The finale...

Blogging allowed me to reflect more on the experiences of this course including readings, field trips, and my personal teaching reflections. The chance to create my own blog page will aid in my professional career, I plan to continue blogging and encourage my students to do so through in class assignments. It gave me the opportunity to read my peers thoughts and ideas about the courses activities and forced me to consider differences in opinions and ways to improve my own teaching. Blogging has further enhanced the course because it is more fun and easier to do than journaling or writing on discussion boards. I suppose that my page background and seeing what I have written “published” gives it a special level of engagement. Blogging has not hindered my learning experience in this course. Through thoughtful reflection I am not able to see how blogging has caused my learning in this course to be less impactful.
Social studies is not a boring topic. My views have drastically changed, before I just remember social studies being about history, looking at the globe, memorizing dates, and other very boring activities.
I enjoyed reading Seeing the Whole Through Social Studies, Tarry Lindquist made Social studies learning and teaching very exciting and gave specific activities that can be integrated into the classroom. I learned the importance of integrating Social Studies into everything, including math, science, and literacy in order to cover important topics. I have heard teachers say that social studies is only taught every other day and we only have to meet about 15 objectives. The news of social studies not being integrated into other subjects is saddening and unfortunate for students. I look forward to considering ways to integrate social studies in my classroom by creating an annual plan, rather than just hoping that I get to social studies content. It is important for teachers to give students opportunities to learn about history, culture, government, economics, and geography to give them the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about life.

Upon completion of History through a child’s eyes, the assignment where we interviewed elementary school aged children to learn about their interests and ideas about social studies was also impactful for my learning experience in this course. The assignment was eye opening because I have never assessed a students’ knowledge with social studies and found ways to teach according to what they know about the topic. Through role playing, hands-on activities, virtual field trips, and classroom artifacts, social studies can come to life in any classroom. Now I realize that social studies does not have to be boring.