CED525 Week 3 (strategies)

Since I'm a Social Studies teacher, I was really interested in chapter 6; Summarizing and Note Taking. Note taking is a skill and there is nothing more frustrating than middle school children who don't know the first thing about taking notes. I don't blame the students, but the teachers need to guide them through this process early on. I remember writing as fast as I could when I was in school. I didn't want to miss a thing my teacher said. My hand would hurt and I feel like I missed a great deal of the material. Looking at all the different ways for students to take notes, I don't think any student should have a sore hand. Organizing information and summarizing the main ideas is what is important. I love using KWL charts because they tell me what my students know, want to know and last what they learned. It's simple, but effective. I was excited to see all the different, but effective and engaging sites that were listed in this chapter. I find that my students get bored with the KWL charts. The charts work in favor, but can also hinder my lesson. Students seem to shut down at times when they see me handing them out. On the other hand, they also know the expectation of the sheet and that is a plus. I will definately be trying some new sites that we talked about in class, as well as the ones listed in the book. Another strategy that we talked about was cooperative learning. I could go on and on about cooperative learning. I love it! I think it's the best tool for a teacher to take advantage of. I do a project every year about mummies, tombs, and ancient Egyptians. I choose groups for my students to work in and complete a large project. I like to mix my groups with children with all different talents. I strongly believe in the multiple intelligences, so I base my lessons and groups off of that theory. Some students love the research paper and writing, where as others enjoy putting together a slide show presentation. The artistic students love the part of the project where they use cardboard and tin foil to re-create the cover of a tomb. Last, you always have that student in the group who organizes the flow of everything. It works great and there are many smiles on their faces when I walk around the room. When I let them pick their own groups it's a mess. There is a lot of goofing around and social hour. I'm loving these new tools and hearing what other people do in their classroom.