Photo Sharing

In the first week of class, we were told to take pictures of two things:
1. The first photo should be one that demonstrates what you believe is your most cherished and natural right.
2. The second one should reflect your understanding of CITIZENSHIP.

For the first photo I chose to take a picture of my nephew of I. I believe that my most cherished and natural right is the pursuit of happiness. I believe that it is our right to be happy and to do things that make us happy. In my life, spending time with my nephew is one of the things that brings me happiness. Kayden, my nephew, is a sweet and caring little two year old boy. Whenever Kayden and I spend time together, we always have a blast with lots of smiles and laughter. I'm not sure what it would be like if I didn't have the right to do what makes me happy.




For the second photo, I chose to take a picture of a passport. I chose to take a picture of a passport because to me citizenship means that you belong to a specific country. Citizenship is the status of being a citizen, so what comes to my mind is having a passport. Your passport indicates which country you are a citizen in, so I thought a passport would explain what I understood about citizenship.

I think that the first picture helps us as future teachers better understand our students. Since it was up to us to take a photo of what we believed is our most cherished right, the teacher is able to see what is most important in our lives. The second photo helps assess our background knowledge of specific terms, such as citizenship. I think that is a great activity that students who are a little bit older could easily do. 

"Kids for Character: Citizenship"

Social Studies Blog Post #5

Field Trip

On April 4th, we took a class field trip to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We started out by meeting at the Main Visitor Center in Porter. While there, we looked around at the bookstore and a room that was full of information about the Dunes. We also watched two short movies about the National Lakeshore as well. After that we drove to Gary to the Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education. This is where we took a short hike through a section of the Miller Woods Trail and talked about the Savannah Oak.  It was absolutely beautiful to walk this short section of the trail.


After we walked the short trail, we went back to the building where we ate our lunch. After lunch, we drove to Bailly Chellberg. We took a short walk on the trail to see the farm and homestead. I think that this was a very neat experience. We talked about how when you book a field trip, a park ranger actually lets you into the home to look around. I think that this would have been a really neat experience to actually see what the house looks like on the inside. However, we were unable to see the inside of the house. Even though we did not see the inside of the house, simply seeing the outside of the homestead and farm was absolutely wonderful.

At Bailly Chellberg there was still a cemetery  and another homestead that could have been explored. However, I was frozen at this point so I did not continue any further exploration. This summer when it is warmer I would like to go back and explore more of these trails.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is a great place to go for a field trip. I learned a lot of different things that classrooms can do for a field trip. The best part of having a field trip: it's free! There are so many exciting aspects of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore that classrooms can explore. In my future classroom, I would love to be given the opportunity to take my class to this beautiful location for a field trip. It is especially great since it is close to us. We don't have to travel far to be able to experience this beautiful park.

To learn more about the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, click here.

Social Studies Blog Post #5

Soap Carving

For class, we read the book Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan. In this book, one of Naomi's talents is soap carving, and she really enjoys making lists. One of the lists she creates lists a bunch of different animals. 

For class, we were told to bring a bar of unscented soap to carve, just like Naomi Leon. I bought a bar of Ivory unscented soap to carve. At first, I wasn't sure what I wanted to carve in my soap. I decided to look in the book for something that I could carve into my bar of soap. I came across a list of animals that Naomi Leon wrote down. It was then that I decided that I wanted to carve some type of animal into my bar of soap. I decided to carve a butterfly. 

I started carving my butterfly by first drawing my butterfly into the soap with the tip of my pencil. One I had drawn my butterfly on my soap, I used the sides of some scissors to start chipping away at my soap. Once I had chipped away the excess soap, I started attempting to smooth my butterfly with the scissors. I eventually gave up and decided to try coloring my soap with some chalk crayons because I thought that maybe adding some color would make it look better.

I found that I became more frustrated as time went on. Beforehand, I thought that it would become easier the more that I carved; however, this was not the case for me. Instead I became more frustrated the further I got in my soap carving experience. I ended up not liking how my soap carving turned out, but I think that is because I am a perfectionist. Since this was the first time I have ever carved soap, I knew that it would not be perfect, but the perfectionist in me wanted my soap carving to be perfect.

I think that this activity was a great way for us to gain a deeper understanding of the novel we were reading. We were able to actually experience what it was like to carve soap, just like Naomi Leon. In a classroom, I think that doing something like this would help my students better understand what they are reading.

"How to Make a Soap Caving" by Dave Zachary

(From YouTube)

Art Blog Post #8

Thank You, Ma'am

On March 9th, we read the story "Thank You, Ma'am" by Langston Hughes. The short story is about a young boy named Roger who attempts to steal the person of an older lady named Luella Bates Washington Jones. Roger was trying to steal the purse to get money to buy new blue suede shoes. Mrs. Luella grabs Roger by the collar and drags him back to her home. Roger believes that he is in great double; however, Mrs. Luella surprises Roger with her kindness and generosity. To read the short story, click here.

After reading the short story, we were told to make one of the characters in the story using whatever materials we wanted to. After we created our characters, we were supposed to write a diamante poem. A diamante poem looks like a diamond when it is written. A diamante poem is made up of 7 lines. Line 1 has the beginning stubject. Line 2 has two describing words about line 1. Line 3 has three doing words about line 1. Line 4 has a short phrase about line 1 and a short phrase about line 7. Line 5 has three doing words about line 7. Line 6 has two describing words about line 7. Finally, line 7 has the end subject.

I ran out of time and was only able to make my character. The character I chose to make was Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones. I chose to make Luella and included her big bag as well because that was important to the story.


Even though I never wrote the poem for this activity, I think that it would be very beneficial in a classroom. I enjoyed getting to make a character from the story because it allowed me to create what I thought the character would look like. I also think that it would be beneficial in a classroom because students could then use their character to help them write the poem. I think that my doll of Luella would have helped me create my poem, so I think that having this in a classroom would be a great activity.




Art Blog Post #7

Poetry Reading

We were asked to bring our favorite poems into class to share with our fellow students. When I first hear this, I had no idea what poem to bring in because I am not much of a poetry person. I have always had a hard time understanding what a poem is trying to tell me. I ended up choosing the poem "A Light In The Attic" by Shel Silverstein. I decided to choose this poem because it is the title of one of Shel Silverstein's books of poems. Last semester when I finished field, my cooperating teacher gave me this book of poems. She was the most influential cooperating teacher that I have ever had, so to receive this as a gift was truly inspiring. I chose to use this poem since it is the title of the poetry book. There are a lot of good poems in this book. My field teacher used poetry books by Shel Silverstein almost daily. She would tell the students to give her a page number and she would read the poem that was on that page. 

When we came into class on the day of our poetry cafe, we realized that our classroom looked a little different than normal. There were four tables set up with four chairs around each of the tables. The tables were covered with black table cloths and had a different floral arrangement. As we were sharing our poems in our groups, soft music was playing in the background. It was really a neat experience. After we read all of our poems in our table, we swapped tables so we would hear other classmates' poems.

I would definitely consider doing something like this in my own classroom. I think that poetry is a hard topic for some students because I was one of those students. However, I think that this was a fun way to teach poetry. I prefer something like this instead of having students just read poems aloud to the entire class. There are some students who are shy and have a hard time memorizing poetry, so instead of having them just memorize a poem, this is more beneficial. It teaches them how to read poetry and how to listen to others read poetry. I think that this also helps students see that there are many different types of poems. I also liked that we got to choose our own poems instead of having Syd just choose poems for us. This allowed us to come up with a poem that was important to us.

Want to know more about using poetry in your classroom? Click here!



Art Blog Post #6

Favorite Music

"Where words fail, music speaks."

-Hans Christian Andersen

Music has always been an important part of my life. While I have never played an instrument, I have always enjoyed listening to music. Music is something that I can connect to many memories. I love when I listen to a song and it reminds me of a specific memory. I have always had a hard time choosing just one song that I love. Instead, my favorite song seems to change all of the time.

           "Country Girl Shake it For Me" by Luke Bryan

Country music is my favorite genre of music. There is such a range of what country artists sing about, so I feel like there is always a song for whatever mood I am in.

My very first country concert I went to was to see Luke Bryan. I went to this concert at a fair in the summer of 2012 with some of my friends. Before this concert, I was not huge into country; however, now I am. Luke Bryan is my absolute favorite country artist because I feel like his music is fun and exciting. 

"Bye Bye Bye" by 'N Sync     

My first ever concert of all time was to see 

'N Sync when I was much younger. Of course I was really big into boy bands as a child, as was every other girl in the 90s. I remember going to the concert and screaming my head off and basically losing my voice. I still enjoy listening to 'N Sync whenever it comes on the Pandora Boy Band station. 

               "Die a Happy Man" by Thomas Rhett

Currently, my favorite song is "Die a Happy Man" by Thomas Rhett. I just think that this song is very sweet and enjoyable to listen to. Whenever I hear this song, I am instantly happy. When this song comes on the radio, I instantly start singing and just want to dance. 

"Love Shack" by B-52s

                            

"Love Shack" by B-52 has so many memories associated with it. I remember dancing around the house with my cousins to this song. We thought it was such a funny song that we would be entertained for hours. I remember when my oldest cousin first got her license we would drive around screaming this song at the top of our lungs. 

I think that music is something that is very important in everyone's lives. It is something that can easily be incorporated in the classroom. I remember in high school, I had a teacher who would play music while we worked on our worksheets. In field, I have seen teachers who use music as a brain break. They play a song and let the students get up and dance, just so they can get up and move around. 

I cannot imagine life without music. Music is all around us in our daily lives. I think that music should be incorporated all throughout the classroom.

Want to learn more about how to incorporate music into the classroom? Click here!




Art Blog Post #5

Shoebox Activity

In Social Studies class, we were talking about how during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, people had to sometimes grab what they could fit in a box and move West. In order for us to fully understand how it felt to experience this, Syd asked us to do this. We had to grab a shoebox (or a reasonable sized box) and in just a few minutes put whatever stuff you would want to take you with you on your travels. She informed us that clothes and food were already going to be on the wagon, so those items were not something that we did not have to worry about. I immediately started wondering what I would put in my shoebox, but decided that it would be best to wait until I was actually home in order to get the full experience.

When I got home that night, I grabbed my shoebox and looked around at what to put in my box. The first things I grabbed were photographs. The pictures were of my family because I would want to have those memories with me wherever I went. I also grabbed a journal with a pen, so I could document my travels. I grabbed a book to read just in case to keep me occupied. I also decided I would take lotion and chapstick, since to me these are necessary. I grabbed my box of Minions Bandaids as well. Bandaids seemed kind of random, but I feel like I always need bandaids. The final things I tossed in my box were my phone and charger. Overall, I think I spent about 5 minutes grabbing the items I wanted and putting them in my box.

The next class we got into groups of four to share our shoeboxes. We took turns sharing the contents of our shoeboxes. Once we were done, we changed groups and once again shared the contents of our shoeboxes. What I noticed was that everyone has items in their shoeboxes that were important to them. Most people had pictures of family members and cellphones. I noticed a lot of religious items as well. There were also a number of people who brought items to keep the busy on the trip, like coloring books and colored pencils.

I think that this activity was a great way for us to fully understand what these people had to go through. We can talk about what life was like during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression; however, we do not gain a deep understanding of how these people felt. This activity allowed us to feel the way that these people felt during these hard times. I think that this a great, simple activity that can be used in the classroom. I think that this also will let us into our students lives because they will be bringing in items that are important to them.

 "The Dust Bowl and The Great Depression" by RuneHQVideos

Social Studies Blog Post #4