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