Miss G's Social Studies Blog

  Lesson three focused on Civics, continuing our learning on the country France. Miss. Karlie and I started the lesson off with an icebreaker activity to get the students moving and ready to learn. We brought in dice for the students to roll and there was a printed directions sheet placed in the middle of the table they were learning at. Based on what number the student landed on they would answer the corresponding question examples: W hat is your favorite holiday? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite TV show? Miss. Karlie and I decided to let the students take two turns each because they all enjoyed this activity a lot. We then went over the list of behavior expectations that we created as a group in lesson one. The vocabulary words for this week were a little more complex than prior weeks so we decided to create a visual and have the students match pictures to the definitions. Along with the matching activity we also provided the students with the words and definiti...

                 Miss. Karlie and I were given the opportunity to teach a history lesson about France to our group of fourth-grade students. The lesson started with a reintroduction of our names and an icebreaker to get the lesson moving. The students were asked some would you rather questions and were provided with yes or no cards using the French language. Following the icebreaker, we decided to go over the list of learning expectations that we had created as a group the prior lesson. To start the lesson we had collected the prior knowledge the students had on primary and secondary sources. We then provided the students with examples of sources and had them identify which ones were primary and which were secondary. The students completed this activity using the T-chart provided by Miss. Karlie and I. Once the students had a good understanding of what the difference between these sources were we decided to do a primary source analysis using ...

           During this lesson, a group of 6 fourth graders learned all about the geography of France and many different mapping skills. The lesson started off with an introduction and some community building, as this was our first time working together as a group. With the use of collaboration skills, the teachers and students created a list of behavior expectations to refer to during future lessons. Miss. Karlie and I created brochures,  passports, and suitcases specific to France for our learning journey. We then reviewed where France was on the globe and its surroundings. While also observing two maps, one from 1806 and another from 1991 spotting the similarities and differences. Incorporated into this lesson were brain breaks and many hands-on activities.           The entire lesson went extremely well and all of the students seemed to enjoy the activities we created for them. Collaboration was a key strength, all of ...

My goal as a future educator who is studying Elementary Education with a concentration is Special Education is to support my future students in any way I can. I hope to have my own classroom one day and make it a safe and welcoming place for my students to learn. When incorporating and selecting primary sources I made sure that the sources were relevant, provided context, encourages engagement, and develops guiding questions. Incorporating primary sources into my teaching is important because it allows students to engage directly with authentic materials, fosters critical thinking, deeper understanding, and possibly a personal connection. Primary sources cultivate wonder, curiosity, and inquiry based learning by inviting students to explore real voices and different perspectives from the past. This helps encourage the students to ask questions, analyze evidence, and draw individualized conclusions. Historical thinking is fostered by primary sources due to the sources being evidence of ...