Learning Processes Blog #2

Well, this time I actually HAVE the Takaki book so that's a definite improvement! As I look through my book I have found it interesting to see what I have highlighted. Half of the things I have marked are things I didn't know before and was interested to learn about. The other half are things I just liked...either I liked the way the author stated something or really agreed with an opinion he had. For example, in Chapter 2 one of the things I highlighted was on page 47: "In blaming the Indians for their own decline, Jefferson insisted that the transfer of Indian lands to whites had been done fairly and legally." Why did I highlight this? Because it made me sad that Jefferson was so rude! I feel like he's always painted as this hero and this chapter definitely challenged my previous thoughts on him. In Chapter 5 I highlighted a Frederick Douglass quote I really liked, "To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one...He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery." How very true that is...and I'd never really thought of it that way.

In our class we still haven't really done any Social Studies. Okay, that's putting it lightly. We haven't done any Social Studies AT ALL. We just started incorporating some science lessons into our usual math centers, but other than that...nothing. I assumed our Social Studies instruction would come from literature we read. However, our school has a strict government-mandated RTI program in place that requires we use the "Read Well" program. I don't think that a story about a dog who finds a dinosaur bone is teaching the student that much Social Studies. I really will be interested to see if it ever becomes a part of the curriculum. With the amount of focus the teachers are required to put on literature in math, it seems as though there really isn't a place for history at all.