Student teaching world history?

okay, here my situtation...





i am in my last year of school and i just started student teaching. i will student teach until the end of april and then will graduate in may. i am assigned to a 10th grade world history class and my supervising teacher is a man who has been teaching for 34 years and he is counting the days until he will be retiring (96 days).





anyway, i just started on friday and already i am very nervous. the teacher i am working with sits at his desk and lectures to the students. he said he sometimes gives them a worksheet full of terms that they can use to follow along while he lectures. he said in all 34 years that he has been a teacher, he has never touched a computer and he plans to keep it that way. he doesn't do group work or hands on activities. however, he told me i can try anything i want and do anything i want and he wants me to use this experience to try everything possible.

Student teaching world history?
I've been teaching for 31 years, and hardly ever lecture (although I'm not in social studies) I also tend to write lesson plans that just have the topic of the week, because I KNOW what activities go with that topic, and I vary them from class to class and year to year depending on the personality of the class.


Lecture is the absolutely worst way to teach. No one learns anything. If he doesn't have a curriculum to follow, grab the textbook. (Does he have a final exam you can look at?) Decide what the 'big ideas' are that you are going to cover. What are the essential questions? Decide what your students should know and be able to do at the end of a day, week, chapter, unit. You will probably want to start with two-three days.


Project based work may be a good start: Lecture some (10 minutes, standing, moving around the room, using visuals--try lecturing for five minutes, ask the students to share what they learned with a partner, and come up with something they want to know next. Ask a few pairs to share with class. Keep track of what they want to know next.) Then have them read something on the topic (text, magazine article, actual document from the era), or show a 3-5 minute video clip (full class movies are as deadly as lecture). Then assign project as HW. (diary entry from point of view of Lewis, Clark, Sacagwea--US history, advertising brochure to make people move to US. I'm more familiar with US history, but the ideas are the same.)


For the first project I'd definitely make it individual or partner. Groups are difficult to manage. Day two would be research in library or in lab to finish project ideas, day three work day? Day four present project? (depends on how involved the project is.)


Make sure to write a rubric for grading the project before you assign it (rubistar.com is good). Discuss with your cooperating teacher what state standards you will meet with your project. Social studies generally has GOBS of state standards. Check your state DOE website and you can download them if your cooperating teacher doesn't have a file folder with them.


You really have a wonderful chance to experiment with more methods than straight lecture, so take the opportunity.


And take time for yourself. student teaching is in many ways more stressful than teaching!
Reply:I just started teaching and I can relate to your problem. Look at your long term goals first. Are you going to cover a specific event or a period in time? Then break it down, know how long you have to cover the topic in class and move on from there.


At first you may feel more comfortable if you write out lecture notes (it can be intimidating standing in from of a group of critical students) or you could try using power point or other overheads. Although the power point will take a while to put together you can ad links or at the very least pictures so the students can get visuals.


Another tactic to try would be to have class debates that way the students will have to research the topic and they will feel a larger sense of ownership and the most important is that they will retain the information longer.





Hope this helps and good luck with the rest of your student teaching.
Reply:Well, first, propose to him how YOU would do it. As a future history teacher also, this is how I plan on doing it.





Come up with year-end goals for the students. What material should they know? Let's say, they need to be voiced in six major topics areas (Depending on your reach of world history, they could be... Ancient History, Renaissance and Englightenment, Revolutionary Era (1770s-1840s), Pre-War, WWI and WWII, Contemporary History)





Divide up the year into six. That would give 29 days for each topic, allowing for five days of final exam review at the end and then a day of final exam.





If these are 10th graders, the end of those 29 days should include two review days and then a test day. So, each unit has 26 days of instruction, groupwork and maybe quizzes, 2 days of review, and 1 day for a test on the topic.





So if you have 26 days to teach them each of the six topics. Give an extra day of fluff room. So you have 25ish days.





Now write the tests. Everything, following your text book and syllabus, of the topic should be included there. Then, build a unit outline based off of the test. Divide your time up between that.





Now that you've narrowed it down to each day, write daily lesson plans as to how you're going to accomplish that portion of the material for that day.





That's how I've done it, and my teacher assistantship has shown me that in a history environment, structure is very important. Throw in movies, group projects and whatnot, but keep in mind that at the end of your unit, they need to function in all tasks.