Internship – Preparing Students As Future Citizens

Cite the Standard:

H – Honor student diversity, development and their right to learn.

To demonstrate a positive impact on student learning, teacher-candidates…

H5 – Honor student potential for roles in the greater society.

Teacher-candidates prepare students to be responsible citizens for an environmentally sustainable, globally interconnected, and diverse society.

My Interpretation of H:

H5 – Teachers should incorporate real world situations in the classrooms so that students are adequately prepared for a globally interconnected and environmentally sustainable society. Teachers should bring cultural awareness and inform students about social diversity so that they will learn to become respectable future citizens in the community.

Presentation of Evidence with Description:

I have prepared a lesson plan called Working Together in Our Classroom Community which focuses on the civics section of the Social Studies learning standards. Students will learn about community building and work with classroom rules through class discussion, partner sharing, and making booklets (in Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Working Together In Our Classroom Community Booklets

Based on the NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies), the purpose of teaching Social Studies is to help prepare students to become well-informed and civic-minded citizens of the U.S. democracy. Through meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active teaching and learning of Social Studies, students will be ready to carry on the U.S.’s democratic traditions and become responsible contributors in the ever-changing diverse world.

Justification:

Teaching and learning Social Studies can become powerful when they are meaningful, active, value-based, integrative,and challenging. Meaningful Social Studies focus on developing in-depth understanding, and this can be done by active participation (sharing and listening to students’ personal experiences and learning). As I develop my own personal values, I will implement basic human values to the students through class discussions and reasoning (i.e. talking about why rules are important to our classroom community). I also encourage students to integrate their Social Studies learning with other content areas; therefore, I have applied Visual Arts to help students develop a more concrete understanding of the civic rules of a classroom community. Additionally, students will also face appropriate challenges, and this can seen through the development of motor skills; the majority of Kindergartners are still in the process of developing their motor skills, so drawing and writing can be challenging. In the end, students will produce their own personal booklets that has images representing the given eight rules. When the pictures match the rules, then it is evident of student comprehension.

Summary of What was Learned:

I have learned that students need explicit instruction every step of the way. It is critical for the teacher to work side by side with the students using modeling and giving plenty of examples.

Comment on the Implications for Student Learning:

Students will see and comprehend the importance of a working classroom community using the booklet, modeling, and classroom talk and sharing. They can always go back to the booklet for future reference.

Next Step: 

In order to increase the effectiveness of my evidence, my next step will be to provide more explicit direction and student practice because students need to understand clearly and feel comfortable with what they are supposed to do during their individual work time.

Reference

“A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civic Efficacy.” A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civic Efficacy. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.