Angela Morales
Dr. Smirnova
ED 5535
Native American Tribes CL Project Reflection
As a developing teacher, learning the essential skills, strategies, and methods is a crucial part to becoming the best teacher I can be. Throughout this lesson I have deepened my knowledge and understanding of cooperative learning. This is simply having students work together in groups to develop knowledge of a specific topic. However it is not as simple as it may seem. In fact, it is far more complex in nature. Students gain so much by working together and building their skills of leadership, respect, listening and so much more. They also learn the content by teaching themselves and then their classmates. Creating the groups is not just random, the teachers goal is to place students of different gender, race, abilities, and culture into groups. This particular activity that was done in class was the jigsaw activity, it is a cooperative lesson that can greatly benefit the student and the teacher. 
Jigsaw is an activity where the teacher breaks students typically in groups of five. Each team member is an essential piece to this activity and everyone must contribute to the learning. It does not allow for one student to become dominant over the others and the quiet student to take a back seat. Overall, Jigsaw is like a puzzle. There are many pieces to a puzzle, and in this case each student is a piece. You need every piece for the puzzle to come together. The teacher picks a specific topic, then the puzzle pieces (students) are assigned a specific topic within that. In this case our main topic was the history of Native American tribes. Each student within the group was assigned a tribe to master and learn about to teach their peers. Once the topics are given, the groups break off and each group member joins the members from the other groups with their topic. These groups are the mastery group. While I was in mine, me and my partner learned some new facts from each other. However, we were also able to think of ways to present our information to the group, along with what information we found to be most crucial. I became a master of my tribe and was ready to share my information. 
Content KnowledgeWhile in my mastery group I learned a lot about my own tribe, the Iroquouis. Particualry that they lived in my own state of New York!!!!! I learned a lot of content knowledge in regards to what they ate, how they lived, their culture, and so much more. Particulary, I learned about famous people within my tribe, some of which played essential roles in the lives of the Native Americans and maybe how we live today. I also learned about the dominance of the women in the Iroquouis tribe, unlike stereotypes, the women were in charge of the government. Once I got back into my main group I learned a lot of interesting details of the Muscogee, Tlingit, Lakota, and the Dine Indian tribes. I learned how they were similar to my own and how they differed so much. Going through each tribe increased my content knowledge, understanding, and interest in the history of the tribes. I learned things about the Native Americans that shocked me such as cannibalism and the famous singer Carrie Underwood being a descendent. I also learned about the differences in the clothing that they wore. It all seemed to stem from the fact that they live in different geographical locations. This of course also affected their housing situation; some could survive living in teepees, where others needed enclosed housing to keep out the cold. This shows how you can add geography into this lesson and how location influences lives. Their cultures were highly affected also by the geography and what resources were available to them in their environment. The Lakota tribe was very interesting to learn about. They were the only ones that had to constantly be on the go. They fed on and used the buffalo for everything; therefore they needed to follow them wherever they went. This also meant they needed housing that they could quickly put up and put down, the teepee. Overall, I gained a lot of content knowledge from this activity, my group all became masters of their topic and used their skills to teach us.
Pedagogical Knowledge
Practicing this activity has truly added to my pedagogical knowledge!!! Pedagogy is the art and science behind teaching. Learning how to make this activity work and be fun for the class takes skill from the teacher. Throughout the years of teaching, I will learn how to make this activity new and exciting for my students. I truly understand the science behind this activity. I see how lessons like Jigsaw helps students develop and how it can be beneficial for them. Working with my group has shown me a different way of teaching and has added to my pedagogical knowledge. Some of my peers taught using handouts from word processor, while others used different tactics. Each hand out was fun and vibrant, making it much more engaging. Pedagogy takes time and development; by having the opportunity to put these activities and strategies to use I have gained more of this knowledge.
Application to Classroom
If I were to make any modifications for a different grade, I would do it for grade three. I would simply decrease the amount of content that they had to master and present to their group. I would be sure to make students who would not normally work together group up. If I were directly using this lesson I would focus on one group at a time and then give each student a particular part such as food or religion. This would make it a lot more manageable for the students, but it would still allow them to increase their content knowledge and their collaboration skills.
National Standards:
U.S. History K-4
NSS-USH.K-4.1 Living and Working Together in Families and Communities, Now and Long Ago.
· Understands family life now and in the past, and family life in various places long ago.
Geography K-12:
NSS-G.K-12.4 Human Systems
Understand the characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth’s surface. ********This lesson helps the students understand the characteristics of the selected tribes, how they got around, and why they stayed where they did
Understand how the forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the division and control of Earth’s surface. *******This lesson helps students understand how the Europeans influenced the Native Americans way of life. The students learn about the struggles that they went through and why they live the way they do today.
NSS-G.K-12.6 The Uses of Geography
Understand how to apply geography to interpret the past. ************This is important because the students will develop an understanding of why the Native Americans did some of the things that they did. For example, depending on where they lived, determined what type of house that they built and what kind of clothes that they wore.
NYS Standards:
Standard 1: History of the United States and New York
use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York.
Standard 1, Key Idea 3
Key Idea 3: Study about the major social, political, economic, cultural, and religious developments in New York State and United States history involves learning about the important roles and contributions of individuals and groups.
Performance Indicators--Students will:
Elementary
- gather and organize information about the important accomplishments of individuals and groups, including Native American Indians, living in their neighborhoods and communities
Geography
Use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.
Standard 4, Key Idea 1
Key Idea 1: The study of economics requires an understanding of major economic concepts and systems, the principles of economic decision making, and the interdependence of economies and economic systems throughout the world.
Performance Indicators--Students will:
Elementary
- know some ways individuals and groups attempt to satisfy their basic needs and wants by utilizing scarce resources
Generalization of Concepts
Particularly this topic is easy to generalize because it has so many different aspects. It is not just discovering the history, but it is including the geography and how it affects the lives of the tribes. You can also include government into this lesson, they had a much different form of government, but it still existed. You can also generalize the jigsaw lesson, you can teach it in any subject area that you want.
Relationship to Teaching Geography
Geography is a major part of this lesson. For this project, students will need to have a good understanding of the different states being discussed. They will need to know the location of these states and even the climate so that they can truly understand why the Native Americans lived the way that they did. Knowledge of the states and climates would be a prerequisite for this assignment. When my group did this assignment, some of our generalizations involved the knowledge that we had of geography. We saw how each tribe adjusted to their environment. If we had not had prior knowledge of where the states were or if we didn’t know about the climates, we wouldn’t have made very good generalizations. That is why geography is a major part of this assignment!
Resources
National Standards obtained from:
NYS Standards obtained from: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/socst/socstand/soc13.html
No comments:
Post a Comment