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TLT 412, Fall 2012 - Course record

TLT 412, Fall 2012 - Course record

Aug 25, 2014

Navigation short-cut: Session jump by number

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 Session 1 - Thursday, 30 Aug

Before class

  • Buy a copy of the textbook (Lee, 2008, Visualizing Elementary Social Studies Methods). The bookstore has it; Amazon has it; used copies are fine. 

  • Cruise this wiki and the CourseSite.

  • I have paper copies of the syllabus; you don't have to print out a copy yourself.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

    • Introductions

    • Looking at our toolbox: CourseSite, wiki, bookmarks, etc.

    • Reviewing syllabus

      • Assignments and grading

      • First step: Completing your first WTL entries

    • Questions thus far?

  • Conceptual work

    • What is social studies?

      • Jigsaw(-ish) / LGL activity

        • Form two groups

          • Group A: Use the collected memories from our WTL exercise. 

          • Group B-E: Gets everything else! 

        • Group: Look over your collection and create GROUPS of items that seem to be similar.

        • Label: Identify each group by a short (1-4 word) label.

    • What is social studies methods?

      • Content?

      • Techniques?

      • Lesson planning?

    • Notes on the "unfunded mandates" in the class: Portfolio updating

    • Who am I as a social studies educator? 

    • Further resources for social studies ed

      • Standards

        • PDE: Old standards and new standards are both available in CourseSite – look down at the bottom of the page.

        • National organizations. (Note the big four content areas, plus the umbrella/integrated organization, NCSS; the big new thing is the C3 framework)

      • Lesson plans & curricular materials

        • PDESAS

          • Curriculum in elementary social studies = pretty patchy. But do note the organizational scheme of Big Ideas, Essential Questions, Essential Concepts, etc.

          • Lesson plans, activities, etc. – be sure to start at the "Advanced Search" page.

        • Given the absence of unified curriculum at the PDE level, I've bookmarked a number of district-level curricula, both within Pennsylvania and elsewhere. 

        • Schools of California Online Resources for Education has some pretty useful stuff. 

        • The national organizations also feature important resources – for example, we'll be highlighting EconEdLink from the Council for Economic Education.

      • "Stuff"

  • Closure

    • Review of what's due next week – reminder about filling in info for "Weaving the Globe"

    • Review of what's where (wiki, CourseSite)

    • Any questions?

After class

  • Reading

    • Lee, Ch. 1 (What is?) & 2 (Reflective) 

    • Crocco, 2004 (as an overview and critique of the field)

    • NCSS, 2008

    • Lovorn, 2009 (as an example of arts integration)

  • Assignments

    • WTL

    • Update your profile in CourseSite to include your picture

    • Starting planning out your upcoming assignments: Original Instructional Materials product #1, who you'll interview for HTCE, etc. 

    • Bookmark class websites on your computer (e.g., CourseSite, relevant wiki pages)

    • Fill out the “Weaving the Globe” input form.

    • Input your portfolio URL ASAP

NB: Help session on library resources & how to use the portfolio system (Mahara) - WEDNESDAY, 5 SEP. Sessions are 4-7 pm and 7-10 pm in the Mac lab.

 Session 2 - Thursday, 6 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • WTL

  • Contribute to "Weaving the Globe" data.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

    • Portfolios?

    • WTL?

  • Conceptual work

    • Opening activity: Sketchmaps

    • Sketchmaps & schema

    • Examples of how social studies schema are complicated / slippery / layered

    • NCSS on the purpose of social studies

    • Curricular frameworks

    • A proposed, deliberately provocative framework of aims: A three-ring circus

    • NCSS and powerful social studies

    • Digging into geography

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

    • Lee, Ch. 6 (Geography) & 4 (Standards; connect to discussion of frameworks)

    • Re-visit NCSS, 2008

    • Brophy & Alleman, 2002

    • optional: Wade, 2002

    • skim: Keeler & Langhorst, 2008 (to get ideas for orig inst materials assigns)

  • Assignments 

    • WTL: Group = Sep 11th remembrances; individual = whatever you like

    • Work on HTCE prep

    • Complete instructional product #1

 Session 3 - Thursday, 13 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Complete instructional product #1 (and a paragraph of explanation!) and either turn it in via CourseSite (if it's digital) or bring it into class (if it's physical) or both (if it's a hybrid)

  • WTL

During class (ppt)

  • Thinking back on the past week in the world: Discussing Sep 11, recent events in the Arab world

    • Examples of competing public goods? (cf NCSS definition of social studies)

    • Set of chained reactions that demonstrate the need for some serious knowledge & citizenship preparation.

    • Display of three ring circus idea of social studies?

    • Something new to introduce into our conversation: excerpts from the PA School Code.

  • Discussion of the upcoming week's WTL: Constitution Day!

  • Housekeeping

  • Original instructional material #1

    • Reviewing assignment process, expectations – see newly-added bookmark into the syllabus.

    • Instructor demo: Will be using one of the pages from this SmartBoard file. 

      • Show it, explain what it is and how you anticipate it being used

      • Talk about content-area standards (via CourseSite)

      • Talk about accommodating students with special needs. To assist with this: 

        • Consider work in SpEd 332, prior field experiences, etc. – work from what you know

        • Examine the PA English Language Proficiency Standards (see full document and also the social studies-specific selections via CourseSite)

    • Pair and share

    • How to share your work with the whole class? Make a post in WTL, attach the file.

  • Conceptual work

    • Reviewing Geography ed standards, stances (i.e., the three-ring circus)

    • Tools of geography ed–there's a lot here, but we're just hitting a few topics

    • Planning social studies instruction: Standards, curricula, curriculum maps, units, lessons, activities

  • Closure

    • WTL for Week 3: Constitution Day

    • Due next week: HTCE prep.

After class

  • Reading

  • Assignments

    • WTL, both individual and group (Constitution Day)

    • Work on original instructional materials assignment, product #2

    • Work on field assignments

    • Update (if you haven't already) your teaching portfolio

    • Complete HTCE prep work. See syllabus for details on HTCE assignment.

 Session 4 - Thursday, 20 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Prepare and turn in your HTCE prep work

  • HTCE

  • Update your teaching portfolio

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

    • How did the HTCE prep go?

    • Original Instructional Materials #1...up next = #2

    • Portfolio comment / questions

  • Conceptual work

    • Human / cultural geography

      • Opening activity

        • Captions -- match these with the images in the ppt; Countries -- locate these countries on the map. 

        • Family food images taken from TIME magazine photo essay about the book, Hungry Planet. Note the parallel to the book Material World. Both seem like great resources

        • Extensions: 

          • Pop the images onto a map! Someone has done this using Microsoft's Live Maps. I would have done it with Google Maps or as a Google Earth overlay.

          • One of the things I like about this image set is the level of contextualization: We have some info about the family and their location, not just their country. So: Could you locate not just the country but the location (e.g., Tingo, Ecuador)? What resources could you use to do this?

    • Thinking about interactions between humans and environments: 

      • Transportation activity

        • Looking more broadly for cultural geography materials, I found a pair of interesting videos via YouTube. They disabled the embeds (Gah!), so just follow what I present.

        • Additional visuals (note that plenty more can be found in, among other places, flickr).

      • Enactive on population density -- note that this will require some tweaking for younger learners...more scaffolded math process (or eliminate it altogether). The technique, however (i.e., giving an EXPERIENCE of a topic) is invaluable for all learners, but particularly younger ones.

        • Extension

        • (FYI: The non-YouTube visuals and the enactive are adapted from the Geography Alive! materials from Teachers Curriculum Institute. Amazon link here. If you liked these materials, definitely consider buying this. If you're not sure, ask to borrow my materials. And if you want to watch Geography Alive! in a Live! format, I believe Saucon Valley uses it, or at least some SV teachers do.)

    • "Them" vs. "We"; "Othering" vs. identifying

      • Let's view a clip from a speech by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie given at Oxford, July 2009. The title is "The danger of a single story" . We'll just watch the first 4:14; then we'll skip ahead to 10:57-11:57 (thank YOU for the interactive transcript!!!)

      • Sample instructional challenges

        • How did the previous activities ("What the World Eats", YouTube clips, population density enactive) reinforce or challenge a Single Story about different cultures / places? 

        • Consider a sample material: Haitian voodoo flag. Poses many possibilities (e.g., combine with writing or math activities), but is also a complex, easily misread artifact. Assuming you had one in your possession, what's one GOOD idea you might have for designing instruction? What's one DANGEROUS line of instruction, one that would lead to "othering" / stereotyping / a Single Story?

        • Reading for other materials: Where in children's lit can we find multiple stories / perspectives on cultures? On historical events?

    • Organizing your methods toolbox

      • What we've done in class thus far: List-group-label, sketchmaps, looking for patterns in the names on maps, mapping an orange, Weaving the Globe, What the World Eats

      • Take a look at what's in the textbook reading thus far (each lesson concludes with a sample lesson--how would you characterize the methods in each?)

      • What other methods do you know? (E.g., a WebQuest, a simulation or role-playing activity.) How might they fit into your categories?

    • Closure – looking ahead to next week's Wikipedia activity

After class

  • Reading

    • Lee, Ch. 3 (Inquiry), Ch. 8 (Direct Instruction)

    • optional: Hammond & Manfra, 2009

  • Assignments

    • WTL (both indiv and group)

    • Complete original instructional materials assignment, product #2 (and reflection)

    • Complete Wikipedia activity pre-session work (to be linked via CourseSite)

 Session 5 - Thursday, 27 Sep

Before class

  • Complete the reading.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

  • Conceptual work

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

  • Assignments

 Session 6 - Thursday, 4 Oct

Before class

  • Complete readings

  • WTL

  • Update me on your field experience progress to date. Nothing fancy, just an email or an uploaded Word doc will do.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

  • Conceptual work

    • Opening activity: Story of Aaron – note that this is drawn from the Geography of Slavery database at the University of Virginia's Center for Digital History.

      • Full set of ads from the Geography of Slavery database at the Virginia Center for Digital History

    • Standards

      • PDE (via CourseSite)

      • NCSS

      • NCHS.

    • Timelines & schema – we'll be using this video as a demonstration object

    • Images / realia (with a secondary line of considering pedagogy

      • Hide-and-seek within an image. (The image I used came from the Library of Congress'American Memory project--a great source for getting photos PLUS contextual info. Lots of lesson plans, etc.)

      • Slow reveal of an image. (Image source is National Archives and Records Administration, child labor activity. Browse their list of activities, heuristics for working with various primary sources.)

      • Photo analysis (again, image and scaffold are from NARA)

      • Zoom-in / shifting focus. Note that this requires (a) a very high-quality image, such as a TIFF, and (b) an image viewer that will allow you to move around in the image without too much hassle. I got this TIFF out of the Library of Congress – they often give you a choice of formats, from large / high-res (e.g., TIFF) down to more compact, lower-res (e.g., JPG)

      • Looking Into the Past (flickr group)

      • And a peek back into your methods toolbox. BTW, much of tonight's image work could fall into an expanded definition of CONCEPT FORMATION. See a simple definition, see a more extended definition. 

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

    • Lee, Ch. 10 (Literacy)

    • Barton & Levstik, 1996

    • Re-visit NCSS, 2008

    • Jensen, 2009 (ambitious teaching)

  • Assignments

    • WTL

    • Work on field assignments

    • Work on curriculum map assignment

    • Finalize arrangements for completing your HTCE assignment

    • Complete curriculum map assignment

    • (If scheduled) Prepare for microteaching

Pacing break - Monday, 8 Oct & Tuesday, 9 Oct 

 Session 7 - Thursday, 11 Oct - NO CLASS due to conference