Reflection

Another six weeks gone. I can't believe that student teaching is right around the corner! When this class first began, I was pretty excited because I loved Social Studies in school and I still do. Now I think that I am even more excited to get into the classroom and teach Social Studies! I loved learning more about the integrated curriculum and all of the things that you can accomplish by teaching this way. Now that I know what grade level I will be teaching in the Fall, I want to look at the standards and come up with some unit ideas!

I feel like this class prepared me to create lessons and units in a much more effective way. I really enjoyed working with Anna on our unit plan and I think that I could definitely put it into action when I get in the classroom, which is a great resource to have as a beginning teacher. The thing that I struggled with the most though in creating the unit was knowing when to stop. Social Studies is so broad and contains so many content areas that it is hard to narrow things down enough to create a cohesive unit. For example, I had a really hard time not doing more history and biography when creating lessons for our unit. Our unit would be combined with the other two 5th grade units to create a government super-unit, and the students STILL wouldn't learn all there is about the history and creation of the US democracy! I suppose this is just something that will get easier and more clear over time...I hope.

All in all, I think that I made a lot of progress over the course of this class. I enjoyed the material, worked effectively with a peer, and was able to interact more deeply with the content that I will be teaching soon. I feel like I am finishing my summer at Meredith feeling prepared to go into the classroom and maybe even start teaching Social Studies first!