Richardson Readings Ch 1-3 & 5

A major idea I learned from this week's readings is about weblogs. They are everywhere and serve a multitude of purposes in the classroom. I was able to be exposed to some of this at Fisler last semester in the upper grades. Teachers were incorporating the use of weblogs for homework assignments and tests even. Each teacher also had a person webpage that was used for that classroom. I think this is a great tool to use to help keep the students, teachers, and parents in communication. It is something I would enjoy incorporating into my classroom in the future.

Technically Social

Last semester I was privileged to intern at Fisler elementary school, which is an Apple distinguished school. They are very advanced in incorporating technology into the curriculum and classroom. Every subject used technology whether it involved the interaction on the promethean board or working on a project on their individual Apple Macbooks. While I was there I was able to observe a few social studies lessons. One of the first ones involved learning about different types of communities including rural, urban, and suburban. They 3rd grade GATE students got to explore each type of community and then drew either a landscape or birds view photo of a particular type of community. A great way to have incorporated a blog into this lesson would be to have the students write a story about the photo they created. They are obviously given the basic setting but are then able to take their knowledge on the type of community and write a story about "A Day in the Life of..." and then choose a character that would live in that type of community. For example, if the student had a rural community, they could write a story about a day in the life of a farmer. By having the students blog using this frame it allows for assessment of the understanding of the type of community being taught. To take it a step further, you could have the students blog about the same character in the other two types of communities and how they would like or dislike that type of community in comparison to their own community. Ultimately, in any social studies lessons, there are a number of ways you can incorporate technology and blogging. Fortunately, for the students I worked with last semester it could easily be done since each student had a computer and worked with them regularly. It would be more challenging in a school that doesn't have the same resources. I'm sure I will have some experience with this in the future ;)

What is Social Studies?

a question many of us ask these days...the adventure begins today to discover the mysteries behind our social lives.

Let the journey begin!