What Do You Call An Alligator In A Vest?....An In-vest-igator!

This week in Social Studies Methods, we have learned a plethora of things. First, we learned about the acronym TPACK. TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. This sounds big and complicated, but what it really is, is what your mindset should be to balance technology in your classroom. TPACK is broken down into different areas, and when the different areas are combined that is what you call the sweet spot, and where the quality of teaching really comes to life. Teachers should be well versed in their technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Quality teaching requires an understanding of the complex relationships between these three fields of knowledge and using this understanding to develop the best lessons we can. The other acronym that we have learned this week is, SAMR. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The substitution stage of the SAMR is the lowest level and the redefinition stage is the highest. It is our goal to get our students to the highest level, but that does not always happen in every single lesson.

"Teacher Leadership needs to be so embedded in the profession that it's an expectation...I am supposed to lead," said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. "It's not separate from your routine as teachers."

This week, I read the article on neaToday titled, Embedding Leadership in the Teaching Profession. This article was amazing for many reasons, but my favorite quote was the one listed above. Leadership should be expected of us as teachers. We are to lead our class in whatever we are teaching or doing. Educators and leaders should go hand in hand, because we are the experts in our fields. Being a leader does not mean that you have to go out and be an administrator, you can still be a teacher leader. If a strategy in your classroom is working well for you, then let other teachers come observe what you are doing or blog about the idea so that other teachers can be helped from your experience. Being a teacher leader, is so much more than we think.

This article obviously ties into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number one, which states that teachers leadership. This article is such a great and inspiring read! The link is below!

http://neatoday.org/2016/02/10/teacher-leadership-summit/

What do you call a group of unorganized cats? A cat-astrophe!

This week in Social Studies Methods we are learning about writing our learning plans. This was originally called a lesson plan, but we are going to start calling them learning plans, because it is about the students learning, and not centered wholly around the teacher. The learning plan has some of the same aspects as a six point lesson plan does, except it is a little more detailed and you have to mention the level of DOK you are using. You also have to list your generalizations, factual content and skills. This learning plan template looks like a lot of work, but I know it will end up being super helpful for when I actually present my lesson. At the end of the template, it is asking you for steps on how you plan on transitioning and class room management skills you intend on using. This will help you to already have an idea of how you will run the lesson when you get there.

Since Social Studies Methods is a big user of technology, I found a wonderful article on neaToday titled, "Using Technology to Lift Up Students' Voices Online". In this article the teacher, Sharon Davidson, mentions many great websites that she uses in her classroom such as Doodle Buddy on their iPads to create their own avatars, Kidblogs and Twitter. The teacher in the article stresses how important it is for the students to be taught to be safe and cautious when they are working with stuff on the internet. Sharon says that twitter is a wonderful way for her kindergarteners to get their voices out in the world. How crazy is it to think that we have kindergarteners on Twitter, and they know how to use it?! Sharon also mentioned the Kidblogs, and how wonderful that was for her students to write about what they think on subjects and then to explore what other people have blogged about in kid friendly manners. Sharon loves that her students have such great ideas all the time, and that they can share these wonderful ideas with the whole world at the click of a button. Before this article, I would have never thought of using Twitter with a class of kindergartners, but this teacher seems to believe that it really helps, so maybe I will try it in the future.

I can tie this article into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number 4, because the teacher is facilitating learning to her students in different ways that can make them better problem-solvers and thinkers. Also, integrating technology is a big part of this teaching standard.

http://neatoday.org/2016/01/05/34067/

I'd tell you a chemistry joke, but I know I wouldn't get a reaction.

This week in Social studies Methods we are working on the learning experiences for our units. Basically, a learning experience is breaking down your performance task. Therefore, you build up to what the performance task at the end of the unit will be, so what skills should the students have at this point? Another great thing that happened this week was the Keep Learning Alive! conference this past Saturday. This was such an amazing experience, and I honestly learned a lot from the short time that I was there. If you have not heard about the amazing Wells Fargo 2015 Principal of the Year, Steve Lassiter, you are missing out and need to research all the great things he has done for his school and his teachers.

This week I found an article, that may be my favorite that I have found so far, and it is titled "When Grading Harms Student Learning" from Edutopia. So I want to start out by asking, is grading the focus, or is learning the focus for our students? Not saying that grading is the worst idea ever, because as teachers we need that assessment, but should that really be the focus of our classrooms? In this generation, grades are what every one looks at. This article mentions that coaches, colleges and parents look into grades so much that it defines the students. Being the horrible test taker that I am, I hate when grades influence me so much. Is there not a better way to test me for understanding, could you not see that I am trying my hardest? This article talks about how giving out zeros and points off for late work, puts students in the mindset that they will fail. Having other alternatives and not stressing students out with a grading scale, gives students hope. I think what we are learning in class about performance tasks and learning experiences are wonderful ways to assess students that will not make them stress out over not knowing whether or not A or B is the correct answer.

I can relate this article to North Carolina Teaching Standard number 4, because it states that teacher's facilitate learning for their students. This ties in with this article well, because as teachers we need to know how to facilitate learning to our students in a way that does not stress them out, but gives them hope that they can be successful.

Here is the link to the article.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/when-grading-harms-student-learning-andrew-miller

Week 5 - Social Studies Methods :)

I love that every time I leave class, I leave with so much more knowledge than when I went in with. This week in social studies methods we have learned about a lot of important aspects in writing our unit. The focus of this week is dealing with performance tasks in our units. We have learned that performance tasks are types of assessments that we want our students to create for summative assessments. Giving a performance task to your students will help the students dive deeper into their knowledge, because they will not all have the same answers. There are different options on how to complete performance tasks. Therefore, each student will not be limited in that area. This gives the student more room to tell you what they know and what skills they have developed from the unit. Another really cool thing we learned about today was what DOK is, and that stands for, Depth of Knowledge. This is kind of like the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, and shows different levels of thinking, but is very helpful when planning your performance tasks. On this website, it gives you a little more about DOK, and I think that this website is on BlackBoard also under course materials. http://blog.performancetask.com/how-can-educators-design-authentic-performance-tasks/.

For my research for the week, I read an article from neaToday, titled, "How High-Performing Nations Treat Educators as Professionals". This article grabbed my attention, because the title is so intriguing. This article talks about teachers from different countries, and how they are treated and the different professional development that is required of them. As teacher in the United States, we are required to go to some meetings, but not as many as people in other countries. At one point in the article it talks says that since their math and reading test scores are so high, the teachers actually have required time during the day to go to a professional development meeting. The teacher's will leave their classrooms and meet with the other teachers and talk about ways to improve their teaching. Every. Single. Day. That is a crazy amount of time being spent with your fellow educators and talking about how to make students better. However...this is obviously working very well for them! Teachers are much more respected in other countries, and seen as some of the greatest mentors. They also have the highest test scores among students. I think that we should have more professional development opportunities as teachers, because they will better us and our students in the long run. After we graduate, we should not just stop learning more, we need to have a hunger to keep on learning for the sake of our students. If you get a chance, read the rest of this awesome article, an tell me some of your thoughts on it!
http://neatoday.org/2016/01/20/high-performing-nations-professional-development/

This article ties in with the North Carolina teaching standard 3 and 5. Standard 3, is talking about the teacher knowing their content, and by going to these professional development meetings, you are gaining more content knowledge in different areas. Also, this article ties deeply into standard 5, which is that teachers reflect on their practice. One part of the standard says that teachers link professional growth with professional goals, and that could not be more true for this article.