Heritage Comes Alive

The Native American Tribe that my group and I did research on was the Mohawk Tribe. My mother's side of the family is actually from the Mohawk Tribe. My great great grandmother was 100 percent Native American so I had a pretty solid background on the Mohawk Tribe. I chose this group because I wanted to learn more about my own heritage. Before the project I knew that the Mohawk Tribe was the first Native American's founded in New York State. I also knew that they created the Mohawk hair style and look. From this project I learned that the women of the tribe elected the Chief of the tribe. The women were also the gardeners and harvested all of the food. This included the "Three Sisters" while the men went hunting for the meat. The women were basically in charge of the entire tribe.

This jigsaw project taught me how important it is to use PIGS Face-to-Face interaction because it allows all of the students to have equal opportunities while working on the project. The students also developed their personal accountability. They will also understand the concept that if they fail or do not contribute to the group project then their classmates will fail too. This gives all of the students motivation to work harder because they are not just responsible for their grades but also their team members. The jigsaw also helps the student develop their meta-cognition because they are going beyond the knowledge and comprehension levels. They advance to the evaluation level because they are solving and evaluating the jigsaw outcomes. 

If I were to teach this to the 4th grade students, I would have easier questions for the students to answer. I would defiantly have the computers already available with the information on it. Meaning that they would not have to google and research everything on their own. Instead the website and information will be there for the students. I would also have a specific worksheet made as a guideline for the students to use. Once the students are done working with their expert groups I would briefly look at their worksheets to see if they all have the same information. This way when the students get into their base groups then I know that all of the same information is being taught. During these presentations within the base groups, I would also have another worksheet for the students to fill out while they are following along. Finally, I would have a self-evaluation and peer-evaluation rubric for them to fill out. This way they are evaluating their work and their group members work. All of these adaptions are important because it breaks the work into smaller and easier pieces for every student to understand.

National Content Standard

NCSS Standards

II. Time, Continuity, and Change

Social Studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the ways human beings view themselves in and over time, so that the learner can:

a.   Demonstrate an understanding that different people may describe the same event or

     situation in diverse ways, citing reasons for the differences in views.

b.   Demonstrate an ability to use correctly vocabulary associated with time, such as

     past, present, future, and long ago; read and construct simple timelines; identify      

     examples of change; and recognize examples of cause and effect relationships.

c.   Compare and contrast different stories or accounts about past events, people,

                places, or situations, identifying how they contribute to our understanding of the

     past.

e.   Demonstrate an understanding that people in different times and places view the

     world differently.

VI. Power, Authority, and Governance

Social Studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how people create and change structures of power, authority, and governance, so that the learner can:

         c.   Give examples of how government does or does not provide for the needs and

     wants of people, establish order and security, and manage conflict.

d.   Recognize how groups and organizations encourage unity and deal with diversity to      

     maintain order and security.

h.   Recognize and give examples of the tensions between the wants and needs of

     individuals and groups, and concepts such as fairness, equity, and justice.

VII. Production, Distribution, and Consumption

Social Studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how people organize for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, so that the learner can:

         h.   Describe the relationship of price to supply and demand.

New York State Learning Standard(s):

SS1: History of the United States and New York: use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York.

Key Idea: SS1.4:  The skills of historical analysis include the ability to: explain the significance of historical evidence; weigh the importance, reliability, and validity of evidence; understand the concept of multiple causation; understand the importance of changing and competing interpretations of different historical developments.

Performance Indicators:

SS1.E.4A: Students consider different interpretations of key events and/or issues in history and understand the differences in these accounts.

SS1.E.4C: Students view historic events through the eyes of those who were there, as shown in their art, writings, music, and artifacts.

Here are the links of my group's work:

Mohawk Tribe presentation
Mohawk Tribe Jigsaw

Proud Information-Processing Projects

In my social studies class, we conducted several different group assignments. Two of these group assignments were jigsaw projects and one was a current event presentation. I have learned how to implement these techniques within the classroom. The jigsaw project was very new to me and before this class I have never heard about this type of lesson. I think that the jigsaw is effective to get all of the students participate in the project. Dividing the students into their expert groups to work is a great way to ensure that every student in the classroom will obtain the same information. This is an interesting way to create an active environment within the classroom. It promotes PIGS Face-to-Face Interaction because students are naturally talking to their classmates without feeling any pressure. When the students are reunited with their base groups, they share the information that they put together with their expert groups through presenting. The students are actually teaching each other about a specific topic, which is good because some students learn by teaching their peers or from their peers teaching them.

The current event presentation helped me understand how important it is to be aware of the world around you. I learned so much about what was going on with our government during the time of the government shut down that I would have never learned on my own because I do not watch the news. It forced me to read articles that I would not normally be interested in. All of the different instructional methods that were used to teach current events were incredible. It made me think outside of the box and begin to think of the endless possibilities on how I could teach current events. My current even presentation group decided to use sentence strips to teach the students sequencing. One thing that I learned from this was that the sentences used from the sentence strips should be an exact match to the sentence in the article or story. Reason why I say this is because it was not easy for the college students to do and both groups were stumped. There was more than two wrong with each group because the sentence strips were re-worded differently than they were in the article. Sentence strips are not made to trick the students. The strips are meant to improve the students thinking skills with sequential order.

Throughout this semester, these social studies projects improved many of my skills. I learned how significant it is to use technology in every lesson plan. I have improved my skill ability to work collaboratively, communicate, using technology in lessons and so much more!

PIGS Face-to-Face Jigsaw Project 

Mohawk Tribe Jigsaw Project

Current Event Presentation

Insightful Observation

As part of my qualifications for my social studies methods class, not only was I teaching but I had to observe my classmates teaching. During fieldwork, there were two group that would teach the lesson and then alternate and reteach the session while the colleagues watched them teach. The fieldwork time was broken up into 25 minute intervals for each group to teach. I will be talking about my observations between group 3 and group 4. I observed direct instruction, inquiry and cooperative learning lesson plans from both groups. If there was one thing that I learned from these observations is to always be prepared for anything and that time restrictions are important to be aware of. Due to time restrictions, the lessons were not completely finished. There were times where the lessons went over 15 minutes. This can cause a huge back up or delay in the day's schedule. I have also learned that it is very difficult to stick with these time restraints. Every day is different in the classroom and you cannot predict what is going to happen. Now I am going to break down my observations by group to make it easier to follow.

Group 3:

Without a doubt, every time that I observed this group there was always a teacher standing in front of the projector. This was very distracting because the words were unreadable. I learned two things from this: 1. Rearrange your classroom if it is too crowded in front of the projector. 2. Never stand directly in front of the projector, when necessary, point from the side of the projector. I loved how they keeps the students involved during the direct instruction by having a worksheet for the students to follow along with. 


Group 4: