Compiled Messages: ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 133 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:34am Subject: 8/30 NCSS standards (1-17) In an ever changing and evolving society we need to stress the importance of teaching Social Studies to our youth. We must strive to achieve excellence in teaching the subject and meet the Social Studies standards for the general welfare of our community. People experience life in an individual way as well as sharing common perspectives with other people. We must design a curriculum that will help each person learn a mixture of personal and community views of social studies. We must also teach the student how to apply the knowledge and skills to civic action as they engage in social inquiry. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 134[Branch from no. 133] Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:36am Subject: Re: 8/30 NCSS standards (1-17) I mean 9/1 not 8/30 ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 168 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Saturday, September 3, 2005 1:14pm Subject: 9/1/05 Fitzgerald/Lester Article Synopsis: This article is what a school room would be like in George Orwell’s 1984, which I found very frightening. I found it very interesting that the “mentor” was the one doing all of the researching work. Aren’t student’s supposed to be the ones doing the hard work by looking and making decisions on what to filter through in the “libraries?” Instead, the mentor will be the one scouring the network “saving the student hours upon hours of search time.” Instead of the student working for the teacher, the teacher is working for the student. The mentor will be the one integrating selected information and “continuously working behind the scenes.” For example, upon request the mentor will have already “retrieved, customized, and prepared for presentation a rich hyper- media document.” The mentors will “exhibit high recall and high precision” accessing “information along multiple dimensions.” In this futuristic classroom, there will be no personable interactions, only synthetic. “All student-mentor interactions will take place in an immersive 3-D projection.” There will be “simulation engines [that] will enable students to model the interactions between complex scientific, political, and socioeconomic systems. This educational technology “will control the social and economic forces shaping society.” The only good thing about these classrooms is that every child would receive the same personalized instruction, access to loads of information from digital libraries, and help to “make the transition from the academic world to the job.” The downside is that the mentors “could be subtle purveyors of propaganda by slating all the information they present.” To conclude, educational technology could potentially improve the way that students “consider society and their role within it.” CCSD: The CCSD CEF’s for Social Studies “curriculum consists of content from civics, economics, geography, and history.” “The students need to develop a perspective on history as it relates to them, a feeling of location, and a view of citizenship as a personal right and responsibility in order to function in an increasingly more complex world.” According to these standards, the students will be able to demonstrate a knowledge of “people and historical events of the community, state, nation, and world, geographic places, rules, laws, and responsible citizenship, money and the role of government in a market economy.” At the elementary level, the standards are not how to solve world problems and how to save your country through the use of simulation, rather the lessons are all skewed as to what information that the teacher will give. They are based upon what the teacher thinks is important. For example, what community is more important Eskimos or Native Americans, or what events in history are more important, the depression or the civil war, or whether or not it is more important to teach students about foreign currency exchange rates than Wall Street. The teacher can choose to hide or expose his/her students to whatever information he/she wants. Instead of the student telling the teacher what he wants to know, the teacher tells the student what he/she thinks the student should know according to state standards. The social studies taught now are usually based in the past and not in the future. They do not usually try to come up with simulated situations that will determine their future, but rather simulate what happened in the past. That is the biggest difference between these two readings. One is based upon social studies of the future and the other social studies is based in the now and then. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 215 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Thursday, September 8, 2005 12:21am Subject: 9/06/05 The reading specified ten themes of social studies. It stated what they were, how they are applied and their importance. 1-Culture: Because it helps us to understand ourselves as both individual members of various groups 2-Time Continuity and Change: Perspectives from various aspects of history. 3-People, Places, and Environments: Helps learners make informed and critical decisions about the relationship between human beings and their environment. 4-Individual Development and Identity: To be aware of the processes of learning, growth, and development. 5-Individuals, Groups, and Institutions: Examine various institutions that affect their lives and influence their thinking. 6-Power, Authority, and Governance: Examining the purposes and characteristics of various governance systems. 7-Production, Distribution, and Consumption: To explore economics 8-Technology and Society: To study the relationships among science, technology, and society. 9-Global Connections: Analyzing patterns and relationships within and among world cultures. 10-Civic Ideals and Practices: The central purpose of social studies. The second part was about the standards and performance expectations for different grades and reference charts for each social studies theme. Each concept was applied to three different levels, early, middle and high school. For example, given the concept power, authority, and governance. The early grades explain the purpose of government, the middle describes the purpose of government and how its powers are acquired, used and justified, and high school grades explain the purpose of government and analyze how its powers are acquired, used, and justified. For each level, the level of taxonomy (difficulty) increases (i.e., explain, describe, analyze). ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 241 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Friday, September 9, 2005 10:28pm Subject: 09/08/05 Behavior Management No effective instruction can occur while a classroom is in chaos. A successfully managed classroom environment is essential to all effective instruction. Kounin’s work has proven that classroom teachers that had a high degree of work involvement and a low degree of misbehavior in their classrooms consistently demonstrated certain behaviors. Nine were stated in the article: with-it-ness, overlapping, smoothness, momentum, group alerting, accountability, valence, challenge, and seat-work variety. Bottom line: teachers must be establish and enforce their guidelines from day one and be consistent in discipline. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 250 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, September 11, 2005 11:09pm Subject: 09/13/05 Organizing and Planning for Teaching Social Studies in Middle and Secondary Schools “Carefully prepared, well-designed plans are a key ingredient in all successful planning.” Planning involves having a clear rationale, attention to time, and thoughtful consideration of both the nature of what students are to learn and why they are to learn it. This article breaks down the parts of a lesson, explains lesson goals, differentiates between the different types of objectives (cognitive/affective), and illustrates how to organize the subject matter into units. “The essence of a unit is a series of sequences and related learning activities organized around some theme, issue, or problem, along with goals objectives, resources for learning, and procedures for evaluation.” The article not only defines a unit, but also explains how to create a unit and how to sketch out the structure of a unit. After a the creation of a unit, the subject matter is then broken down into lesson plans. The article also describes the fundamental elements of a lesson plan and the guidelines one must follow when creating a lesson plan. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 271 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 4:11pm Subject: 09/15/05 NCSS Standards p. 49-75 This reading depicted the ten thematic standards in practice for the early grades. For example, it took a standard (i.e., Individual Development and Identity) gave the different performance expectations (and related themes) and gave examples of how to apply the standards in the classroom. One of the scenarios that I found interesting was example #3 under Individual Development and Identity (p.58), depicting an example of a teacher having the children read 3 stories and having them study the characters ideas about their situation. Then they compared them to U.S. courts and how witnesses sometimes see the same situation differently. The teacher then gave them a news photo and after each student had a reasonable amount of time to examine the photo, it was removed from view and then they each wrote a description entitled "What I Saw." After completing their writing interpretations, they got into groups and shared their descriptions. Then they took notes of their differences and how they related to the differing assumptions illustrated by the story read earlier. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 313 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:04am Subject: 9/20 Teaching Social Studies That Matters “Lesson Types” by Thornton The most effective learning of content stems from engaging methods. A teacher-led inductive lesson (which is discovery or inquiry learning) stimulates and directs student curiosity. In contrast to discovery, small-group work suits any subject matter depending on the purpose and factors such as self-direction and cooperation. Small groups are great for dividing up large topics and forming specialist groups. Thematic work with groups enables broad treatment of a topic, dividing into groups, and sharing what has been learned. A third type of lesson, is the development of a central concept, “a big idea” in which you start with a big idea and develop it. Effective teachers not only need to have knowledge of subject matter, but the ability to adjust purposes with the curriculum and method. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 314 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:15am Subject: 9/22 Helping Student Develop Social Studies Inquiry Skills p. 45-63 Inquiry in social studies involves the diverse ways in which we study our social world and propose explanations based on evidence for various events. These foundations constitute the “inquiry skills”: (1) early inquiry skills, (2) social studies inquiry skills, (3) inquiry attitudes and dispositions, and (4) integrative thinking skills. These skills ‘help us to develop an ‘explanation’ for what we observe or investigate. The explanation students develop is the social studies ‘idea’ or ‘knowledge’ to be learned in the lesson.” Students use their prior knowledge and experiences to construct new social studies knowledge. Social studies inquiry skills can be grouped into four areas by their functions: data gathering, data organizing, data processing, and communicating. The article also describes the skills of observing, inferring, and hypothesizing. The development of attitudes promoting powerful learning is a fundamental goal of the social studies curriculum and these attitudes are essential to being an active and responsible citizen. As a teacher, we should also foster curiosity by welcoming their questions about people, objects, and events. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 367 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, September 25, 2005 11:19pm Subject: 9/27 “Helping Children Develop Social Studies Inquiry Skills” p.63-78 This article was about teaching lessons in which students use integrative thinking skills. It describes the need to help develop: critical thinking (which children use to analyze problems and for taking action need to focus on questions), problem solving (to help resolve difficulties), investigating (asking “what-if” questions), and creative thinking (to develop ideas or products). Then it describes the need to create an environment promoting student thinking through three strategies: questioning (using wait time), structuring (planning interactions), and modeling (posing a problem and demonstrating a solution). It further describes how to implement these into inquiry skill lessons with the use of exploration, explanation, examples, expansion, and application. It also charts the assessment and evaluation of the hierarchy of thinking skills. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 368 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, September 25, 2005 11:35pm Subject: 9/29 “Using Instructional Strategies that Help Students Learn” (Sunal and Haas), pp. 123-134 This article elaborates on how to become an effective planner of a Social Studies program. It describes four main dimensions of effective teaching that support meaningful learning: clarity (focus learning before and after activities), variety (combining instructional approaches), task orientation (student involvement), and student engagement (student-focus on lesson activities with few disruptions). It also describes two teaching strategies that support meaningful learning: questioning (“all learning begins by asking questions” and “guides students’ engagement in the lesson”) and cooperative learning (designed to encourage student cooperation while learning and foster interdependence, positive student interaction, interpersonal and small-group skills, and develop awareness of the need for group processing). It even exemplified how to match instructional strategies such as expository, direct, guided discovery, inquiry and problem solving/decision making to student needs. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 440 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 12:18am Subject: 10/04/05 Using Instructional Strategies that Help Students Learn (Sunal and Haas) This article first examines successful teaching methods for the exploratory introduction phase of a lesson sequencing them from low to high student control: review, structured exploration, cooperative group challenge, confrontational challenges or discrepant events, problem exploration, and open exploration. Then it delves into the second phase in the learning cycle, lesson development, which explains a new concept or skill, leading students to perform and practice new skills and content. Instructional strategies ranging from expository through inquiry-based problem solving and decision making are also listed and expounded upon: field trips, guest speakers, demonstration, lecture or teacher presentation, games, role-playing and simulations, and discussion strategies. The article also reports how reading and writing create powerful social studies learning. Then, the article depicts the next phase, the expansion phase, in which students apply the new concept, generalization, attitude, and/or skill to additional examples and gives some instructional activities for this phase. Next, the article gives an overview of powerful instructional procedures promoting meaningful learning not usually found in traditional classrooms and then classroom management strategies/guidelines designed for a Social Studies program which are: advanced planning, giving directions, distributing materials, organized beginning, grouping students, using classroom rules, lesson smoothness and being a facilitator. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 448 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Thursday, October 6, 2005 11:46am Subject: 10/06/05 NCSS Standards, pp. 79-107 This reading is similar to all of the others, but this time the standards are applied to the middle grades. The performance expectations are a little higher up on the Bloom’s Taxonomy too. For example, under the concept People, Places, and Environment, standard K. states, “propose, compare, and evaluate alternative uses of land and resources in communities, regions, nations, and the world.” Under the same category example #3, describes a situation in which students take a role of a Civil Emergency Coordinating Committee and speculate about the social and economic effects of the natural disaster (the hurricane), to determine mechanisms for coping with those effects, and to make a plan to guide the municipality through 48 hours. Situations and activities like these require more critical thinking and analysis. Most all of these standards take Social Studies to another level of depth and application for the students. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 493 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:31am Subject: 10/11/05 PR’s Doll 1-80 The story is told through the eyes of Patty Reed’s Doll. The family makes pioneering seem a wonderful golden opportunity. Their outlook is sunny, bright, and hopeful for discovery and adventure on their trek to California. The family also starts out pristine, wealthy, and excited. Things start to dampen, become darker, and more serious when the grandma dies, when the trek becomes a little more difficult, and when they decide to put their trust in Mr. Hastings. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 504 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Thursday, October 13, 2005 1:01am Subject: 10/13/05 PRD’s Doll 80-end Hastings route wasn’t the best idea, even though it was a shortcut, because it was a difficult trail and a terrible trek. Everyone becomes tired, hungry, and on the verge of death. Because of the lack of water, whenever they are thirsty, they suck on sugar cubes. The party ends up getting snowed in (in the Sierra Nevada Mountains) so close to their destination (Sutter’s Fort). They still try to leave but their efforts are futile and so they have to come back. On the way out, Patty has a near death experience, but her father saves her with bread crumbs which were stored in his mitten that he had saved up for an emergency. The Reeds finally make it to the end. Patty’s doll was saved and put away in a box of relics. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 530 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, October 16, 2005 10:28pm Subject: 10/18/05 Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown Stanley Lambchop was an ordinary boy until one morning when he wakes up flat as a pancake from a bulletin board that fell on him during the night. He then becomes four feet tall, one foot wide, and one half an inch thick. He then becomes known as “Flat Stanley” who can slide in and out under doors, sidewalk crates (to get his mother’s ring), can be mailed anywhere in an envelope, can be carried rolled up with a string, and flown as a kite. He becomes a hero by capturing the two sneak thieves (Luther and Max) at Mr. Dart’s Art Museum disguised as a little shepherdess in a painting and earns a medal from it. Stanley became famous from it for a while and then he began to be picked on because of his differences and did not like it. His younger brother Arthur then comes up with a brilliant idea to make Stanley “normal” again by blowing him up with his bike pump. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 551 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 1:02am Subject: 10/20/05 Bosma article This article discusses how guided reading of folk literature, directing attention to its story structure, helps the child become a better reader. It discusses expressive language and states that, “Even before children can read the words, they can listen to the music of language.” It discusses the universality of the folktale and its story structure (magic, natural wit, limited magical power, and good triumphing evil). Then it describes the adaptation of folktales (alteration of motif and mood and literary simplification/elaboration). It then elaborates on folklore classifications and definitions and defines the four different folktales: fairytales (unbelievable tales of enchantment), animal tales (animals who act like people and teach life lessons with subcategories of trickster tales, fables, and etiological stories), legends (folktales told as fact and presumably believed by the storyteller), and myths (folktales told as fact which develop a theory of the origin of the world and humanity). It finally gets to the point, which is, “Children who learn to read through folk literature have the opportunity to become lifetime readers, understand other people, and appreciate other cultures.” I wish this article had given more ideas on how to use the literature besides teaching values and ideas from them, but rather how to use them in the classroom besides story maps. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 586 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, October 23, 2005 10:37pm Subject: 10/25/05 The ABC’s of Evaluation (7-38) Part One of the book consists of the ABC’s of belief statements about the evaluation process in the middle grades classroom, the ten commandments of testing in the middle grades, the ABC’s of research, and the ABC’s of early adolescent characteristics that can be addressed through creative/critical thinking questions and tasks. The different belief statement quotes from the alphabet were all too true and yet very poignant, such as “Z is zest for living. We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” One of the ten commandments was number eight, “Thou shalt not fail to provide adequate feedback to students on test results.” (I wish teachers would remember this. I really dislike it when teachers give a test and just give you back a score without the test and do not even give an after test review/feedback to see what you did wrong so you can improve). In the ABC”S of research, one interesting letter is I which “is for impact of testing on students.” It discussed the fact that the older the students the less likely they are to believe that their scores reflect their actual abilities juxtapose to younger students. The next section, the ABC’s of characteristics, gave great sample creative/critical thinking questions and tasks. (I thought again that Z was really cool because it made me think). For example, “Z is for middle level student’s Zealous passion for considering ideas that are contrary to fact: What would happen if memories were only retained for a year?” ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 598 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 12:12pm Subject: 10/27/05 ABC’s 41-130 Part two of ABC’s is about the ABC’s of Evaluation A-L. For example, for a given letter (B) it states what it is for (Bloom constructed tests) its domain (cognitive), its purpose (to use Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Development as the basis for constructing quizzes or tests in any given subject area), description (to become acquainted with the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy), the teacher’s application (determine your understanding of the key assessment terms and procedures by completing the pretest), the classroom application (how it applies to different subjects, i.e., mathematics, science, and social studies), and then how to adapt that concept into the classroom (a Bloom-constructed test). It does this for the letters A-M and even gives a plethora of examples, useful topics, and ideas to use in the classroom. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 599 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 12:13pm Subject: 11/01/05 ABC’s 131-225 Part two of the ABC’s continued is about the ABC’s of Evaluation M-Z. For example, for the letter U (which stands for Undertaking project Evaluations) is in the cognitive domain and its purpose is to encourage use of projects as an alternative to testing. It requires students to complete a project that clearly illustrates his/her understanding of material learned as part of an independent study, unit, or test. Then the book describes project formats and ideas that “lend themselves to more sophisticated results.” It even takes those ideas and shows how to apply those to the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (very impressive). One example, was to make an almanac and for one project according to Bloom’s application level, “Interview ten people to find out if and when they use the almanac. Record your findings in chart of graph form.” I would definitely use this book in my classroom for higher level thinking and even for exciting applicable ideas. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 638 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Sunday, October 30, 2005 8:01pm Subject: 11/03/05 Teaching Social Studies in Middle Schools The school and community help students establish their own sense of place and the “number and quality of connections among the spheres indicate the strength of the child’s support system.” The school and community can be sources of social data in which the students need assignments and activities that encourage them to view data from their daily life as a relevant subject matter for analysis in the classroom. The article also states that in order to effectively use community resource persons, have individuals who represent different career areas report on what they do, have them work with students as mentors, or have them give advice concerning selected topics. Newspaper articles and editorials link then classroom to the community and provide social studies students the opportunity to engage with their communities at local, state, national, and global levels. Field work in the community allows students to gather information on-site directly which helps to test hypotheses in problem solving or to provide clear examples in concept learning. Collecting oral histories provides students with a sense of personal engagement in a stream of events. Collecting social science information through surveys and interviews allow students to transform the school and community into a laboratory for gathering social data. The article then goes on to describe communicating with the community about the Social Studies program and alerting it to school activities. ------------------------------------------------------------ Message no. 641 Posted by Brittany Royal (broyal) on Monday, October 31, 2005 1:17pm Subject: 11/08/05 Beyond the Family Geography Challenge The article describes the Family Geography Challenge which “was developed by the Michigan Geographic Alliance for the purpose of ‘develop[ing] more meaningful connections between . . . geography classes and our constantly changing world.’ ” “It is a six-week program where families are encouraged to follow news stories together while engaging in active discussion and maintaining written logs.” Overall, it engages families in positive ways while supporting an increase in geographic knowledge. The article then describes the organization of the program and how it works (i.e., following the families arrival there is a brief greeting and description of activity for the session, followed by a hands-on activity, group discussion, prizes, and family dinner). Then the article explains the materials needed (world maps and a Family Geography Challenge (FGC) booklet, beach ball globe, bumper sticker, a map, and a picture). Then it explains the assessment process (in which they were required to complete the Geography Journal and to participate in the four evening sessions to complete the FGC model) and how the school, families, and community all benefitted from the expanded program. Then the article gives suggestions for creating a successful program through marketing your program, starting small, maintaining participation, being organized and flexible, and getting help. ------------------------------------------------------------