REFLECTIONS

A large part of social studies education is the study of people, places, and environments. Whenever I am planning a lesson, I make sure to take into consideration people, places, and environment.

Like stated previously, it is difficult to plan a lesson with out taking people, places, and environments into consideration.  When I planned for a lesson on the Pacific Theater of War, I made sure to incorporate where this theater was located and the people who were involved.  I made sure to incorporate a map into the lesson so that students would be able to visualize the Pacific Theater.  I find it very important to use maps when planning lessons.  Many times teachers have a tendency to assume students know where a place is.  However, I have found during my student teaching experience that many times students need the maps just to visualize the location.

The use of maps really helped with the implementation of this lesson.  Cooperative learning was the main teaching tool used; however, I used maps to introduce the topic.  When first presented with the Pacific Theater, most of the students really did not understand where this was located.  I placed the map on the overhead and it seemed that light bulbs started to go on in the students’ heads.  It is not that the students did not know where the pacific theater was; they were just having trouble visualizing the location.
I feel that I was very successful demonstrating where the Pacific Theater was located.  It really helped out when the class was involved in the cooperative learning activity because I could use the map to show them exactly where the battle was that they were researching.  The students really seemed to appreciate the fact that I used maps to help teach about the Pacific Theater.

In the future, I will continue to concern myself with people, places, and environments.  Like I have state previously, I really like to use maps to help teach lessons.  There is so much that a teacher can do with a map when used properly.  As a visual learner, I know that maps really help to me to learn better.  This theme is very important to the social studies and social studies education and is an area that cannot be ignored.