The Beginning of Time

         Ever since I was little, I never really enjoyed social studies. My first social studies teachers never made learning social studies fun. I felt like I just had to memorize certain facts and dates, but nothing really connected to one another.  However, once I got to high school and college social studies interested me more and more. I realized everything that we do has a reaction and leads to something else. I also realized that we need to know history so that we do not repeat our same mistakes. It is also amazing to see how far civilizations have come since the beginning of time.

           In our first class of social studies methods we did a class activity. We were to think of who our favorite social studies teacher, list qualities of a good social studies teacher, make our own definition of social studies, and recognize our goals and expectations of this course.  After we answered these questions independently  we had to share our findings with a partner and then repeat it to someone else in the class. This is a good exercise because it allows students to practice listening skills which is a very important quality to have as a teacher. Instead of just hearing what people are saying it is important to listen to others so that you really understand what they are saying.  Also after discussing all our answers with one another, we discovered that we all had the same view on what a traits make a  good social studies teacher. One quality was to use hands on materials and artifacts so that we could be intrigued and experience something instead of just reading a textbook to memorize facts. Also, setting goals and expectations the first day of class is good because it steers us in the right direction and good path for the whole semester.

      I  am really excited to see what I will learn in this course. I know that it is similar to science methods, but social studies methods we get to learn how to teach a cooperative lesson, not just direct instruction and inquiry. I also feel like I learned so much from science methods that during social studies methods I could keep practicing the skills that I learned to perfect myself. My goal of this course is to learn to make learning social studies as engaging as possible. Even though I know this course will be not be easy, I am ready and excited to conquer the challenges!

This is an example of an assignment I would have my students do, to make up a song about a specific topic including facts. Teaching students through songs is fun and an easy way to remember facts, it also allows students to be creative.

This is a link to my All About Me project.