Newbie teacher -- needs serious advice

[Attorney-Teacher2B]

:wowee: HELP! I'm an attorney who's pursuing a teaching licensure to teach middle school social studies, with the hope of full-time teaching sometime in the future. While I have my law degree (and bachelors in political science / international studies), I've only taken a few education classes, basically just the general ed. and developmental stuff. I have a lot of volunteer experience, its all at the elementary level.

Today, I was asked (on an emergencty basis) to substitute in 3 middle school social studies classes for the next 2 weeks. I will start on Monday.

The students are pretty good kids, at or above-grade level. The grade book says that I should start the following topics.

6th grade -- Ancient Rome (using Prentice Hall text, History of our World)

7th grade -- Ancient India & poss. begin Ancient China (same text above)

8th grade -- The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution (Glencoe's America is . . . textbook)

I have 2 weeks to teach them, as they need to be finished with the units by Dec. 21. Class periods are short -- 45 min. and may be shorter due to school holiday events. There are basically no lesson plans, other than a brief reference to covering the chapter during the week. I start on Monday and will have 3 other religion classes to prepare for in addition to the SS classes.

It seems that they are not used to much homework and are really behind in the textbook. Apparently the previous teacher spent most of her time talking about her travels, showing slides, and did little objective assessment. For example, one class has had only had 1 test in the last 10 weeks.

Sounds stupid, but here's one of my questions. When we're going over the material, do I spend most of my time lecturing about the topic, do I have them read the textbook silently during class or should we read it out loud and then engage in discussion and complete the review questions orally? I know this is really basic, but since I only have 2 weeks (it seems that they have a new permanent teacher coming in Jan., but if not, I may be asked to sub until the end of the year, if I don't mess up the next 2 weeks), I don't have time to plan projects and its feet to the fire, preparation-wise as I only have this weekend to bring myself up to speed on all the content.

I went in today to observe to see how the other substitute was handling material, but all she did was show a movie.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm really excited about this opportunity, but don't want to blow it either!
THANKS!

[Reita13]

Oops! Sorry, I totally read that post wrong! Message deleted!

[hweber]

My advice would be to read the text aloud, ask guided reading questions, and do questions at the end of the chapters as homework. For the constitution class - class project could be to create a class constitution to follow when the new teacher gets there include things like respect the teacher, etc. Ancient Rome - take a virtual tour of Rome with stops at Coliseum and other places. Ancient China is great - take a tour of the great wall.

[Brit]

the text is your first line of defence. If you have TIME for anything else, I'd go to hands-on. miniature models of important structures in ancient greece or india or china, mapping out locations of ancient sites on current maps -- kids could plan travel brochures describing a trip though the ancient sites, their history and what you would see today, that sort of thing.

However, with the time you have and the limited time to prep, I'd go to the textbook, read with the kids. Always better to have more than one modality (i.e., seeing and hearing the words), but just reading aloud together can become monotonous quickly. Try a few different reading strategies -- read to find out ______________ (you pose a question, kids need to read to find out the answer), read aloud in class, "wacky professor", where kids need to read 2 different sections, then teach a buddy what they've read with energy and expression, read and summarize, read and make notes....make sure they're accountable for the reading, but mix it up if you can -- AS MUCH AS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE. Don't do anything that doesn't feel right to you -- as a sub, having something bomb isn't the end of the world, but you're garanteed it'll bomb if you're not comfortable with the idea.

also, do make sure you discuss the material as you go. Ask SOME recall questions, but go for those higher order thinking questions most of the time -- WHY did they do it that way? HOW did that affect other things? How does that relate to other cultures? Did that lead to what happened next? Is it a causal chain of events or is it just coincidence? HOW is that similar or different to today/to what you expected?

[Attorney-Teacher2B]

Thank you all for the suggestions. I've spent most of the weekend with my head in all the books and feel like I have a decent handle on all the various subject matters. I've outlined some basic discussion questions to go with the readings. I've talked with the 2 other MS teachers (its a very small school) and bounced some ideas off of them. Given my academic background, they've also recommended that I give some book and lecture note-taking and test preparation tips. I also decided to assign a short written project, that way the incoming teacher will have some guideline as to their abilities so she can tailor her plans from there.

I just learned that the person they thought was coming in January, has declined the offer and many of the parents / fellow teachers are encouraging me to stay on, so we'll see what happens.

I'm so excited -- feel like its my FIRST day of school tomorrow! I mean, it is, but its just weird to have it in December!

Thanks again for all the advice. I'll let you know how it goes.

[muinteoir]

I can't be much help to you content-wise. I'm a science person. However, it sounds like you have a good handle on things. Checking with the other MS teachers is probably the best way to understand the way things ate done at that school. The effort you are putting into this leads me to believe you will have liitle difficulty.
Keep checking though, there are several Social Studies teachers on the board to bounce ideas off of, offer insight, and so on.

[SS Rocks!]

I would recommend getting the kids as involved in various activities. A full class of lecture or a full class of reading is generally too much. You could have them work in pairs or small groups in order to discover information for themselves. Also, if you have access to a computer lab, you could consider making a web quest (a web browsing activity where kids use specified websites to complete a task).

Here's an example of an activity I do with m 6th graders. I use a different text than the one you have but you could adapt the activity to your text. We read a section of our text about daily life in a civilization. Then they take what they learned to make a poster, postcard, or something of the sort. For example, when we study Greece, students write a post card to a friend explaining why Athens would be a great place to live. For Rome, we take what was learned about daily life to make a movie poster that explains what life was like in Rome.

As was mentioned before, regardless of what anyone says, make sure you are comfortable with any activity you choose to do.

I teach ancient world history, so if you have any specific questions, I'd be willing to try and answer them. I am by no means an expert! In the mean time, check out the following websites. You might find some information that is helpful.

http://mrdonn.org/ This site has information about all areas of history so it could help with your ancient world and US classes.

http://www.ancientindia.co.uk This site is from the British Museum. It has a lot of fascinating information. I find Hinduism and Buddhism to be the most fascinating topics from the Indian Subcontinent.

http://www.ancientchina.co.uk Another site from the British Museum. Pretty good info. Kids love learning about the Great Wall.

I wish you the best of luck! :clap: