Social Studies Links:
After finishing our Dragonfly Pond activity, we were asked to reflect. This is what I wrote in my reflection:
In
the beginning of this assignment, the expectations of Dragonfly Pond were
unclear. As time progressed I concluded that the expectations were supposed to
be about helping us experience an activity that introduces students to the
concept of community. With community comes so many different aspects and this
activity would encourage students to see and experience those types of aspects.
For example, the students would be introduced to civic responsibility,
compromise, patriotism, etc. The challenges I faced in completing this
assignment would be the lack of effective communication. In the beginning, it
was unclear how we were going to work together with the other class to build
Dragonfly Pond. With that obstacle in the way, we tried to make a compromise,
but even then, it felt that we were being treated unfairly by not having any
say in the distribution of landmarks. The reason this was unfair, is simply
because there was no way for all of us to sit down together and discuss our
ideas and thoughts to make decisions together. Another challenge I faced was
seeing the importance of actually building the pond ourselves. I do believe
this would be a great activity for elementary students because it allows them
to work with their hands, collaborate, and gain that sense of community.
However, I felt that it was not necessary for so much of our class time to be
spent on figuring this assignment out and actually making all the pieces to go
on Dragonfly Pond.
Some strategies that led to the
completion of this project include effective communication and collaboration.
What I mean by that is, communication is so important in general, but
especially when working together as a team to achieve a specific goal. In the
beginning, when it was believed to have a combined city with the other class,
communication was not very effective; therefore we struggled with the
understanding of our expectations and with deciding what should be done next.
The strategy that led to effective communication was when the other class made
an attempt to have written communication. This was a great idea and I believe
it would have worked, if we had continued to have a combined town of Dragonfly
Pond. When we had decided to build our own separate city, our next strategy was
collaboration. We made a collaborative decision to stay separate from the other
class so that we could effectively use our time to accomplish this assignment.
We discussed the best decisions on how and where to place certain landmarks and
collaborated over different ideas set forth.
One approach from our “Elementary Social
Studies A Practical Guide” textbook is child-centered approach. I believe that
our Dragonfly Pond activity was very child-centered for a number of reasons.
First, every decision made was made by the students participating in the
activity. Second, it was a hands-on activity that allowed every student to have
a responsibility to make their own home and a type of business. Lastly, I feel
that it was a child-centered approach because of the way students were allowed
to have the freedom to make those decisions and discuss the results. For those
reasons, this assignment allowed students to play a large role in making
Dragonfly Pond, thus engaging them in a process where communication ad
reflection played a key role. This assignment allowed each student to think
about where they wanted to live on Dragonfly Pond and where their community
should go all for the main goal of building a safe and effective community.
Child-centered approach is all about engaging students based on their interests
and I believe that students can find many ways to be interested in this type of
assignment, whether they are kinesthetic learners, they like art, they like
working as a group, etc. This activity is an opportunity to engage students in
learning first hand what it is like to have a voice and responsibilities in a
community.
As citizens of a community it is our
responsibility to play a part in it. What I mean by that is, everyone has a
voice that should be heard when regarding issues that affect their community.
In order to have a voice, we have a responsibility to stay informed of the
different issues going on and respect the beliefs and opinions of others in the
community. Next to playing a part in decision-making, it is our responsibility
to keep our community safe. For example, abide by the laws of out nation and
our local communities.
Whether or not our educational
institutions are preparing students for a life of engaged, democratic
citizenship comes down to the individual schools and classrooms. I say this
because every school is so different from the next. I believe that this should
be the goal of all schools, but I have seen some schools and/or classrooms who
don’t prepare students for life as responsible citizens. That may sound harsh,
but some schools’ main focus is teaching to “the test”. When school’s
transitioned to teaching just so their students pass the standardized tests,
they lost that time to engage students into activities for preparing them to be
responsible young citizens. That being said, not all schools are unsuccessful
in doing both. I have seen schools that have a great school community followed
by teachers who create an effective classroom community where efforts are made
to teach students responsibility as citizens. This is why it all comes down to
the individual school and/or classroom where they may or may not make an effort
to reach this goal. When I become a
teacher I would help my students become more civically engaged by holding two
classroom meetings everyday. One meeting in the morning where we can talk and
discuss the plan for the day and one at the end of the day so that we can talk
about what went well and what did not. I would allow the students to share
their thoughts and ideas, allowing their voices to be heard. I would also
prepare students for responsibilities by rotating students on the classroom
responsibilities, like handing out assignments, putting assignments in the
students’ mailboxes, checking to make sure floors are clean at the end of the
day, etc. I would also make sure to include activities into the classroom that
encourage communication and collaboration amongst my students. This will help
prepare students for when they need communication and collaboration skills in
the future, like when employed with a company. As a teacher, I will be a
forever learner, so there will be ideas and activities that I will learn along
the way that I can use to help prepare my students to be engaged, responsible
citizens.
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