10 Global Teaching Methods
1. I think it’s crucial for each student in every classroom to feel that they belong there and are welcomes. As a part of a classroom decoration, a large world map will be placed on the wall and during the first week of school, students will be given an arrow where they will put their name and a picture of themselves on it. After they will then place that arrow pointing to the place where either their immediate or distant family is from. For example, although my parents live in Apex I could decide to put my arrow pointing towards Ireland because a lot of my family is from there. This would allow students to visually see that everyone is from different places in the world but we all belong to one community.
2. One of the most difficult challenges I have personally been struggling with is ordering food. What I have found to be the most challenging is not the vocabulary of food on the menu, but having a conversation with the waiter about what you want/don’t want on your food. There has been a few times were I had no idea what the waiter was going to bring out after I had ordered. This experience helped me develop a strategy of teaching students how to order food in a restaurant, possibly in a different language. I would like to teach different vocabulary words and phrases to my future students and would like for them to actually use them in a real-life situation. I feel that learning is not as powerful as using what you have learned outside the classroom.
3. When students are learning new vocabulary it can be very difficult for them to remember. Vocabulary does not always mean definitions but it can be important people in history, dates, formulas, etc. One technique I have found to be helpful is creating flashcards with the vocabulary word accompanied by a picture of the word on one side and on the other side having the first letter of the vocabulary word. Alterations can be made to this such as instead of having the word with the picture; you could have a few facts. The students would then study the cards with a partner (or by themselves) and quiz each other after they have studied. Based on how they performed will determine how much more they need to study and what they need more help learning.
4. At the school I student taught at this semester the teachers greeted their students each morning with a handshake, the traditional American greeting. I personally have not been introduced to any other greeting other than a hug until I left the United States and came to Brazil. Here in Brazil everyone greets one another with a small peck on the cheek. I thoughts about combining what the school does every morning and what I have learned here and greet students differently either each week or every other week. Based on what greeting will determine what country we could be briefly learning about. I thought that this would be a great teaching strategy to teach students about something that we all have in common but do it differently.
5. All around the world, different countries have different currencies with different values. A great way for students to learn about the world is to do activities dealing with money. One activity could be to take the US dollar and find its equivalences in other countries and figure out what you could buy with it. This could give the students some sort of idea of how much things cost and the value of a US dollar.
6. In North Carolina, farmers are only able to grow certain foods around certain parts of the year because of the weather and rainfall. This causes the price of food to increase and decrease depending on whether the certain type of food is in season or not. However, in other parts of the world that are usually hot all year around, they do not have this issue. An activity that students could do is to compile a list of at least 10 fruits or vegetables and see how much they are currently at a US grocery store and compare them to another warmer country.
7. Students do not usually watch the news or read the newspaper and so the only news they get about or world is what they see on television or what they hear from their parents or peers. It is our job as the teacher to educate children about what is currently going on in our world and by using current events in the classroom. I’ve seen this done several ways in an elementary school classroom. The way I would go about doing this is to choose an event in a country other than the United States that could be used in another subject other than social studies. By using different subjects, various interdisciplinary activities can be planned and the students can interpret the news and create their own meaning from it.
8. With the increase in technology the possibility are endless with teaching our students about globalization. One of the simplest yet effective ways of doing these is video conferencing another school. I have seen how much children get involved with video conferences and feel that it would really benefit all the children involved. These conferences could include schools within the same city, state, or country but would ideally occur outside of the United States. Students could brainstorm questions and ask the students in the other classroom like they’re having a face-to-face conversation. These face-to-face conversations would be more meaningful than reading about the school systems in that area because the students are experiencing learning first hand.
9. This semester I taught my students about the Engineer Design Process (EDP), STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics), and the importance they both have on our world today. Students should realize that how our world is today was not how it’s always been and it is always changing. Another powerful realization is that the types of technology and scientific discoveries made in the United States are not the same in other parts of the world. Some countries are further ahead with these discoveries and some are not. The world we wake up to tomorrow is different than the one we lived in yesterday.
10. Since I have taught my students about the EDP and how scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technicians are all working together to make our world better I want my students to feel that they can make the world better too. As another activity, I would like my students to choose a global issue and use the EDP (maybe just the planning steps) to try and come up with a solution to help solve the issue. Students need to know that change happens in this world when people want it to occur. That change can be for the good or for the worse and I want them to know that they have the ability to create changes in our world to make it a better place. They will only know this by learning about the world we live in and brainstorming ways to make our world better.
2. One of the most difficult challenges I have personally been struggling with is ordering food. What I have found to be the most challenging is not the vocabulary of food on the menu, but having a conversation with the waiter about what you want/don’t want on your food. There has been a few times were I had no idea what the waiter was going to bring out after I had ordered. This experience helped me develop a strategy of teaching students how to order food in a restaurant, possibly in a different language. I would like to teach different vocabulary words and phrases to my future students and would like for them to actually use them in a real-life situation. I feel that learning is not as powerful as using what you have learned outside the classroom.
3. When students are learning new vocabulary it can be very difficult for them to remember. Vocabulary does not always mean definitions but it can be important people in history, dates, formulas, etc. One technique I have found to be helpful is creating flashcards with the vocabulary word accompanied by a picture of the word on one side and on the other side having the first letter of the vocabulary word. Alterations can be made to this such as instead of having the word with the picture; you could have a few facts. The students would then study the cards with a partner (or by themselves) and quiz each other after they have studied. Based on how they performed will determine how much more they need to study and what they need more help learning.
4. At the school I student taught at this semester the teachers greeted their students each morning with a handshake, the traditional American greeting. I personally have not been introduced to any other greeting other than a hug until I left the United States and came to Brazil. Here in Brazil everyone greets one another with a small peck on the cheek. I thoughts about combining what the school does every morning and what I have learned here and greet students differently either each week or every other week. Based on what greeting will determine what country we could be briefly learning about. I thought that this would be a great teaching strategy to teach students about something that we all have in common but do it differently.
5. All around the world, different countries have different currencies with different values. A great way for students to learn about the world is to do activities dealing with money. One activity could be to take the US dollar and find its equivalences in other countries and figure out what you could buy with it. This could give the students some sort of idea of how much things cost and the value of a US dollar.
6. In North Carolina, farmers are only able to grow certain foods around certain parts of the year because of the weather and rainfall. This causes the price of food to increase and decrease depending on whether the certain type of food is in season or not. However, in other parts of the world that are usually hot all year around, they do not have this issue. An activity that students could do is to compile a list of at least 10 fruits or vegetables and see how much they are currently at a US grocery store and compare them to another warmer country.
7. Students do not usually watch the news or read the newspaper and so the only news they get about or world is what they see on television or what they hear from their parents or peers. It is our job as the teacher to educate children about what is currently going on in our world and by using current events in the classroom. I’ve seen this done several ways in an elementary school classroom. The way I would go about doing this is to choose an event in a country other than the United States that could be used in another subject other than social studies. By using different subjects, various interdisciplinary activities can be planned and the students can interpret the news and create their own meaning from it.
8. With the increase in technology the possibility are endless with teaching our students about globalization. One of the simplest yet effective ways of doing these is video conferencing another school. I have seen how much children get involved with video conferences and feel that it would really benefit all the children involved. These conferences could include schools within the same city, state, or country but would ideally occur outside of the United States. Students could brainstorm questions and ask the students in the other classroom like they’re having a face-to-face conversation. These face-to-face conversations would be more meaningful than reading about the school systems in that area because the students are experiencing learning first hand.
9. This semester I taught my students about the Engineer Design Process (EDP), STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics), and the importance they both have on our world today. Students should realize that how our world is today was not how it’s always been and it is always changing. Another powerful realization is that the types of technology and scientific discoveries made in the United States are not the same in other parts of the world. Some countries are further ahead with these discoveries and some are not. The world we wake up to tomorrow is different than the one we lived in yesterday.
10. Since I have taught my students about the EDP and how scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technicians are all working together to make our world better I want my students to feel that they can make the world better too. As another activity, I would like my students to choose a global issue and use the EDP (maybe just the planning steps) to try and come up with a solution to help solve the issue. Students need to know that change happens in this world when people want it to occur. That change can be for the good or for the worse and I want them to know that they have the ability to create changes in our world to make it a better place. They will only know this by learning about the world we live in and brainstorming ways to make our world better.
Targeted Reading Intervention (T.R.I.)
I was taught how to use T.R.I. in one of my elementary courses and I have used this manual along with the letter tiles during guided reading lessons. It is a great way for students to learn the different vowel sounds in the English language. I have used it over the course of student teaching and have seen how effective it is teach students the different vowel sounds, different levels of word work, how to blend unknown words, and chunk larger words into syllables. Because of the different features this tool offers, it is a huge advocate for differentiation.
S.T.E.M. Notebooks
Over the course of my student teaching experience at A.B. Combs Elementary, I introduced to the students what STEM means and how we use it in the real world. In order to get a real feel for what STEM is and how engineers, scientists, technicians, and mathematicians use it, a unit plan was designed and implemented. (Further descriptions of these can be found under the tab, Student Teaching in Raleigh.) Below are samples of some students' STEM notebooks over the course of the unit, Balance and Motion.
Station OrganizationIn any classroom it is essential that organization is a top priority. For example, in Mrs. Catherwood's classroom, it is a castle themed room. The math stations have different categories that each have a letter. All the letters together spell the acronym CASTLE (see middle picture). This allows the students to have more responsibilities in the classroom.
Another aspect of organization is where supplies is kept for students to find. In the far right picture, buckets are labeled with words and pictures of the supplies they contain. Students are able to locate supplies quickly as well as put back appropriately. |