Since I have done my student teaching, I have found my thinking has changed a bit. I no longer think about things as that student who is just going through the motions for class. I find myself walking around and looking at things and thinking, “Wow, that would be great for my class!” or “Ooh, I should take a picture of that to use in a presentation.” Many things are a teachable moment (This is why I love social studies, so broad). The only problem is….I don’t have a classroom. I have avoided buying anything unless I need it to spruce up my portfolio (That is another post altogether @_@).
I spent my summer looking at books to try to build a repertoire of lesson ideas and projects. Great idea, right? Seems I had my work cut out for me. First, the problem with not having a position is you can’t really narrow it down to one subject. I could be teaching American history, which tends to be divided into two courses, or European studies, throw in some geography and civics and the books are endless. Another issue I came across is age appropriateness. High schoolers have a higher reading level that the middle school children and yet some material I got was a bit advanced for even the older children. Not all these books had an age level conveniently listed on the cover and even some of the ones provided by Amazon made me do a double take. Then when I got these books I was torn between some books that had a great outline of information but had projects in them that were so juvenile and irrelevant it made me wonder. Yes, a toy drum resembling those used in colonial times is fun to make but…what does that teach the child. The most annoying problem was I would find these great books online, cheer when I saw them listed in the library catalog, and then go to request them…just to find the library had no copies. WHY would you list something if you had no copies?! I would much rather have it not in the catalog at all rather than giving me false hope. Despite these trials I found a few good ideas that I would like to try out and have added one or two (dozen) books to my wish list.
Ms. TeacherM'am's Teaching Tidbits 