Walk past my room on any given day and you'll see students sprawled about, moving, collaborating, and essentially, LEARNING. It's loud and chaotic, but believe me, there is a method to the madness.
In fact, I encourage my students to become sort of "mad scientists" in social studies because that's what it's all about! Questioning.....Hypothesizing...Researching and Testing...And Again..And Again... until a Conclusion is reached.
In this case, students learned about an essential GEOGRAPHY tool used to answer the question any professional geographer would ask: "Where is it located?" And that is none other than our friends Mr. Longitude and Ms. Latitude.
First I transformed my room into a gridded map...a coordinate plane of sorts and let the students roam free. They had to determine the correct placement of each point with the help of only an atlas and themselves.
Later, we explored various locations around the globe using 3-D Virtual Reality! My kids were AMAZED at what they could see with a simple app called Google Street View and a handy dandy Cardboard Viewer. (Photos to come)
Well, not really. But we do play a lot of games. In fact, I make it a point to integrate gaming with technology as much as possible. When I do that, students tend to absorb the content at a greater concentration than if they had not been this engaged in learning. And by the way, it's FUN!
Here's a snapshot of the fun.
Before every unit test, we play a FUN FUN game of Kahoot. My kids LOVE it! They were so grateful. One of my precious students even told me, "Thank you so much for taking the time to make us a Kahoot...because I tried to make one before and it took FOREVER." *Hugs*
My 7th period got to be the guinea pigs of a new game I found to help with vocabulary. Quizlet LIVE. They LOVED it! Special thanks to my parent Mrs. Esaili who recommended it!
Watch this 4 minute video to learn how to best support your student in knowing what they are learning everyday in Social Studies. Their ISN is the essential tool for success in my class.
I am an 11th year educator at Red Oak ISD. I love expanding my students' views beyond the geographic boundaries of their city, state and country. The world is big! But with the advancement of technology we are definitely a global society where the saying the old saying "It's a small world after all" is becoming more and more evident every day. I see it as my mission, duty, and purpose to prepare our youth to be competitive contributors to a world that is vastly different than what we were used to in the olden days!
Warning: I'm not like the teacher you had when you and I were kids. I don't follow a textbook and I don't give out worksheets for homework. In my class, we are project and research based and I expect my students to question, explore, find answers on their own, create, share, and publish their findings while I facilitate that process. My class is designed for the 21st century learner and hopefully I will be able to teach them more than just geography and world cultures, but that they will learn skills necessary to be able to "learn how to learn", to grow to be able to become leaders and producers, not just consumers.
You can learn more about me and how I teach in this interview I did last year:
Surprisingly to many of my students, I also have a personal life.
I have been a parent for two decades now raising two daughters (20 and 4) so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about kids.
Jaksyn and Jasmine
I love to travel with my husband!
Our trip to the Middle East was fantastic! I can't wait to go again!
I'm a pageant coach.
Me with one of my pageant clients who just won her state pageant!
I also play the piano at church where I am the youth choir director. I've been doing that for about 20 years.
I have a Master's degree in education. And I love teaching!
Me, my parents and my sister at our graduation from Lamar University
