Direct Instruction! Groups 1 and 2

Direct Instruction!

Writing something like, "you learn nothing ever goes to plan" would not be correct in this situation. Throughout many of my teachings I have found you can not completely be prepared for what will happen. STudents may or may not fully understand the information, they may get lost, you may forget something, you may not be able to complete everything you wanted to, and soo much more. In this case I feel almost everything did go to plan. We were able to accomplish everything that we had wanted to and the students were excited to learn. I learned that you need to over plan! Always be prepared to do more and in this case we were and we got through everything. I also learned that from my past experience and now, that every class is going to be different. Every student thinks and understands in a different way and therefore you can not predict their responses. I also learned that teacher social studies can be fun! This is NOT how I felt in the beginning of this class because social studies has always been one of my worst subjects in school, however I learned I can successfully teach it!

Overall, I think the entire lesson went well. Everyone played an essential role in increasing the knowledge of the students. Our slides were engaging and even silly at times, but the explanations behind them made the visual representation clear, making the information unforgettable. When the students think of the Colombian exchange they should think back to the picture of the Indian and the little sick face, they will remember disease! Giving them these fun and engaging associations will help them in the long run. The other parts that went well was the use of the smart board. This is an amazing way for teachers to increase the knowledge of students and to assess how much they have learned! The students were excited about the games and enjoyed working together as teams to come up with the answer. Lastly, my group did a great job checking for understanding! We constantly stopped and asked questions to make sure that the students were on the same page. 

What will we change next time?? I think the only section of the lesson that needed improvement was the modeling. Angela did a GREAT job modeling, however we failed to give them a visual representation of what we were talking about. We should have added pictures of explorers, to help refresh the students memory, but because it was a last minute addition we did not have time to redo it. This is something that teachers face daily, time restraints. learning how to deal with this is part of pedagogy, learning the art and science of planning engaging, fun, exciting lessons!

I learned a lot about social studies, in general I learned new concepts and gained new knowledge about the topic. I also learned that social studies can be fun and exciting for students to learn. It does not need to be boring, even when directly teaching concepts and facts, teacher NEED to make it fun and exciting!

By watching Gina and Jessy I learned some new things, such as the power point website that they used to provide information. It was soo interesting and like nothing I have ever seen before. I also saw different teaching methods, Gina is a very dominant person in the classroom, she demands the attention of the students and she gets it. This is something that I need to learn to do, I need to find my voice and be a powerful presence in the room. The part that I felt might have been too much was the graphic organizer, the idea was to have the students fill it out during the lesson, but when looking at  the organizer it seemed very overwhelming. I feel as though instead of having them fill out such a large amount of information they should have reduced it down to a few crucial points. Some of the students ignored it completely while others could not pay attention because they were trying to fill everything in and could not keep up. However, we learn from things such as this. What will be successful and what will not.

MAKE IT MEANINGFUL! MAKE IT VALUE-BASED! It is crucial to keep the essential parts to a lesson in mind. Making sure that students are being challenged and they are able to relate to the information. The should not just be given a handful of facts, instead they should be able to see why these facts are important to learn and how it has affected there life. Another part of the book that I kept in mind was throughout chapter 14, the use of diagnostic, formative, summative assessments. How you include them into your lesson is crucial! In general, direct instruction does not need to be boring! This idea I got from the textbook in almost every chapter. Making the lessons fun and exciting rather then simply having students memorize facts and concepts. Build their knowledge of these facts and concepts, help the develop a greater understanding for what these concepts are!