Reading 6 Looping Sketchbook

Primary sources are helpful for students to understand a concept especially when they have pictures such at it mentions in the article that talks about kindergartners. Personally, as I am student teacher in a kindergarten classroom, I find this really effective as it helps them know what they are investigating and looking at. When students are able to observe things and have things by hand, it helps them be more engaged in what they are doing as well as having crayons for them to use to label and circle. They work more effectively and their is no disruptions or having students be distracted talking about other things. As it mentions in the article, “In these activities, students engaged far more readily with historical artifacts when the objects were physically in their hands.” (Savage, A, Wesson, S. (2016) What makes you think that? Kindergarten Students analyze primary sources from the library of Congress.) In general, when I have readings in hand, it helps me to highlight the important words or phrases, take notes, etc. If children feel it useful and they feel they are learning from it, they are going to feel great of their achievement of understanding the concept.

Reading 5 Looping Sketchbook

As I went through my school years until high school, I had a different view of who Christopher Columbus was. “The aim was clear: slaves and gold.” (Zinn, H., & Stefoff, R. (2009). A young people’s history of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror. New York: Seven Stories Press.) I was always told that he was the one that discovered America and he was looking for gold, but I did not know the fact that he was killing the Indians because he wanted them to find and give them the gold and eventually he took them as slaves. I was never told that he killed the people who he thought they were from India. A misconception I had before was that I thought he had landed in the United States, but it was at the Bahamas which is considered the Americas. A map would be useful to show students where exactly he landed, even though that doesn’t take away the fact of what he did to innocent people just for the greed of gold. Today, we are in a new world where everything is different. We did used to have slavery, but that’s something that changed with time with the help of people who wanted to change the world. Now is more of crimes that we see that it targets anyone. We can say that there might be people who are greedy and do the things the right way, or they just steal to make it easier for them.

Reading 4 Looping Sketchbook

 “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above. “- Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967  

The reading of Black Ants and Buddhist had me thinking about ways to present the content of slavery that won’t hurt how the kids view it. I feel that this topic might be a little hard to teach given that we want them to know how slavery is, but for them to not have the right concept or view of it. Before teaching this content, it would be best as for the teacher to learn it as well and know how to make students learn. The quote above made me realize of how some people felt about the things going on in our country and how they wanted America to be. Even though slavery was abolished at the time this was written, things were not going well, and some people were having a hard time to survive and keep going with their lives without judging. Even until now, there is a lot going in the United States with our president as well as many crimes going on in the world.

(“12 Poems to Read for Black History Month.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 3 Feb. 2017, www.poets.org/poetsorg/12-poems-read-black-history-month)