in schools because creativity won't get us a job. At the same time, I wished he would have given more suggestions for how to fix the problem.

September 28 - My teacher pen pal gave me a few tips on how to unit plan. She told me that she uses mainly the curriculum as well as the ACT and SAT tests to figure out what to teach. Another interesting thing she told me was that because she is an ELL teacher, she also uses the US citizenship test to help prepare any of her students hoping to become citizens.


 * DUE SEPTEMBER 19 - ( A) What has been most difficult in planning this unit so far? ** For me the most difficult thing in planning the unit on the Middle East has been organization. I know a decent amount about the modern Middle East but its difficult to decide exactly what is essential to talk about and in what order.


 * (B) Do you think units should be planned chronologically? Around a theme? Through enduring understandings? A combination? Why? ** I have never been a huge fan of teaching strictly chronologically because at any one point in time there are going to be separate important events happening around the world. For this reason I am more in favor of teaching by theme. Having said that, it does make sense to teach chronologically within themes just to make it easier to keep things straight.


 * September 7**
 * (A) D<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.66px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">escribe and post your favorite memory from a social studies class from middle/junior/senior high school; **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 14.66px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My favorite moment in a social studies class happened in tenth grade US history. Rather than having us read or lecturing to us, my teacher told us that he was going to tell the story of this friend of his who started from nothing and created an extremely successful business. The story took the entire hour to tell and it was obviously incredibly detailed. Throughout the story he would throw in famous names to make it seem real but at the end he told us that it was just a little story that he made up. The entire class was completely enthralled during his story and everyone really did believe that it was a real story and it was a bit of a shock when he told us it wasn't real. It was near the end of the year and we all thought that we knew our teacher but clearly there was more to this guy than we had all thought. It taught me that no matter what subject you are in, creativity should be encouraged and in my classes in the future I hope to be able to encourage creative thought.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.66px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(B) Describe and post your worst memory or experience from a social studies class from middle/junior/senior high school; ** Government class in high school consisted of nothing more than worksheets that were derived directly from the textbook. These worksheets did not make a lasting impact on me at all. Participation was not encouraged in any way - as long as you were quiet and you did the worksheets, you got an A.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.66px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(C) Describe and post your rationale for why you want to teach social studies and what particular reasons you find compelling for having students study and learn social studies in schools. **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 14.66px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I want to teach social studies and in particular history because I have always found it to be more interesting than other subjects. Students should study social studies because without some of the basic things learned in social studies classes a person cannot read or watch the news and know what is going on or be a part of many intellectual conversations that pop up in everyday life.


 * SEPTEMBER 12 - (A) Keeping in mind that there are many models of good teaching, describe some attributes or characteristics that good teachers possess. ** A good teacher should be able to motivate their students to want to learn the subject. They should also be able to time manage in their class. They need to be able to communicate their ideas well and to teach to all of their students rather than just a portion of them.


 * (B) Reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher at this point, what are some areas you are strong in? Where do you have room for improvement? ** I think I work pretty well with students one on one because I can figure out exactly what is troubling them and then target that need but I need more work on talking to the entire class at one time and making everything make sense to everyone.


 * (C) What are some things you need to learn or skills you need to practice to improve your teaching?** I want to learn how to better manage a class as well as technical things such as how to effectively lesson plan and organize as a teacher.