2012-13 STARTING NOW!

As this school starts, I am so excited with new ideas and methods to experiment and tweak throughout the year! Asking the students to hang in there with me and have a great time exploring all there is to offer in the Social Studies world! So much to be gained other than the content! Driving questions that are challenging me this year include:

1. If something is "Googleable" why would we spend precious class time teaching it?
2. When we ask students to summarize, do we actually want to know what's important to them?
3. What do you suppose students think they are supposed to be doing when we ask them to analyze?
4. Do you ever ask your students questions you don't know the answer to? Why not?
5. Think about all those things we teach kids claiming "you'll need to know this someday." With the exception of teaching it, when's the last time you needed to know any of that stuff?
6. Do your students need more information, or skills in how to critically evaluate the information that surrounds them?
7. How much of what's really important in life, is taught in a classroom?
8. Why do we usually teach all the boring facts first and save the interesting stuff for later?
9. When we cover material, what is it that we think we have accomplished?
10. Is being told something the same as learning it?
11. What would content area teaching look like if it were taught the way an art teacher teaches art?
12. If state testing went away tomorrow, would we actually teach differently?

Mrs. Nelson and I are now professionally trained in Project Based Learning; we are super excited to start building projects together for our Juniors. Putting together a well thought out project that is authentic, academically rigorous, includes applied learning, encourages students to be active explorers,  build adult relationships, and have a worthy assessment is quite a challenge. We are ready to put our best foot forward in engaging the students in an awesome learning experience!!