Job Interview Reflection

Job Interview Reflection

When I was preparing for today's interview, I was very nervous because I didn't know what questions the administers were going to ask me. However, the preparation for today's interview helped me to review what I have learned through this class: Direct, inquiry, cooperative, and technology based instructions. While I was doing the interview, many questions were very significant and valuable. My favorite questions were:

What animal can you think when you think about direct instruction?
When you think about cooperative instruction, what color can you think of?

(I think it requires creativity to answer this question. Creativity is an important element of teaching.)  

I also liked Marie's questions with a given scenario. It was interesting to listen to others' perspectives on a same situation. One of my challenging questions was about the information processing. I had hard time to remember what it was/how to explain. It was a great experience! I was able to see how the interview works and I learned I have to be prepared and dressed professionally.

Our inquiry lesson plan reflection

Inquiry Lesson Plan on Life in New Spain

 Here is our PowerPoint Presentation

What we covered:

• The review from the previous class
• The scientific method
• Hypothesis (An educated guess which is suggested as a possible explanation for a particular situation.)
• Gold expedition activity

Reflection:

I believe that the students loved our inquiry lesson. They were very eager to search for gold and scroll. I learned that the students are more engaged when there are hands-on activities. A role card for each student helped to give each student a responsibility to work on the task. But, it was little hard to manage it. Most of the students wanted be a gold digger. So, I had to persuade them to take other roles. I had fun to work with my expedition group. They followed the direction really well and they asked me questions when they didn't understand. As a teacher, I wish I could give more clear directions and be more confident what I say. When I did the closure, I felt that my words were little bit unorganized. I will definitely work on these skills to be a better teacher. I am very thankful to my group that they added to what I was saying. 

Different Worlds Collide (group 3)

Different Worlds Collide 

Key terms:

• Mexico City
• New Spain
• Convert
• Colonist
• Francisco Pizarro
• Athualpa
• Cuzco
• Lima
• Conquistador
• Ally
• Moctezuma
• Hernando Cortes
• Tenochtitlan
• Conquest

Feedback:

I thought that using timeline is a good way to organize students’knowledge and activate their prior knowledge. I thought that the teachers were moving on too fast. I saw some students didn’t have enough time to write it down. However, I thought that the lesson was very organized! All teachers seemed that they know the material. I also like that all teachers repeated important words again and again. I really like the ping pong paddle white board. It is really easy to hold it up and students seemed very enjoying (Later I found out that it belongs to the classroom). I really liked the idea and it is a great way for exit ticket! As a teacher, you could see what they have learned through the lesson and how you can make an adjustment!

NAT Project Reflection

Dine / Navajo

Our group prepared for Dine/Navajo Native Americans. Here is our presentation link. 

When I prepare for the lesson:

We covered their history, five themes of geography, culture, religion, clothes, food, habitat, famous people, and their generalization. While I was preparing for the lesson, I had fun to learn a new culture. I discovered many interesting facts about the tribe and I tried to be creative to teach this topic. I prepared for the parts of their traditional clothes, food, and habitat. I wasn't able to bring any traditional clothes, but I brought a food bag with their primitive food and I tried to make a model of their houses. I made a wood frame for forked stick hogan and it was really hard to make it. However, if I am teaching in the real classroom, I will pass it around as a sample and I will encourage the students to try to make the hogan. I believe they will love to make it. It will be an hands-on activity so it will help the students to be more engaged to the learning.  

After I teach:

The presentation went really well and we had very informative information on our presentation. Even though it was little bit long, we had covered everything that we needed to cover. In real classroom, I thought we could have two days of direct instructions so we don't overwhelm the students. My personal reflection on myself as a teaching, I will practice more speaking in front of people. I will try to speak louder too. I will continue build my creativity when I create my lesson plans. 

Teaching Geography

How to teach geography?

Five themes of geography

Acronym to memorize the five themes of geography:

Movement

Region

Human

Environment

Location

Place

• Hug the Earth activity:

The students will take turns to hold the globe and share their ideas. This activity will help the students to be more engaged to the content. It is a good opportunity to listen to others' opinion and thoughts. 

• A poem on geography:

Walking along feeling free
Feeling the Earth here with me
And I love her. She loves me
I hug the Earth, the Earth hugs me.
She's our friend,
We'd like to be together forever.
The Earth is our garden
It's a beautiful place
For all living creatures
For all the human race,
Helping Mother Earth
We can peacefully roam,
We all deserve a place
We can call our home.
Food is a treasure from soil and the sea.
Clean fresh air from the plants and the trees
The warmth of the sun giving life each day
Turns water into rain, it’s nature's way.
And 1 would like to thank you, Mother Earth,
I like to see you dressed in green and blue 
I want to be by you.

Lorraine Bayes

If I use this poem in class, I will make the students to create an poem based on their previous knowledge on geography. I will provide the students a rubric for the writing. 

More strategies:
Bingo
60 seconds film
Creating a model with the clay (visual representation)
Cake me (visual representation)

Building literacy across the curriculum: forging connections with the past through artifacts

HISTORY

What does it mean to be a historian? what do historians do?
- Analyze the past
- Interpret the evidence
- Examine written records to understand the past.

Students should be able to:
- Think chronologically
- Understand historical documents

Artifacts activity:
Based off the artifacts that were given, the students will be able to find out who the person is/ what topic is. 
- It requires chronological thinking and predictions.

Artifacts are pieces of history (pictures, documents, graph, photographs, and etc.)

Questions:

• What do you notice first?
• find something small but interesting
• what do you notice that you didn't expect?
• what do you notice that you can't explain?
• what do you notice that you didn't know?

1. who/what?
2. when?
3. where?
4. why?
5. how?

Comments on the activity:
The activity I did in class was very interesting. I was given three artifacts: a birch tree portrait, a diploma in different language, and a decorative spoon. These three things are explaining Russia and Dr. Smirnova. It was very interesting activity because I felt like I am a historian. I had to type every single letters in Russian on a website to have the English translation. That's how I found that the diploma was belong to Dr. Smirnova. Also, I have learned that the birch trees are the symbol of Russia. With these founding, our team was able to guess these artifacts are all about Russia and Dr.Smirnova. I thought that it was fun and interesting to learn the topic/person in this way. I was able to actually explore and make a prediction. 

Strategies for Social Studies

Strategies 
for Social Studies:

Using hands-on activities can add interest and meaning to lessons because students are engaged in visually and kinesthetically with hands on materials. Hands-on activities make a lesson more concrete and meaningful, especially for learners who are less skilled with abstract ideas. 

According to Carolyn Halpin-Healy, hands-on activities can promote critical thinking skills as the students observe, speculate, and interpret. Using artifacts as part of a hands-on activity can add experiences with another kind of primary source to the student’s study of history.

Examples:

1. A-Z Vocabulary/ Social Studies Word Wall or Word Bank

2. Art history IS history

3. Visual discovery

4. *Flip book 

5. What am I? activity

6. Living statues

7. *Postcards (write a postcard to veterans, write recent activities, weather, and etc)

8. Paper bag history

9. *Artifact discovery

10. Sequential questioning (students ask questions to the teacher on the topic)

*The EPIC Strategy encourages critical and creative connections with history using the Constructivist theory of teaching. It works this way:

E	The teacher encourages students to share personal Experiences related to the topic. Common experiences that could be related to Columbus’ voyage, for example, might be:
	having been lost	having been bored on a long trip
	having to share space that is too small	exploring a new place
P	The teacher encourages discussion of Perceptions that students have from the experience such as feelings they had, details they remember.
I	The teacher shares Information about the topic to be studied.
C	The teacher helps the students make Connections between the students’ experiences and perceptions and the topic being studied.

Artifact activity reflection and samples

Artifact activity

Reflection:

As a teacher, it was really fun preparing an artifact activity relates to life in New Spain. I was able to use my creativity when I was create the artifacts. It is kind of hard to find the actual artifacts from the history so I had to create an old map, painting, and statue. When I gave my classmates my artifact bag, they were able to guess how the artifacts relate to the content. They were able to figure out that the map represents plantations, houses, and missionaries. Thy were also able to figure out who was the person from the statue and social classes from the painting. When I am actually teaching this lesson to the students, I will provide the students enough time to do some research using a computer or iPad. Instead of I am giving all the information, the students will explain what it is and why it is important (with a visual presentation; posters, ppts, and etc). I will borrow the idea of Marie, the scientific methods too. 

Examples:

New Spain:

Amanda's PPT

Cierra's PPT

Gaeun's PPT

Latitude & Longitude:

Marie's PPT

Aimee's PPT

Christopher Columbus:

Alexis's PPT

Micaela's PPT

Rachel's PPT

Kim's PPT

Spanish Explorers (New Spain & Aztec):

Kristen's PPT

Cassandra's PPT

Planning DI for Life in New Spain

Life in New Spain

Our PowerPoint Presentation

Terms to teach*

five explorers

• Hernando de Soto
• Esteban
• Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
• Francisco Vazquez de Coronado
• Juan Ponce de Leon

Society in New Spain

• A society is a group of people forming a community
• Peninsulares, Creoles, Mestizos, Indians/Africans
• Encomienda (gave a peninsulares control of all the native peoples who lived on an area of land)
• Plantation (large farms with many workers who lived on the land they worked)

More changes for Native people

• Missionary (one type of encomienda that was run by Roman Catholic missionaries to teach his or her religion to others who have different beliefs)
• Mission (a religious settlement where missionaries live and work)
• Bartolome de Las Casas
• Slavery in the Americas

We were supposed to use Prezi instead of google slides. However, we had a problem with prezi so we made google slides. Amanda will open the introduction and briefly mentioned about Search for gold then Cierra will talk about five explorers. Then I will talk about the society in New Spain and Olivia will explain more changes for native people (Slavery). Between each content, we will have check for understanding. When we are studying the explorers, we will use pop stickers sticks with explorers images. Web organizers and notepad are provided. I was very nervous when I was teaching however, the students were paying attention to our lesson and they were very engaged to the lesson. Even though we were rushing to finish everything but I thought that we managed time really well. We had to cover many concepts so that's why we didn't have enough time I believe. However! I was so proud of my group!!

The voyage of Christopher Columbus (group 2)

The voyage of Christopher Columbus

Key terms:
Expedition
Colony
Columbian Exchange
Bahama Islands
West Indies

Christopher Columbus:

• He was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy and died in 1504.
• He was an explorer from Spain.
• He is known for discovering the Americas
• He was on a voyage to discover the Indies not the Americas

The Taino:

• THe land that Columbus discovered was an island called Guanahani
• The island was inhabited by a group of people known as the Taino

Funding the Expedition:

• Expedition: a journey made for a special purpose
• Columbus spoke to King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella about his plan
• He convinced them that he can find a cheaper and quicker way to the Indies
• Three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria

Columbian Exchange: Columbus broght over settlers, animals, and supplies

teaching methods:

Web organizers (Columbus web)

Columbian Exchange Posterboard (thinking caps)

I really enjoyed watching Group 2's direct instruction. It was structured and organized.I also liked their activities that they did. I really like that you had a slide with key terms so students know what they were supposed to focus on.

Fieldwork Information

Lesson plans

Direct Instruction(Behavioral Model)

• To develop basic skills and knowledge
• Modeling shows the process of thinking.
• Demonstration is just showing information.

Ex)PowerPoint presentation, written information on the whiteboard

Indirect instruction IPM (Information Processing Model): inquiry lesson

• To develop critical thinking skills

Ex) explorers journal with given clues

Indirect instruction SIM (Social Interactive Model) 

• Cooperative learning methods focusing on social skills.

Ex)Creating poems, artworks, stories, and songs.

Reflection: Map skills (group 1)

Teaching Map skills 

• Globe: a model of earth that shows the two major lines: the equator and the prime median.
• Many ancient civilizations believed that the earth was flat. This made sailors and explorers worried they would sail right off the earth.
• Equator: an imaginary line that circles Earth at its widest point between the North and South poles.
• Prime meridian: an imaginary line that extends from the North and South poles. It passes through the Greenwich, England .
• Parallels: lines of Latitude that circle the Earth
• Meridians: lines of Longitude that circle the Earth
•  Longitude and Latitude: imaginary lines that help us find locations on earth
• Latitude lines tell us how many degrees north or south of the equator a location is.
• Longitude lines tell us how many degrees east or west of the prime meridian a location is.
• Hemisphere: the earth being divided into half spheres

        Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western

How to teach this lesson effectively?
1st direct instruction: Model and demonstration are very significant. 


Reflection:

I really like that the teachers showed the google map. By asking/showing the location of places where students might know, students seemed very involved in the activity. They also made a good transition from the introduction to the next part. Good explanation on map vocabularies with pictures and definitions. I liked that the teacher asked the students if they had any question on what they were learning. Marie provided gestures and keywords (hand motions on latitude and longitude). It seemed that the students remember the terms better! The teachers played a video clip on the map skills. It was a great resource and appropriate to the age of class. Word wall activity was a good way to develop their knowledge. Students seemed very engaged to the activity. However, I wish all students have a chance to participate in this activity. I liked that the teachers provided the world map so all students can look at. Students who participated seemed very engaged with teachers by asking different questions. I thought that the closure was very smooth and clearly emphasized what the students learned today.

Jigsaw Project on cooperative learning

Cooperative learning

Project Jigsaw

Reflection: I really enjoyed working on the jigsaw project. We all became an expert in a specific area and conduct a lesson for others students. As I gathered information of positive interdependence and share it to my expert group to create a lesson, it helped me to master the content and be prepared for teaching. When I gave a lesson to the base group, I was very prepared and feel confident. Learning from other friends was also very interesting because I was able to ask more questions.

PowerPoint Presentation on Positive Interdependence & Individual Accountability

Consideration:

• hands on activity
• more engagement
• Giving a feedback to each other is very important. 
• When you design a lesson, make it simple and include effective images.
• Creativity (video, animation, sounds, and etc)
• Have a plan B (try to practice before you present)
• Turn & Talk activity
• Talk louder
• Try not to read the texts on PPT.