Week 5

I am excited about all the technology that we are learning and how we can implement into the classrooms.  Amber and I created a lesson around animoto.  I was surprised how easy it was to use.  I got excited by how to use it in the classroom and how I could even use it in my personal life!

As I read chapter 4, I kept thinking about the difficult task of establishing National Curriculum for Social Studies.  Social Studies is a such a broad subject field.  Plus, I think it difficult to narrow down what we want children to learn in this subject.  Although I as a teacher find it hard to write lessons without standards.  I know each school district and state has their own, but as I started writing the lesson with Amber.  I  again was focused on writing for a 4th grade, because that was the standards we had.  I also found it hard to zero in on what we wanted to teach students.  We finally did narrow it down.  We had so many ideas.

I had another thought about standards and Social Studies.  At my son's school the teachers have done a lot of units where they incorporate the standards for ELA along with teaching Social Studies.  Students seem to love the units when these subjects are integrated.  It seems easy to teach Social Studies along with a book that is set in history.  The teachers have immersed the students in the history, geography, and social aspects of the books. It just seems like a great way to learn and a great way to combine subjects.