All About Social Studies

The topic of the day was using primary sources and how to compensate when you can't get them. I learned so much in class and found it extremely useful! The lesson example that we took part in was teaching students from their textbook about Tenochitlan, an ancient city in Mexico. One of the keys to the lesson is that we made up hand motions for the difficult vocabulary words that the students needed to learn. The words were Tenochitlan, Hernando Cortez, Moctizuma etc... These were important people in the story and making up motions for them was a way for the students to remember who they were. Students were asked to come to the front and act out the characters. They were given props as well. One student was a narrator and would read the text book as the student participants and the rest of the class would act out/observe what was actually going on in the story. I thought this was such a great technique! I even learned a lot from what we did and will remember it so much better. The second part to the lesson involves drawing histopics. Histopics are stick figure drawings that recap the story in order of the events so the students have another visual representation and way of remembering what we learned. To finish the lesson have students retell the story to a friend or a parent!

We spent the rest of the class learning about 12 easy ways to use primary resources. Here is what we learned:
1. Gossip Collumn/News - article about the event
2. Histopic - note taking with pictures
3. Walking Timeline - long piece of paper with artifacts
4. Social Studies Songs (SSS) - tons, or make them up
5. Dramatic plays and readings - assign roles and have them carry over the rest of the semester
6. Synectics - compare concept to something different
7. Grafitti groups - chart paper around the room with different questions
8. PBL project based learning - high conflict and innovation
9. ABC Brainstorm - vocabulary or key words
10. Story Board - more professional histopic great computer program
11. Photo journaling - kids take pics of scenes and describe in writing
12. Graphic organizers or flip books

Lastly, we spent the rest of the day at the Benjamin Harrison House. We got a tour of the house and got to participate in an activity that children who visited would experience. It was very educational and cool to get a feel for what it would be like immigrating over here. I learned a lot from the experience!