Thoughts for Final Project
Week 3
For my final project I am thinking about doing a culture journal with my studetns. My "classroom" is sixth graders coming into a geography class. I want my students to have a good understanding of culture and what the definiton means for them and the people around them. I think it is important for students in sixth grade to begin using their computer, writing, and thinking skills. They will be discussing their own cultural experiences as well as learning about their classmates. My students will spend 20-30 min each day for the first 1-2 weeks of the course working with a blog on a computer.
The first resource I will be using is Discovery Education. This resouces provides a good lesson that could pair with mine about the different ideas of Christopher Coloumbus. The idea is to give different accounts of what really happened helping students understand that culture, history, geogrphy is up for intepretation based on your own experiences. Here is the link to that lesson. (http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/culture-clash-new-world-meets-old.cfm). I found this resouces from the helpful list that was provided in the instructions. This resource addresses standards that address the understanding of the beginning of our geography as well as global expansion. Overall this lesson has a good "historical thinking" undertone.
The next resource I would use would be blogger. I would want my students to become familiar with differnt web resouces, such that we have in this class. I think blogger is very easy to use, and blogging is a great and relevant way to get students writing. I found this website from our class, but find it very relevant to the lesson I am hoping to accomplish and followed them on twitter in hopes of learning more gaining tips and tricks on how to improve my blogging.. I want my students to feel safe in their writing and open up. The URL for this blog is (https://www.blogger.com). While this aspect does not cover an geography standards, it will help students with their writing and technological skills, both skills that will aid them in their future educational careers.
The final web-based resouce I found really captured exactly what I hope to accomplish with my students. I would also define culture and then use the media, photographs, video, etc. to help students recognize their own culture. This website uses national geographic and teach channel, but this could be a great resource for me as a teacher, as well as the resouces discussed in this video. The URL is (https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-cultural-identity). I want my students to understand and accept that although a culture is different, that does not mean it is wrong/right. I found this resouces by using the google search to search "cultural identitiy for students." I then read through the bio to find the best and most relevant to my teaching practices. This one discussed teach channel which I remembered seeing throughout my education searches on the different media outlets and it also included ideas of helping students use different media to understand idenity. This part of the assignmetn would capture the human aspect of geography understanding the way that humans shape the geographical landscape.
Hey Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI think it's awesome that you are doing your final project on culture! I'm in the same boat, probably because I had so much fun teaching this stuff to 6th graders. I love the idea of having your students work on their writing skills via blogging. I know 6th graders generally hate writing, so this might be a good way for them to write and still have fun. If you happen to have students who really want to blog using a website other than blogger would you be open to the change?
Also, I really like your third resource video on cultural identity. If you wanted to use that website to find content for a unit other than culture, could you do a search to find material for upcoming units? I know the PBS website lets you search via standards and even grade level. How easy is teachingchannel.org to navigate?
I would certainly be open to change. I would be very pleased if my students brought to me technology I was unaware of, I am always open to learning more. I would definitely want to approve the blog prior to use, but I would certainly be open to it.
ReplyDeleteThe TeachChannel is very similar to PBS as it breaks down by subject, and grade and then along with most of the videos they do have standards. Unlike PBS it is mostly videos, rather than the mix of resources. But the videos are based around more ideas such as lessons, or how to teach something. You should check it out, it has some really interesting resources for both teachers and students.
I took some time to go through teachchannel and it does look like a great resource for teaching. I'll definitely keep this in mind for making future lessons. Thanks!
Delete