Putting Jigsaw to use!!!

Jigsaw and Native Americans

Jigsaw is a great way to have students work collaboratively with one another. Jigsaw is just like a puzzle and each student is a piece of that puzzle. Each student is highly responsible for their part, if they fail to bring their collaborative skills and effort the puzzle will fail. 

During this class activity we were asked to get into groups of five and each member of the group was to take on an important role of gathering as much information possible on the Native American Indians that were assigned. We worked through google docs and by collaborating with out mastery group in class. The mastery group is the group that you go to that incorporates the people that have the same topic as you. You work with these people to get a good idea of what you want to teach your peers about so that everyone is learning the same thing. It is also helpful so that if one person forgets a piece of information the mastery group can help.

During my experience I had learned a huge piece of knowledge that I must have overlooked during my time reviewing all of the information. My tribe had slaves! In fact they were one of the first people to have slaves from what we know in history. I CAN NOT BELIEVE I DID NOT SEE THAT IN MY RESEARCH!!!

Once we were done working in our mastery groups we got back into our main group. The main group is the people that we will be teaching out topic to and learning about their topic. My group made FANTASTIC handouts for one another. Each hand out was different, some people use publisher and other used processor. It was great to see the different ideas that we all had. We all made sure t o include captivating pictures and colors, which made the boring information seem a lot more interesting.

I learned so many new facts and more importantly I was able to see how Jigsaw can be useful in my classroom!

The fight against bullying

"The Girl you just called fat? She is overdosing on diet pills.
The Girl you just called ugly? She spends hours putting makeup on hoping people will like her.
The Boy you just tripped? He is abused enough at home.
See that man with the ugly scars? He fought for our country.
That guy you just made fun of for crying? His mother is dying.
You never know what its like until you walk a mile in their shoes"

Bullying is a harsh reality in schools today, it is something that teachers, administration, parents, and even the students themselves can put an end to. It wont be an easy task because bullying comes in so many forms, and many times they are not visible to the eye, cyber bullying for one is something new that we must add to the list. Before we can figure out how to put an end to it, lets take a look at what bullying is.

Bullying is any type of physical, emotional, psychological initimidation over another person, doing something to have power over another

• Name calling
• Leaing people out of activities
• saying or writing mean things
• Threatening
• Making someone feel uncomfortable
• Scarying someone
• Using violence against someone
• Physically hurting someone
• Making them do things they do not want to do.

Who are the Bullies??
Someone who has low self-esteem but puts on an act that they have a strong self-esteem. Someone who wants to overt control. They may come from homes where violence is the norm. They may see it as a way of being popular, or making themselves look tough and in charge. Some bullies do it to get attention or things, or to make other people afraid of them. Others might be jealous of the person they are bullying. They may be being bullied themselves. Some bullies may not even understand how wrong their behaviour is and how it makes the person being bullied feel.

Who is the victim?

It can be anyone, it can be the bully themselves. Many children that are being bullied seem insecure, socially isolated, anxious. Some young people are bullied for no particular reason, but sometimes it's because they are different in some way - perhaps it's the colour of their skin, the way they talk, their size or their name.
Sometimes young people are bullied because they look like they won't stand up for themselves.

"Some people think bullying is just part of growing up and a way for young people to learn to stick up for themselves. But bullying can make young people feel lonely, unhappy and frightened. It makes them feel unsafe and think there must be something wrong with them. They lose confidence and may not want to go to school any more. It may make them sick."

We need to stop bullying, but how do we do this. First thing is that we need to raise the awareness so that it does not go unseen, that parents, adults, teachers, administrators and everyone in a childs life knows what to look for.  Once we know how to look for it we need to have responses in place that we can use to stop it. We can create a better school environment by having teachers and students practice peer mediation. We can have rules put into place in the classroom that the students help to come up with against bllyings and the consequences against it. 

USE COOPERATIVE CLASSROOM LESSONS!! 

This encourages students that wouldnt normally work together to do so, it reduces social anxiety and it allows these students to have a voice that they would not other wise have.  

"Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke."

"Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying. "

Learn by doing!

JIGSAW!!!!

Today we had some fun in class.. we learned about jigsaw! a great strategy for teachers to use in their classrooms. It was great because we learned about the essential elements while we preformed the strategy.

Jigsaw is a strategy that takes a group of students of different abilities, genders, race, ect. and places them into a group to work together. Each member of the group is then assigned a task to master. This can be a variety of things, for example if you are learning about a unit of history, the teacher can break it up into specific time frames and each member of the group gets a time frame. Then the students are asked to leave their group and become MASTERS! They do this by finding the person from the other groups that have the same task as them. Together these students become masters of a particular topic, the become masters so that they can come back to their group and teach it to their peers. The teacher can provide these groups with:

Internet web sites

Journals

Notes

textbooks

Pictures

books

ect.

The tools that students can use to learn about their topic is endless, the teacher can use this time to be creative and make it a fun experience. Once the students become masters of their topic they are to go back into their main groups and teach their peers about the topic.

I think all of the concepts we learning were crucial for carrying out jigsaw, each of my peers became masters of their topic and gave a great explanation. Students must be accountable for the information, they are responsible for learning what their peer is telling them, and they are also accountable for explaining the information properly. When it comes to social skills, students need to have these to go through the jigsaw strategy. If there is a deficit within one of the areas they may not be successful. Skills are communication, listening, respect, leadership, and so on. These skills go along with face-to face interactions. The students should be set up in an environments where they are knee to knee and eye to eye, it will benefit their learning.

Benefits are: First and foremost, it is a remarkably efficient way to learn the material. But even more important, the jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Group members must work together as a team to accomplish a common goal; each person depends on all the others. No student can succeed completely unless everyone works well together as a team. This "cooperation by design" facilitates interaction among all students in the class, leading them to value each other as contributors to their common task. 

Micro-Teaching

Peer mediation micro teaching was a success in my opinion. Peer mediation and conflict resolution is a skill that all you individuals should learn so that they can become successful in this world, in jobs, relationships, and so much more.

Angela and I were able to collaboratively come up with a few ideas and then brainstormed the best approach so that our class could see how peer mediation works, how they can teach it to their students, and the benefits to the process. Angela found a great movie that depicts the bullying that goes on in every day schools, it is a reality that we have to face as future teachers and must put a stop too. We then decided that we would give the class time to read a scenario and role play. It gave us time to walk around and hear the different conversations that were occurring. 

Micro- teaching is a great tool for us as future teachers. It gives us a time to practice teaching a strategy that we would teach in our classroom. Then we get ideas and strategies from our peers, as a teacher new ideas are essential and if you have the tools new ideas are endless. 

Content test

For me the easiest question was number three, the reason for this is that I did not have to have prior knowledge on any facts. I only needed to know how to read and analyze a chart. Considering I have not been in a history course in so many years and I have not done any review, that would have to be the easiest. Number five was another question that i found to be easy. The reason is simply that it relates to my everyday life. I understand taxes and why we are taxed. This provides me with the knowledge of what jobs are paid through my taxes. One of the answers I gave was police, I see them every single day and as a young person to an adult you are taught what poilce do and why they are here. The last question that I found to be easy was number 17. It was easy because this is value-based and meaningful, these bill of rights are apart of my every day life. I chose to talk about freedom of speech, this is important for me in every single aspect of my life. It is also important for me to teach my students because it is preparing them to become citizens within a democracy.  

The questions that stumped me were the ones on the government, such as the checks and balances. The reason that I felt this was more difficult was because you really needed to know what the concept was to answer the question. The other question that has to do with the government asked about all three branches of the government. This is one question that I had to do some research on. It is not something that I can really relate to my everyday life, I do understand the general overview of all of these concepts, however I did not withhold enough of the information to complete the questions.

There is not one area of social studies that I do not need to refresh myself on before I enter a classroom. I think I struggle the most within the government strand of social studies, but this does not mean I do not need to develop a better understanding within all strands.

When it comes to the pedagogy of teacher social studies I feel I am a beginner and I have to develop all aspects of this art and science of teaching. I need to learn how to make social studies interesting for my students to learn. Make creative activities so that they can become engaged in my lessons and develop a better understanding for social studies themselves. It is crucial for me to develop pedagogy before entering the classroom and continue to build pedagogy throughout my teaching career.

Can I engage students in active learning????

What is active learning???

Yes its being active, doing posters, writing in journals BUT! that does not mean they are actively thinking! We need to make sure we use authentic and cooperative learning to make sure that our students are ACTIVELY learning and thinking!

HMMMM how can I stimulate thinking.... I need to add qualities to my lessons to engage students in high order thinking, connecting them to the world, and social support. Use authentic instruction this way the lesson is meaningful and engaging, it is not just "schoolish" this way students want to learn. IT is using things that the students can really connect to their own lives.

Add cooperative learning... JIGSAW!!!!! Jigsaw is a great activity that brings students of different abilities into a group working together. Each student is accountable for their part, and they must become a teacher and teach their peers the part that they are responsible for.

MAKE THE LESSONS MEANINGFUL, VALUE BASED, INTEGRATIVE, CHALLENGING, ACTIVE

To teach or not to teach

AHHHHH!!! Social studies is one of the scariest subjects to me, I know most people fear math, but I am actually comfortable with this subject. Social studies was never my best field of study, but I want to make sure my students learn more then i ever did.

Today we went to visit our 5th grade students that we are going to be teaching. What a great class, I got to meet with 3 of the students in the class and I was plesently suprised to hear that they enjoy social studies a lot. This is going to make my job even easier seeing that they already want to learn more things.

My objective is to teacher these students about the 13 colonies and the revolutionary war, which will the unit that they will be on. The students will have some prior knowledge because they will be going on a field trip to the FDR house, so I will use that to my advantage. I have already started hinking about what kids of activities I can implement and my ARTIFACT Bag will be one of them. The artifact bag I made uses artifacts from the pilgrims, the pilgrims are an essential part of the 13 colonies because it is them that traveled here and began building.

Direct, Inquiry, and Cooperative lessons will be implemented. Thinking of ideas for all of these is tough so I am excited to start working with my group to here there ideas for how we can make this interesting and engaging for the students.

Artifact Bag

Critical thinking! High LEVEL questioning! 

These are all things that we as teachers want to see our students accomplish in our classroom! An artifact bag takes the students back in time to when those artifacts were around. The get to see and touch these artifacts. The students must guess when they think the artifact was around, where, and even why... It is a very engaging activity for students, and once they have made these discoveries they can do more research and further their learning.

MY ARTIFACT BAG!!!

Topic: The Pilgrims

Grade: 4

New York State Standards

Social Studies Standard 1:
History of the United States and New York

Students will: use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York

Key Idea 1: The study of New York State and United States history requires an analysis of the development of American culture, its diversity and multicultural context, and the ways people are unified by many values, practices, and traditions.

Performance Indicator: Students will know the roots of American culture, its development from many different traditions, and the ways many people from a variety of groups and backgrounds played a role in creating it.

            The topics I chose to work with is pilgrims, from their journey and why they traveled, to their lives in America and forming the thirteen colonies. I chose the first artifact, the journal of William Bradford because his journal is seen to be one of the single most important sources of information from the pilgrims and Plymouth colonies. William Bradford is a man that lived during this time period so all that is in this journal is of eye witness accounts and it is full of facts. The journal describes the first 30 years of the Plymouth colony, it is a complete story of the colony from the day it was founded and the voyage to America. Williams account is one from a true pilgrim, he was a passenger on the Mayflower and was even elected the governor of the colony. The journal itself allows the students to see actual entries written in Bradford's hand writing, it also gives the students an opportunity to see the difference between how we speak now from how they spoke hundreds of years ago. It allows the students to dive back into the time period of the pilgrims and the journey they made to start the 13 colonies. The second artifact that I chose is an actual letter from the pilgrim Robert Cushman, being that he was such an important figure during this time a letter from him deemed important. Like the journal it gives the students a perspective of the time from the eyes of the pilgrims themselves. It also shows the hardships that occurred and how these people stayed strong to fight for their beliefs.

            The book "The Thanksgiving Story" is a very informative story about the pilgrims and their journey. I found it a wonderful source for students because it describes how the pilgrims traveled and why. The reason was described that pilgrims are people who travel far distances for their religion. The first chapter dives deep into the journey on the ships, the conditions and the hardships. It even describes how due to the condition of the ship they had to return, but started their journey again on the ship that was still intact. The book then takes the students on the journey of the pilgrims landing on the new land, how they started to build homes, gather food, and their meeting with the Indians. The last chapter in the book is about the feast that took place between the pilgrims and the Indians, so the students have a better understanding of how thanksgiving came about. The book is engaging and very informative, a wonderful story to share with the students when starting a new unit on the 13 colonies.

            The web site, Kids Konnect is a wonderful site for students to go and explore. This can be used when the students are asked to develop their own knowledge about the pilgrims and do some research. I would use this site to have students work collaboratively to create a poster about pilgrims. The site in general is very well laid out, you can chose a grade and numerous topics within social studies. The section on pilgrims includes a list of quick and easy facts for the students to read. On the bottom of the page students have an array of resources that they can use to develop an even deeper knowledge of the pilgrims and their lives. It provides sites with virtual tours, more information, and real life reenactment videos for the students to watch. This site is very engaging and full of information for student to learn. I would not hesitate to use this site for other topics in social studies.

           

References

Belzer, J. (2011, ). Pilgrims. Retrieved from KidsKonnect.com website:      http://www.kidskonnect.com/subject-index/16-history/275-pilgrims.html

Blake, N. (2010, ). New jersey state library. Retrieved from New Jersey Colonial Ordinances        website: http://law.njstatelib.org/new_jersey_colonial_ordinances

Dalgliesh, A. (1954). The thanksgiving story. New York, New York: Atheneum Books For           Young Readers.

Johnson, C. (1994, ). Letters written by the pilgrims. Retrieved from May flower history website:             http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/index.php

(2005, May 18). Of Plymouth Plantation: The journal of William Bradford. Retrieved from           Pilgrim Hall Museum website: http://www.pilgrimhall.org/bradjour