Ms. Snow's Social Studies

What is the role of Assessments? As a second-year teacher, this is something that I ask myself quite often. During my first year of teaching, I had to focus on designing lessons and tests that pushed my students to understand the mat erial. After reflecting on these moments, I have made changes throughout this school year, but there are always ways to improve, especially when it comes to assessments, their use in the classroom, and how they impact the learning process. Assessment Synonyms Image is free to use under Creative Common Licensing. When I think of assessments, I believe they check students’ understanding of the material and uncover their growth in a concept or idea (Shepard, 2000). Tests are the tools teachers use to help gauge where their students are in reaching the learning objectives. This evaluation is vital in the learning process because learning sometimes builds on previous steps. Without a check-in of the learning process, some may not understand the material, as wel...

Have you ever looked at the news and questioned why something happened? This last school year, I ran into this problem; school safety. Students participating in the National School Walkout against gun violence in Minnesota.  Image is free to use under Creative Common Licensing. I was a first-year teacher settling into my first classroom and the rest of the first that I would eventually experience. Sadly, I looked at my phone and saw the events at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan. My stomach turned into knots instantly. I couldn't help but think of the students, the teachers, and all the people connected to that horrific day. How could this happen again? But, one question stuck with me. What if we work with various professionals from different backgrounds to find a solution to prevent the next event? This transformation would require two big ideas: reevaluating the questions and changing how we look at the process. Berger's 2014, A More Beautiful Question , explains how w...

Learning how to tackle a new skill can be challenging, but imagine having to learn by only using digital resources. That adds a new dimension to the challenge and uniqueness of learning this new skill. For me, it was the art of crocheting, and now I am "hooked," literally. As I began this journey, I was nervous. I wanted to live up to the expectations of my late grandmother. She was an inspiration for this project, but I knew the digital aspect would be where I would struggle. I found it difficult not to talk to my family members that learned her top secrets and shortcuts. Away from the nerves, I got down to business stitch by stitch until I created some things that resemble crochet. But, I kept asking myself, how do I do this? The first few stitches I started with just learning the basics and allowing myself to be creative. Berger's (2014),  A More Beautiful Question reinforced this push to explore my "how." The book shares the ideas of bringing back creativit...

Is there a moment in your life where you felt that you could have asked more, learned more, and truthfully discovered the meaning of something? Berger's book, A More Beautiful Question , explores the world of questioning from its phrasing of questions, lighting up creativity, to diving deeper into the limits of inquiry in the modern world and the classroom. Yet, are we challenging those thoughts? A cover of Berger's Book I took when getting accepted to MAET! This book challenges one to reflect on how one looks at the world through questioning (Berger, 2014). Are we asking those critical questions that lead us to change our thinking? As a child, we ask many questions, but that is how we learn about something for the first time. As we grow up, we ask fewer "why" questions. So "why" is that? What happened to the creativity? It disappears because we do not take time to engage in the why, what if, and how questions (Berger, 2014, p. 71-134 ). If we go back to our...

QuickFire Conversations Imagine this; you are in a room with school board members, administration, teachers, parents, and students. The topic is a new school policy changing for the next school year that is designated to target cell phones in the classroom. The policy has been shared with the public and even made the news. The mock debate voiced concerns from all perspectives, online and at the school board meeting.  Well, this QuickFire activity was called to session where my classmates and I were assigned roles of various members of the Prescott, Arkansas, community and discussed this hot topic. Our spontaneous roles were given to us at random with little information about our new identity, but even more a lack of information on their recent change. After a given time to research, we "dialed" in our thoughts and began a respectful conversation.  My role in the activity was school board president.  While researching, I dove into the interweb to find information from al...

Let's Bring Playtime Back To The Classroom Remember in kindergarten when you got to build or create something? You would bring home your creation, and your parents would be so proud of you and put it on the fridge. The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment it conveyed. But where did this creativity and hands-on learning disappear? Do schools kill creativity? Check out this eye-opening TedTalk for an intriguing perspective. As you progressed throughout your formative years, the transition to memorization and teacher-centered learning occurred, and education has not been the same. After reading Kindergarten Play , I realized that the learning experiences in kindergarten were practical (Resnick, 2018). They taught one how to think critically and be creative with 21st-century skills . So, how do we change the model? Only one strategy comes to my mind to do this, the design thinking process (Plattner, n.d.). The five-phase model helps one ask a question to go through the steps to fi...

Let's Talk About Tech! As you grow up and learn new concepts in the world, you create memories from those experiences. Whether those memories are positive or negative, they may stick with you forever, and you will be able to share your adventures. As a teacher and graduate student, I have had experiences I can share and relate to with other students, teachers, or faculty. For me, this was participating in the Michigan State University Educational Technology Summit. We brainstormed applications and tools used in our classroom and graduate-level classes during a QuickFire activity . This information would be the content that we would present for the conference . We created categories and teams to discuss those topics. Well, for me, I was in the MSU Library resources group. I expressed my thoughts about using the library website with my partner. As a beginner at MSU's interworkings, I thought about how we would present the information. The design thinking process and QuickFire com...