Reflection 17

Planning a unit and lesson takes time but the way that I would approach is the same way when creating a webquest. The first thing is looking for ideas as to what is the theme of the unit; in the webquest I used Cells. Once the theme is selected I begin to find out what is that I want the students to learn from the theme; in the webquest that I did I wanted them to learn not only what cells are but the impacts that they have on our everyday life. After the theme was chosen, the subjects that will be used in the unit would be selected. Then find out how long it would take to teach the unit. With the use of technology the internet is full of good resources; online field trips, activities, etc. that can be used when thinking about what to use in the unit.
The hardest part of planning a unit is picking a theme and what you want each student to learn, after that everything else is easy. The rest requires that the teacher has good planning skill and also a good prior knowledge activity, so that the teacher knows where each student is at. Homework should be used to reinforce what the student has learned; also transition from subject to subject should be smooth. The activities that are selected or created should be based on the skill that students have and also teamwork would be used. This is how I have approach when making a unit plan based on how the experience that I had when making a webquest.

Reflection 16

Jerome Bruner was very influenced by many writers including Lev Vygotsky, which eventually led to his intrapersonal focus on the lack of attention that was given to political and social context. As he continued his work he became an important part to the cognitive revolution, which led to his 1996 book called “The Culture of Education.” Now when looking at his work there were certain points that not only began to influence how Social Studies were taught in school but education all together. The way that education should be seen is as process. The process is based on four themes: role of structure in learning by making it central to learning, readiness for learning, analytical and intuitive thinking, and motives for learning. When looking at the first theme, Bruner want for education to be view as a structure instead of just mastering facts and techniques. Second theme focuses on how schools spend more time on what are important areas that should be taught so that it won’t be too difficult for students to learn, this is where the spiral curriculum comes in so that education should be used to revisit basic ideas and continue to build on them until the student has fully understands. In the third theme Bruner states that analytical and intuitive thinking are neglected because of the lack of conditioning. And the fourth theme is about getting the student to participate in the process so that he/she begins to think for him/herself and not so much in getting him/her to commit to education. Bruner believes that culture should be a part of education because it is through culture that the minds are shaped because it not only shapes the world but also us.

Reflection 15

History is not present in the elementary curriculum and personally it should be, but it should not be the center of the social studies curriculum. History along with all the other sections of social studies are important part of the curriculum, the main purpose of social studies is to provide students with enough knowledge to make good decisions. According to Mead, he views history, anthropology and other categories important to the curriculum. In a way all the subjects found in the social studies parameter are in one way or another connected to each other, humanities and history are almost the same except that humanities focuses on arts and the culture while history focuses on the development of a civilization.
The problem is not whether the elementary students will be able to understand or have conceptual abstract but if the teacher uses effective strategies to teach the subject that the students in will be able to learn history. The learning depends on the skills of the teacher, personally even if the students in elementary do not have history as a subject history should still be taught because it is everywhere. One finds history in geography, humanities, etc. it is all about how well the teacher can integrate history to her unit. But like I mentioned earlier I do not think that it should be at the center of the curriculum, the teachers should find a way to incorporate it to the lesson so that the students are able to make a connections.

Quiz 6

Reflection 14

Mr. Bennish was Colorado teacher that was having a class discussion about the speech that President Bush made when addressing the state of union. He compare some of the comments made by President Bush to those that Hitler said, one of the students recorded the discussion and presented to his parent. When the parent heard he was very upset so he contacted the school principal. The principal heard the recording and place the teacher on administrative leave until the school board completed an investigation. But from the whole situation the reason the student was upset was because the teacher had only given one point of view of the situation and he did not provided students a balance and fair discussion.
Now looking at the national social studies standards the teacher did not provide the student with a balance point of view but just stated what his opinion was. The reason for social studies is to provide students with reliable unbiased knowledge so that the students can make their own personal opinion about the situation. Social studies is to provide the students with various knowledge so that they can become an active citizen, the consequence to Mr. Bennish comments is that some of the students are not really given the opportunity to make their own decision about the discussion. The teacher could of approach this discussion some other way, but as the student that made the complaint said that the students were just going to take what the teacher said as if they were facts and not an opinion.

Quiz 5

Reflection 13

The balance approach is when both the whole language and phonics are used in a classroom to teach children to read. During the past centuries teachers have been using either whole language approach or phonics approach to get the children to read but there has been a great debate for years about which one is better. The only problem is that both approaches have been used in various setting but the child reading still has been low. This has cause for teachers to use both strategies to teach students but so far there has still been no real drastic change and according to the article is stated that the balance approach is the mixing of both approaches but how is this accomplished accurately that depends on the teachers.
The most important part of this situation is to try to get the students to actually enjoy reading and not see it as something boring. Personally I have never been a big fan of reading because all the experiences that I have had has been bad, teachers would make me read stories that are boring and that I would have no connections to them. In a way the teachers should not put so much focus as to which of the two approaches is better but instead focus on the style that each child has to learn. Some students might learn by the balanced approached, while other from the whole language/ phonics approach or it can be from an approach that no one has really discovered yet. The focus of the teacher should be the students and not the approach. In the article it even stated that there has been research performed from the two approaches and neither has given much of positive results, so there can still be a better approach out there that has not been found. The research recommended that teachers should try to do something different or to look beyond those approaches that have been used.