My Teaching Reflection.....

I LOVE TEACHING!!!! Okay maybe that is a little too enthusiastic...but...I LOVE TEACHING!!!!

Every time I have the opportunity to teach a lesson in a classroom I find that it not only gives me the chance to improve on my planning and teaching skills but it also gives me the much needed opportunity to reflect on my teaching strategies and learn from the experience as a whole. This time was of no exception.

Despite prior preparation and completion of my lesson plan, I found myself on the morning before I was due to teach sitting outside reflecting on my lesson once again, making changes, and bouncing ideas off a 19 month old and a 3 year old ( I will take any help I can get.). At around 10 o'clock I found myself with a revised lesson that I could not for the life of me get to print off of the computer....I despise .doc vs. docx and Open Access.....but anyway in order to remedy the situation I decided to copy the revisions to the two hard copies I had printed previously that morning. Once that hurdle was out of the way and the babysitter arrived...I in my car on my way to teach.

My partner and I arrived at the school prior to lunch so we could get a head start on an observation project we had to do for another class. I found that this extra time I got to spend in the classroom prior to teaching my lesson was very beneficial to me because the students seemed more comfortable around myself and my partner and I was more comfortable around them and the school in general by that point.

The 4th grade activity-based social studies lesson plan that I designed and taught incorporated teaching students the essentials of a timeline and how to read one while incorporating the founding of North Carolina and European Explorers that led to European Immigration. Wow, that is a mouthful. The lesson had students explore and analyze chronology through storytelling, which they then applied to creating a personal timeline that led to the students applying their knowledge of timelines as they explored and discussed a timeline featuring European Explorers in North Carolina. Overall, I thought that the basis of the activity was engaging and that the students would have the chance to recall and demonstrate any background knowledge they had that related to chronology, timelines, and/or European exploration of North Carolina.

Implementing the lesson proved more challenging than I had anticipated only because I had to teach the lesson out in the bustling hallway due to lack of space. During one part of the lesson, the students needed to create a personal timeline using a colored marker and 5 index cards. The students were ingenious in finding ways to accomplish this task out in the hall but it was not easy because they were sitting on the grade and did not have a lot of space to lay out their cards. Location also became an issue when I needed to post the timeline of European Explorers of North Carolina because there was no place to do so that allowed the students to be able to see it and for me to be able to work with it as a guide for the discussion.

There were some changes I would make besides where I would actually teach the lesson. If I did the lesson again I would break the lesson up over a longer period of time so that students could explore the importance of chronology and timelines more not only in social studies but the application and integration of timelines in science (plant life) and in math (time segments, different ways to design a timeline). I also think that creating a class timeline that would be added to throughout the year would prove beneficial to the students allowing them to see how history relates to them and explore it from different aspects. And on a final note I would make sure that when I was making changes to a lesson plan prior to teaching I would be able to print the new lesson out instead of having to handwrite the changes but that is just me.

In the end I feel that the lesson was a success. Why? The students were actively engaged and asking and answering questions that went beyond the intended learning objectives of the lesson. As I was asking questions throughout the students were revising previous answers, rethinking their schema and reflecting on and tying in different aspects of timelines and their uses. The students, although time ran out, seemed to enjoy learning about the timeframe of European exploration using the timeline as a tool and I was amazed at the predictions, inferences, and conclusions they made all from the same timeline...in fact they made me want to explore some questions I had on my own about European exploration of North Carolina...maybe a trip to the NC Museum of History is in order.

We came, we saw, we conquered....and you can read all about it on my blog.....

Primary sources....the United States Constitution, photos of Abraham Lincoln, newspapers from April 15, 1912 or October of 1929, the Zapruder film, and so on....are an essential part of engaging students in meaningful learning tasks when it comes to learning about past....history....but are primary sources on the verge of becoming history?

In today's high tech world of digital cameras, computers, cellphones that take photos and videos, and the Internet...hard copies of primary sources are being phased out. Once hand-written letters and detailed journals documenting daily life have been phased out by phone calls, email, and blogs. Quality photographs that captured events and people of the past are still being taken but by cellphones and digital cameras which lends itself to storing photos on computers where they are either lost, or amassed in bulk but rarely printed out. It is a good thing that scrapbooking came back because at least that it producing hard copies of personal family primary sources. Newspapers are going out of print and becoming digitalized which is great considering that it allows more access to a greater variety of newspapers but who knows how long the posts will last. I am all for progress and technology but my concern lies with future who may not be able to access primary sources for history because they do not exist.

OR are primary sources being revolutionized? Due to technology advances it is evident that the way individuals access primary sources is being changed but also what is considered to be a primary source is changing as well. Today individuals can access images and the text of primary sources via the web and in most instances they do. This is a huge benefit because now educators can use access images they normally would not have access too and thus further engage students by delving deeper into a topic. I must admit that the changing and adaption of primary sources greatly intrigues me and I am curious to see what the future holds.