Grade 8 Social Studies R Us

Found herein are the ideas, recommendations, strategies, and plans of Aaron, Amy, Colin, and Daniel for the challenges of Grade 8 Social Studies.

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Tips for teaching geography and social studies to students who are blind or visually impaired

useful strategies for teaching social studies to the blind and visually impaired.

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Helpful hints to help teachers teach the visually impaired.

Twelve Tips for classroom teachers in regards to teaching students who are visually impaired.

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What is education? Resources

Visually impaired children search an item on the internet and the item is created by a 3D printer for them to handle and explore.

really cool new piece of AT that allows for students who are visually impaired to gain an understanding of how various landmarks, animals, and buildings are shaped with the help of a 3D printer, and their sense on touch.

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Biography boxes are a lesson idea for students with visual impairments in which they use items associated with a given person to highlight important parts of their lives or characters.

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The Toughest Class You Will Ever Teach: 9 Tips for Engaging Middle School Students

Teaching little kids can be fun. They have energy and a fascination with the world that only comes from the innocence of childhood. Adult students, on the other hand, have a higher cognitive

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If there are problems constantly happening in your classroom, maybe you should as yourself if you as a teacher are handling the behavioural problems correctly! Here’s a list of things NOT to do as a teacher!

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Accountable for the World

While teaching students about the different countries involved in World War I, I gave them a blank map of Europe and asked them to colour the countries involved, label the major cities of each county and label some other items on the map as well. 

I gave the students artistic freedom, as long as they adhered to one simple rule: countries of the same alliance need to be coloured the same colour. I gave the students one class to do but found out later that perhaps they needed a little more time. As the maps kept coming in, I noticed some incorrect labeling, incorrect colours and some minor punctuation (not capitalizing the countries of major cities name). I quickly realized that these students may not have grasped the ideas i was trying to teach and so I devoted another class to let them improve on their work. I reprinted the maps and went over another map on the board, letting them know what some of the errors were. I gave them a choice: students could either redo the map and receive a better mark or they could not do the map and take the mark they had (I had given their maps back by this point). I explained to them that knowing these alliances would be important for the weeks to come, and that if they aren’t known soon, it could lead to some confusing questions. We spent the remainder of the second class (45 minutes or so) fixing up the maps. The marks were significantly better the second time around. By allowing them to review their mistakes, consciously fix them and be re-evaluated, the students were directly accountable for their grades. They could have easily said “no” and took the marks that had been given to them, but they chose to work harder and take responsibility. 

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Historia: Game-Based Learning for Middle School History

Middle school students learn social studies through Historia, a paper-based simulation game that incorporates a world cultures curriculum aligned to state standards.

This is a really cool way to teach Social Studies! This method can be applicable to both the junior and senior high level!

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Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves

Consider using autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance as practical classroom strategies to reinforce the intrinsic motivation students need for making the most of their learning.

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This Ring Reads Books And Magazines To The Blind

Scientists at MIT developed a device for the vision impaired to read with their pointer finger. And the protoype was made with a 3D printer...just like the one we'll have in the library August 11th - 21st! Source: HuffingtonPost.com

this device could help students with vision problems as well as students who struggle reading texts. The ring actually reads out the words, and can be connected to a set of headphones for optimal learning. 

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Here is a look in the life of someone who is visually impaired. This video just goes to show you how challenging it can be for our students in our classroom.

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http://www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/index.shtml

As teachers, we expect our student to be organized and accountable for keeping track of their work. The best way to encourage this is to model it; Serve as an organizational model for your students! Education World has provided a web source containing numerous templates for everything a teacher needs, separated into specific categories, from assessment and graphic organizers, to icebreaker and parent-teacher communication guides. These templates can help you to create a sound organizational system for your classroom, and help to show your students the benefits and advantages of being on top your game.

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The teacher of students with visual impairments is the central figure on the http://www.familyconnect.org/parentsite.asp?SectionID=72&TopicID=345 educational team for your child with a visual impairment. This is the professional who has expertise in how visual impairment affect your childs development and learning, as well as the strategies and tools that can help your child learn about the world, perform everyday activities, and participate in the general curriculum and other activities in school. Therefore, your child is likely to be working with the teacher of students with visual impairments on a day-to-day basis. He or she will probably serve as the coordinator of the educational team and as a resource for the other team members, including you. You may sometimes hear this teacher referred to as a vision teacher or by the abbreviation TVI.

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Field Trips = Motivation

Schools often offer field trips as a way to entice students to take interest in a certain particular field. What once was a simple field trip, such as bus trips to the GeoCentre on Signal Hill, has now escalated into more grandeur excursions. When I was in high school, the World History 3201 class was given the opportunity to travel to Germany to divulge into the history of World War 2. They were able to explore concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Berkenau, and explore some of the historical sites that they learned about in classes. This was a great opportunity for the students to gain more knowledge on the subject, as well the trip alone provided them with the opportunity to travel half-way across the world with their friends and teachers. Not only was the trip full of information and facts, but it was also fun and exciting. It is our goal as teachers to make learning fun, and having these great opportunities available and manageable, allow just that. Not every student or family will have the financial funds to send their son or daughter to Germany for 10 days, so a fundraising method that my teachers implemented was that when the students were in tenth grade, the trip was decided upon for their grade twelve year. This allowed time for families to save money, and for students to work and fundraise their trip. There were so many fundraisers held by students over the three year period such as bake sales, candy grams, and putting off school dances, that there were some students who actually paid off their entire trip through these fundraising activities.

Although the expenses may be daunting to students and parents, if the students are able to commit to fundraising over the three year period, the cost of the trip should be cut greatly.

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Communication is vital is the classroom. We need to make our expectations clear, and we need to ensure that students know what is coming next in our lesson plans so they are prepared to learn and participate. We know that explicit instruction, advance organizers and information are very helpful to our students; for projects and assignments, do up an in-depth outline of what the students need to do and how they will be graded. Take this Heritage Fair outline, used in my Grade 8 classes during my internship, as an example. In this outline (which you should go though in detail with your class), students are clearly told what hey need to do (such as creating visual and written components), things they need to be aware of (such as time frame and theme), information on how they will be graded (specific project components as well as rubrics are included), and other critical points that students need to be aware of (like permission forms and due dates). By communicating your expectations in explicit ways, such as creating a detailed project sheet, you know that you have sufficiently informed your students on what to do and how to proceed. You should go through these outlines with the class, and as you do, questions can be answered as you go, and any confusion can be cleared up before the assignment begins. 

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Rubrics, Rubrics Everywhere!

When I create an assignment, I always create a rubric to go along with this. While teaching Grade 8 Social Studies, I asked students to create a video game cover about a video game that takes place during World War I. This was part of an assignment from which students had to pick 3 of 9 smaller assignments to complete. Out of the 8 groups of 2-3 students, 7 groups picked to do the video game cover. 

When I passed out the major assignment (that is, a small booklet with all 9 of the assignments in it) every assignment had its own rubric. There were clear expectations communicated to the students before they had to choose. For this particular sub-assignment, I asked students to include certain items that are part of a typical video game cover. However, since the video game had take place during World War I, the cover also needed to include accurate depictions of items such as tanks, uniforms, weaponry and landscapes. 

By communicating my clear expectations, students had fun and were very successful this this particular assignment. Upon reviewing the marks and completed rubric, I noticed that none of the groups got below 90%. I gave the students the rubric when the assignment was passed out, and ensured that they used it a check list of sorts. This way they were able to communicate what I had asked of them, which resulted in some great marks and very artistic video game covers.