The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge.
Students were placed in groups in sizes two or three to make group presentations for the class. After having a unit on Manifest Destiny, the students were now exploring the different types of groups who were making their journey out West. This consisted of The Explorers, The Pioneer Women, The 49ers, Missionaries, The Mormons, The Californios, The Mountain Men, and The Chinese Immigrants. Their job was to be the teachers and teach others about the group that was assigned to them to create a presentation.
They had to first read through the section that was given to them, next work out with their group what slide they were responsible for doing, and then answer the question that went with the slide. The last part of the group project was presenting their findings to the class to teach their peers about that group who traveled West. The artifacts below are examples of presentations that were made in class. This demonstrates indicator 6G, which states, "Understands how to design, select, modify, and evaluate a wide range of materials for the content areas and the reading needs of the student". My students understood how to evaluate text from their textbook and turn the section they read into their own words. They were able to produce PowerPoints to help the class understand the section they read.
As the different groups were presenting their projects, the students were held accountable for writing down the presenters' names, one piece of information learned, and a difficulty the group faced. This demonstrates indicator 6F, which states, "Recognizes the relationships among reading, writing, and oral communication and understands how to integrate these components to increase content learning". My students were able to realize they were learning from their peers, rather than me going over each section. They we able to accomplish how capable they were with reading, displaying their findings, and presenting.
Social Studies.pdfLIfe In the West.pdfChapter 18 Presentation Reflections.pdfLife in the West Presentations 7B 2024.pdfLearning about a new piece of history could be overwhelming for students, especially since the class can only cover some much in a short amount of time. This is why it is important to start a unit with vocabulary words that will be used multiple times in lessons and will give them a clear understanding of what the definitions are. Also, allowing them to add a photo, synonyms, and antonyms, and put them in a definition to help them remember the word.
One unit we did with the vocabulary words was talking about the division between the North and South. The artifact below shows the six vocabulary words that were put into a Google Document for my students to work on. This demonstrated indicator 6L, "Facilitates the use of appropriate word identification and vocabulary strategies to develop each student’s understanding of content." This helps students be able to have one sheet that has six of the important vocabulary words to identify while going through our unit and refer back to the sheet if needed.
The most important part of their vocabulary sheet is the last text box about writing a sentence that uses the vocabulary word. This helps my students be able to learn how they can use the word in a sentence and develops word recognition. This demonstrated indicator 6D, which states, "Understands writing processes and their importance to content learning." Along with expanding my students' vocabulary, I wanted to help them learn how to expand on their writing by being used to using these words in sentences. This will get them a start on doing short sentences because at the end of the unit, they will be writing an essay about the advantages and disadvantages of the North and the South.
North and South Vocabulary 2024.pdf