The Pros and Cons of Teaching Social Studies

Today we taught our lesson plan! It was exciting, and yet terrifying. Becky and I taught three lessons (direct, inquiry, cooperative) on Ancient Greece. Our first lesson focused on democracy and religion. We chose these two topics because we thought they were relevant to the students. This year is a presidential election year, so democracy is surrounding them. Also, we taught the lesson at Bishop Dunn, a Catholic school, so they were able to compare their own religion to that of the Ancient Greeks.



During direct instruction, I feel like we had a good control over the students. Our behavior managements routines were well thought out, as well as where we sat students around the room. Because students arrived late, we were already behind on time. Through the lesson, we were never really able to find a spot to take time back. Students responded well to the information we presented. At our check for understanding points, students were able to answer our questions with information they rephrased into their own words.




Our second lesson was an inquiry lesson where students were presented with a riddle they needed to solve. The answer to the riddle was one of 5 greek gods and goddesses. We gave them 2 websites (here and here) and 2 YouTube clips (here and here) where they could go to find information to solve their riddle. I think we struggled most in this lesson. Our riddles were interesting, but seemed to be a little over the heads of the students. We would have been more successful if we prepared better modeling for the students. I think it also would have been effective to show them where they may encounter an error or a struggle so they would have an example of how to overcome a difficulty.

The final lesson was a cooperative learning lesson where the students had to create a glogster about the god or goddess from the riddle. By grouping the students, they were also able to check their answers to the riddles or fill in any gaps in information that they may have. I think we did a better job modeling in this part of the lesson. We made sure to tell students how to add the important features they would need to complete their glog. The mistake we made in this portion was not explaining the rubric to the students. We simply left it on the SMARTboard where it was visible, but didn't go into detail about their requirements. The students really flourished in this part of our unit plan. They all worked well together and created some beautiful glogs.

I think overall, it was a good lesson. There were definitely improvements to be made. However, if it was perfect, I wouldn't be in this program learning how to become a better teacher. The experience itself gave me a lot to think about how I teach and conduct a lesson. All of these moments in front of students where I may flounder or succeed are all part of the process of becoming a teacher.