Geography

Geography Awareness is coming up! This week is dedicated to educating those who are not aware of the interconnectedness of our world. If you visit the website for Geography Awareness Week, you will be able to look up several different missions you can complete to help you better understand the world better. 

Hugging the Earth

Today's lesson started off with a squishy globe activity. We were all asked to hug the globe and then pick a continent, ocean, or specific country that is special to you. I chose the Pacific Ocean because I swam in it when I went to New Zealand. My other classmates chose italy, the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland, Great Britain, and many more. This is a fun activity you can do with your student to get a lesson started. 


The Five Themes of Geography 
1. Location, position on the Earth's surface
2. Place, natural and cultural characteristics
3. Relationships within places, humans and environments 
4. Movement, humans interesting on the Earth
5. Regions, how they form and change

The Six Elements of Geography 
1. The world in spatial terms
2. Places and regions
3. Physical systems
4. Human systems
5. Environment and society 
6. The uses of geography 

Emily and I playing a geography game.

I learned in class today that your knowledge on Geography can always improve. The amount of facts on geography are almost overwhelming. A great way to include geography in the classroom is to use a globe in your history lesson. This gives students a visual presentation and allows them to see where everything is located. Teachers can also set up a twitter account and put a different fact everyday. Then they can take that fact and research it more. A teacher can also make some kind of trivia game using geography facts that the students can use during their recess or free time.

Flipped Classrooms

What is a flipped teaching?

Ramsey Musallam, defines "flip teaching" as "leveraging technology to appropriately pair the learning activity with the learning environment." This flexibility is why technology has the potential to be so transformative in education.

The goal of a flipped classroom
Have students be able to:

• question
• problem solve
• think outside the box
• create innovative solutions 

The problem with flipped classroom

• Many of the flipped classroom examples are passive ways of learning. The teacher gives the video and the student only watches it, and they only engage in lower thinking of Bloom's Taxonomy.

How to improve the system

• Create online discussions 
• Hold a debate
• Make collaborative group work
• Take advantage of ready to use content

Salman Khan

The 2nd TED talk

KHANacademy.org: Is one of the best tutoring websites I have ever been on. I have personally used this website for math tutorials, and I seriously recommend it. 

Salmon said his cousins preferred the youtube videos over an actual person tutoring them, because they had the ability to pause and repeat the material-- and not waste the tudors time. Not only did it help his cousins but the content will never grow old.

When he put the videos on Youtube, he actually got positive feedback from people all around the world. One of the first comments he got was "that was the first time i have ever smiled after doing a derivative."These videos are also friendly for children with autism. One mother said she exhausted all of her resources, and she finally discovered KHANacademy videos. These videos on decimals and fractions actually worked! 

What does this have to do with teachers?

-These videos penetrates in the classroom. Many teachers assign the lecture for homework. The when the students come in the next day, they can work in class on the homework they would have been assigned that day.  

Benefit-the student can enjoy the video-pause and learn at their own pace.
In class, students can have their peers interact with each other and use technology to humanize the classroom. Many students race ahead and other students are a little slower learners-- These videos let students work at their own pace.

The class moves on-if you fail the test or not. You must learn a subject the same way you learn how to ride a bike. Constant exposure and practice will help a student succeed. This website is even convenient for older learners, because sometimes they can be embarrassed to be taught something they learned years ago.

KHANacademy even has a link for the teachers use only that can diagnose what the student is having trouble with. The teacher can also see where they stop the video, how much time they spend on a problem, and which questions they got right or wrong.

All Hallows Eve!

Learning about Halloween on a school day. As many teachers know, Halloween is a very hectic day. Many of the students are all hyped up and in their costumes, and not exactly in the mind set to learn. All the commotion and sugar makes it difficult for teachers to control their class. Larry Ferlazzo has some excellent ideas on how to teach students about the significance of Halloween in his blog.

The History Channel  offers an excellent video about what students might not know about Halloween. I would show this video in class and then I would have them complete a few questions, and then tell me 2 new things they learned from the video.

I could also assign each student a different country and ask them to make a small presentation at the end of the day explaining what they learned. Learning about how different countries celebrate the same holiday is extremely interesting, and it will have the students thinking critically. 

5 Minute English also offers a great little story and questions to be answered after. The reading comprehension is very important in elementary school. 

Hippocampus

What I learned from HippoCampus U.S. History & Government- Homework and Study Help:

U.S. History:Lesson 12- Declaration of Independence 

I am creating a unit plan on the Declaration of Independence with two other group mates, and this website was extremely helpful!

"We have it in our power to begin the world again"

Thomas Paine created the great document known today as Common Sense. Many colonists were writing documents to the King asking him to ease up on some of the laws, but nothing was working. As a result, in January of 1776, Paine criticized King George III and called him a "Royal Blue who was unworthy of American respect." The main argument Paine made was that an island does not have the capacity to rule a continent, because it defied natural law. Paine created a great ruckus, but one that had a point. The Continental Congress even had each state form governments and write their own statements of Independence. Paine's goal was to make sure that no one else was under King George III's rule anymore.

June 7, 1776 Richard Henry Lee told the Continental Congress "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." This announced America's break from England.

The Continental Congress then created their committee to write the formal document called The Declaration of Independence: Ben Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson. On June 28, Jefferson submitted the final draft to the Continental Congress.

What is stated in the Declaration:

1.  Justify the American Revolution
2. An expression of the American mind
3.  Natural Rights
4.  People have the right to overthrow their government when it abuses their fundamental rights

Jefferson also made a lengthy list of King George III's violations of the Americans rights. An important example is, imposing taxes on colonists without their consent.

July 2, 1776 The Continental Congress passed Lee's resolution to declare American Independence from British rile. 

On July 4, 1776 delegates adopted the Declaration of Independence 

• Patriots became rebels subject to treason (because they signed the Declaration)
• "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." 
• "We must hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." -Thus a nation was birthed 

The Declaration of Independence was not all that popular at first, but then a few years later, many countries that strived for freedom adopted the ways of the Declaration and used it as a guideline to make their own. Today, the Declaration of Independence remains an inspiration for freedom loving people. 

I really enjoyed this website, because not only did it explain the topic via text, but it also had a video that was easy to understand. This website helps all kinds of learners find a great way to remember the information. It was filled with great reliable facts and good pictures. 

Philosophy of Education

Year after year, candidates for teaching go through articles, books, workshops, and many other resources learning about what to teach and how to teach it. Your own philosophy of education will lead you in the right direction as to why you make certain decisions when creating a lesson plan.

Have you ever wondered what your philosophy of education consisted of? If you're at all interested in finding out what your philosophy of education is, then you should look into taking this self -assessment.

The results of the self-assessment test on my philosophy of education are in order from highest to lowest:

1. Information Processing--> 22 points 
2. Humanism--> 21 points 
3. Cognitivism/ constructivism--> 21 points 
4. Behaviorism 21--> points 
5. Progressivism--> 20 points
6. Reconstructionalism/ critical theory--> 19 points
7. Perennialism 17--> points 
8. Essentialism--> 16 points

I think this website is a very useful tool, because now I have a better understand of where I stand with many educational factors. I learned that I focus more on how the mind works, and how to improve on processing and memory.