Virtual Tours

After reading Chapter 12, it made me realize that I have never really thought of using the internet when teaching Social Studies. In the First Grade, Social Studies is one of the subjects that is not given a weighted grade at my school. We give S for Satisfactory, N for Needs Improvement and U for Unsatisfactory. Honestly, it is one of the subjects that usually get cut if we run out of time in the time. I thoroughly enjoy teaching Social Studies and feel the integrating the computer in my lessons would make it more enjoyable. One thing in Chapter 12 that I liked, was taking a virtual trip on internet sites to see places that students could not easily go in real life. Many of my students have never traveled out of the state of Alabama. I feel that taking a virtual trip to places to let them get a better feel for what it is like in other places around the United State or even the world. We do a unit in First Grade called “Christmas Around the World”. Each First Grade Teachers picks a country and teaches students the different customs and traditions of the country. I have used the internet to look up a variety of information on my chosen country. It would be interesting to find a website on my chosen country that was student friendly. That way they could navigate themselves and find out more about that country. The internet is such a useful tool; it is just up to us as teachers to utilize it properly in the classroom.