Economics Currently

In elementary school, once a week a few of my classes would receive magazines that held short news reports, interesting facts, and other factual stories that we would have time to read and talk about. Until creating a current events lesson on economics, I hadn't thought about how important those magazines and news stories were. It is vital that as teachers, as social studies teachers in particular, that we remember to involve students in what is going on in their world on a daily basis.

I created an economic current events presentation using a NewsELA article on Black Friday shopping. For the lesson, students would look at the NewsELA article, as well as articles on the economics of different stores opening earlier or closing down for Thanksgiving. I also provided a few articles on laws that were created because of Black Friday. Using all of these resources, students would be asked to decide if there were enough economic benefits to staying open on Thanksgiving as well as Black Friday, and explain their reasoning. Teaching about Black Friday would be useful when teaching economics because not only is it an event that takes place every year, students will be familiar with it, and may have family members who work in stores that remain open on Thanksgiving which may affect their standpoint. Further, Black Friday relies on so many different concepts of economics, whether it be supply and demand, advertisements and sales, or profit for the stores. All of these concepts could be addressed when the student is explaining their stance on Black Friday.

Evaluating Interviews

Being able to experience an interview for a teaching position was a helpful exercise in that it caused me to think about questions I could be asked when looking for a teaching job, as well as gave me the opportunity to reflect on the answers I provided. Many of the questions really made me think about how to effectively answer what I was being asked while basing my answers on my experience with fieldwork and in classes. Being asked how I would handle students engaging in a physical fight was definitely a question I had not previously considered. Students fighting one another is not an unusual thing for me in that in elementary and middle school fighting occurred in my schools and classes, but I had never considered how I would handle being in the position of the teacher in such a situation.

Not only were the questions interesting to think of, it was sometimes difficult to make sure I knew how I wanted to answer before I began speaking. In a normal class setting I likely would have been able to answer the questions at least on a basic level. Because it was an interview, regardless of the fact that the "principals" were my peers, it was important to me to make sure I was answering the questions as fully as possible. I also wanted to make sure my responses were well thought out so I wouldn't be hesitating in the middle of sentences or tripping over my own words while trying to express my thoughts. It was satisfying to feel prepared in answering the questions in that I knew I was drawing from my experience for fieldwork as well as information I was taught in classes from various different semesters. Feeling relatively comfortable in giving my responses validated me in my career path because, even while I know there is nothing else I want to do in life but become a teacher, being comfortable answering questions about how I would implement different aspects of teaching in a classroom was reassuring. Being "hired" based on my interviews with the different schools at the end of the process was definitely rewarding and has provided me with a small push and renewed determination to finish out the semester as strongly as possible. 

Digging up Economics

As an educator, it is important to be constantly finding ways to engage students in new content being taught to them. One way of doing this is by using an artifact bag. I created an artifact bag that I would use to introduce the topic of economics. I included five "artifacts" that I thought each covered a different concept of economics. The items I included were US currency, a coupon, a shirt tag that said "made in India," and two QR codes that linked to the youtube videos below.


Having students work together in groups in order to determine what the next lesson could be engages students in the lesson. It allows for discussion about the items, as well as how they could be related to each other. Then, when the groups present what they believe the connection between all the items is, having them explain why they think each artifact was included shows their metacognition and helps the teacher understand their though process. Further, when teaching the lessons on economics (or whatever the artifact bag may be on), the artifacts in the bag can be used as examples for the different concepts or vocabulary they represented. In doing so, you're activating student's prior knowledge from the artifact bag lesson, and helping them make connections between vocabulary and a more concrete item.

Creating an artifact bag was not something I had previously thought about, but I now realize how useful it could be. The items within the bag could be made more or less difficult depending on the grade level of the students. While I would have used my artifact bag to introduce the lesson, there are also ways I could use the bag to review a topic as well. If I were using an artifact bag lesson at the end of a unit, I could include create multiple bags so each group had a different one, and then tailor the items in each bag to one specific concept covered in the unit. In doing so, it would help students review the concepts learned, as well as help me see if there were concepts the students did not fully understand, and therefore could not identify based on the artifact bag provided.

Making Miles and Minutes Count

Participating in the Skype-A-Thon was an awesome experience. Our class video chatted with a class studying biomes and used their knowledge of biomes to ask us questions about the landscape where we were to not only determine what biome we belonged to, but where exactly we were located. We, in turn, asked them similar questions to figure out where that class was located. After each class decided where the other was, their teacher allowed us to watch how she would conclude the lesson. She asked the class what questions from us they were or were not expecting, as well as how the questions asked helped narrow down the biome we were a part of. These questions caused the students to reflect on what they had asked and if they would want to change the questions they asked in the future.

The class we video chatted with  had said they were surprised when we spoke, we didn't have New York accents. This observations made em realize that being able to video chat with other classes not only in the United States, but around the world, could help dissipate any misconceptions or stereotypes held by the students in my class about another area or another group of people. By having students learn in an interactive way, there are bigger takeaways for the students. The experience of being able to Skype with another class will undoubtedly stay with me, and I would imagine would stay with the other class of students. Being able to use technology in a way which leaves a positive impression on students and helps expand their knowledge of the world is a powerful thing and definitely makes me want to incorporate Skype into my future classroom. Skype allows students to travel the world without ever leaving their classrooms. Additionally, Skype could be used to create a "virtual field trip" where the class could talk to experts on different subjects being studies or to explore an area they otherwise would not have been able to.

Presenting on Geography Through Lives of Native Americans

Cooperative learning can be very beneficial when used to ensure each person has a responsibility and can then share the learned information with a larger group. Creating groups to become “experts” on one tribe before presenting to the class allowed for everyone to learn much more material in a shorter amount of time. Not only did this assignment help increase my knowledge of how cooperative learning works in a classroom setting by allowing me to be a part of it, it also increased and refreshed my knowledge of Native American tribes.

Previous to this assignment, my knowledge of Native American Tribes consisted of what small trivia facts I could recall from school; I would not have been able to teach a lesson without going through different resources as was done for this assignment. The resources presented for our use provided ample information about the tribes being researched, in my case the Lakota, and provided information that prompted further exploration of what was stated. Further, because The assignment was not to simply read articles, but instead to then take the information and reformat it into a presentation that highlights important information, the knowledge was further embedded in my mind because I was actively working with it. Because I needed to present the information to the class, it was important for me to be familiar with what I would be saying. This meant that the knowledge learned and retained was more than being able to read a few sentences off of the slides; the wording on the slides were meant to be prompts that would engage what I learned while researching the Lakota tribe for me to then teach to my classmates.

In teaching about the Lakota tribe to the class, as well as observing my classmates teach on their tribes, I was able to reflect and think about how this would be taught to elementary students. The cooperative learning model would work very well with students of all grades, because everyone has responsibilities which ensures an equal sharing of work. By splitting up the tribes to different groups, becoming an “expert” becomes much more manageable and would allow students to focus on perfecting their information and knowledge on one tribe, rather than rushing and trying to know something about everything right away. This assignment also helped me understand more concretely how to teach geography. Not only would this assignment require student to identify where their tribe lived, but also to look at how that affected the people of the tribe. This way, the students are learning locations but also the relationship between an area’s geography and how people learned to adapt to their environment.

While this assignment could easily be used with a wide range of grades, there are different changes and adaptations that could be made to make it best fit different grade levels. For example, using New York State social studies framework standard 2.5b, “the location of physical features and natural resources often affects where people settle and may affect how those people sustain themselves,” second grader students could be asked to focus on how the geography affected the way their assigned tribe lived. They would be asked to identify the food and natural resources the Native Americans relied on based on their geography. For fifth grade students, according to standard 5.4a which states “physical maps reflect the varied climate zones, landforms, bodies of water, and natural resources of the Western Hemisphere,” students can be asked to look at a map of different regions where Native Americans resided and infer which natural resources would have influences the way they lived and sustained themselves. Students could also be asked to, after learning about different Native American Tribes, infer which tribes may have resided in the same or similar regions, as is aligned with standard 5.4b, “the Western Hemisphere can be divided into regions. Regions are areas that share common, identifiable characteristics such as physical, political, economic, or cultural features.” These inferences require a higher level of thinking as well as require the students to be able to make generalizations about the information learned and so would be more fitting to use with older students. Another adaptation that would need to be made would be the reading level of resources provided to students. These resources could be more specifically adapted to the student working on a certain tribe, if some students read below grade level. This would ensure that one or two members would not be doing all of the reading and researching.

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Preparations

Preparing to teach a fourth grade class for fieldwork is one of the more intimidating aspects of this course. Working one on one or in a small group with students is a much different dynamic than being in control of an entire class. In the past for fieldwork, it was much easier to design lesson plans based on the needs and interests of one or two students. Having to account for the needs of each student is an intimidating task, although exciting. Teaching the class in a group will be the first experience I have being in front of an entire room of students, and hopefully will not be the last.




Not only are there three lesson plans to create, but classroom management strategies to consider. One student being temporarily off task is easier to bring back on task because you are right next to them and able to quickly remind them what you are working on together. With seventeen students, one or two off track students have the ability to derail the entire class if effective classroom management is not put in place. While the goal is to create engaging lessons for meaningful and active learning to take place and for students to be excited to take part in, it is important to consider how to ensure that the student's excitement is channeled back into the lesson in  a productive manner. If this energy and excitement is left alone, students may become off track and lose focus of the lesson of the day.

Another aspect of being in front of the class that I find myself preparing for is how to channel my own excited and nervous energy into excitement for the content I will be presenting. Especially because the lessons will be recorded, I want to be sure to try my best to control nervous fidgeting while teaching. There are so many small elements involved, from voice projection to making sure to use academic language, it is important to remember everything that needs to be done. It is difficult sometimes in the moment to realize when you are speaking too quickly, or not pronouncing words clearly enough for the class.

Auction for Information

The first day of fieldwork was incredibly exciting! In order to both get to know the students a little bit, and start to introduce the topic of economics to the class, my fieldwork group created an auction. The students each got a certain amount of monopoly money to start with, and then we "sold" questions. The more students wanted to answer the question, the higher the bidding price went. So, for example, if students were really excited to answer "If you could have any super power what would it be?" the bidding might go up to $100 before it was sold, whereas if less people wanted to answer "What is your favorite color?" the bidding might only go up to $25.

The activity we planned went really well. The students were engaged in the activity, and got more and more involved and enthusiastic about it the further we went along. Even students who seemed reserved and soft spoken found at least one or two questions that opened them up and had them involved in the process as well. Then, we would ask the students to make the connection between how many people wanted to answer a question and the price, and used that as the basis for explaining supply and demand.

I was very happy with how well the students responded to the activity, as it can sometimes be difficult to have students volunteer information and answers the first day meeting new people. The students seemed very eager and excited to have us in the class and to learn from us, just as we all were very excited to have the chance to teach them. Overall, I think it was a great start to our fieldwork journey this semester.