About the Author

A little about me:

My name is Rebecca Waltz. On a more personal note, Im a true blue Nevadan. I was raised (not born) in Las Vegas, Nevada. After receiving the Millennium, I attended UNR in Reno, Nevada and moved to Carson City shortly after graduation. I married by dearest friend in 2011 and began the life changing goal of becoming a teacher in 2013. I recently became a substitute in the Carson City School District (which like Clark County is also shortened CCSD). When Im not subbing or studying, I am usually drawing, reading, or gaming with family and friends. I received my Bachelors of Science for the School of Business in Information Systems with a minor in Economic ade), a judicial court, and a police station (hall monitors). I never remember being bored in elementary school grades 3-5. s in 2008 from the University of Nevada-Reno. After realizing that I wasnt happy with my chosen career, my husband and I decided to embark to the journey of getting me certified to be an elementary teacher after a great deal of soul searching. I am cu rrently enrolled in NSCs Post-Baccalaureate Elementary Education program. If these last five courses and the Praxis II tests go well, I hope to be student teaching in the Fall of 2014. UPDATE: (4/1/2014): I recently passed the Praxis II and completed my student teaching application for Fall 2014! What do you think of when you hear the words "social studies"? When I think of the words social studies, I think about everything that isnt Math and Grammar. It was history, government, culture studies, people, places, technology, economics, science, innovations, discoveries, civics, and time. Sometimes it is easier to identify what things arent social studies rather than try to define what is. Social studies was an exploration of the world and would allow me to place understanding on a previously unknown place, person, thing or even and thereby creating a greater depth of knowledge to learn about myself. Describe your elementary school. I attended a few elementary schools, but I was at Walther E. Jacobsen Elementary School in Las Vegas Nevada for grades 3-5. Every day I walked down Cimarron to Boseck to school. Its been almost twenty

years since I was in Elementary school and I dont have an class photos available to count, but I would guess about 20-25. I remember 4-6 groups of tables of four or six throughout the years. I feel that our area was probably what is considered Middle Class. I dont remember there being many apartment complexes at the time. A lot of the land was still undeveloped while I was in school there, but most of it has been developed into housing and parks since I moved away. I dont remember our classrooms being very diverse at all, but that may be due to the fact that I just dont remember. What do you remember from your elementary school social studies experiences? Did you read from textbooks and take notes? I remember reading articles that looked like they were scanned from a textbook a few times. However, I dont recall learning from textbooks at all during elementary school. My first memory of using textbooks was in middle school. Did you answer questions at the end of the chapter? In third and fifth grade, I remember doing a lot of projects, trivia games, and thinking maps. I remember photocopies of articles with questions at the end. My third grade teacher would copy those questions of the first page and we would read those together first. Did you go on field trips? If so, where did you go? I loved going on field trips in Las Vegas. Where didnt we go in elementary school? I remember going to Old Mormon Fort, Red Rock Canyon Conservation Center, Museum of Fine Art, Nellis Airforce Base, Firehouses, Natural History Museum, Lake Mead, the Courthouse, and the Nevada State Railroad Museum. Did you do any projects? If so, what was the project? Elementary school was all about projects. Its been almost 20 years, but I will never forget the day my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Barnes, took a roll of duct tape and divided the class in half, then announced that we were at war. We became soldiers in the civil war and our table groups were our regiments. We had generals and even a spy! We would win battles by earning points by doing any 20 of the project from our project list, turning in our homework, and good behavior. The project list would have corresponding packets to choose from that included creating autobiographies about important people (which we could write, act, or model), making hardtack, sewing our own flags, writing a solider journal, creating a war timeline, ect. We had the same kind of full emersion when we learned about the revolutionary war and pioneers. If there was any project that could be done, we did it because we were living the social science. I remember singing a LOT to other classes as part of our projects. I dont mean holiday songs. I still can sing all the names of the presidents, capital and states, and Home Means Nevada. The year we learned state capitals, initials, and spellings, we also painted a giant United States on our black top. Our classrooms were businesses and there was a school wide currency. Twice a year, there was the Jacobsen Fair and all businesses were open. You even had to buy a business license and sign a contract if you wanted our own business outside your classroom. In third grade, our class ran a publishing house. In fourth grade, our class was the school newspaper. In fifth grade, we were a karaoke/ recording studio. Our elementary school had a school government (I think I was treasurer in fifth grade).

What do you want to learn or improve in this class? I want to learn to be the teach social studies with my students being engaged 90 - 100% of the time. Even if I have to read an article, I want to be able to get them excited or connect with the things they read. I once subbed a fourth grade class where we read an article about Malala and they were so excited to ask about everything the article didn't explain. I don't know if it was the class or the way I opened up discussion, but I would like to know how to get that same enthusiasm again. I want to have them ask WHY and be motivated to research something because something we talked about them motivated them. Im hoping to find ways to meet the ELA standards and benchmarks, but at the same time create an atmosphere of curiosity. Specifically, I would like to learn more about how to write a better lesson plan for social studies. Aside from basic art projects, textbook reading and speech memorization, I would like to know how to plan lessons that allow my students to make a connection to the content and derive their own meaning from it.