For College of Education students facing the Subject Area Exam (SAE), studying for all areas can seem like a daunting task.   Certified teachers in the state of Florida are required to pass a series of three tests. One, the Subject Area Exam is designed to test for knowledge of subject matter.

However, since the addition of content area classes, students are learning about the domain of knowledge in World History, U.S History, Geography, Government and Economics through interactive and project-based learning.  This includes drama, the arts, DBQ’s (document based questions), academic gaming (Cranium CoRE), using primary sources and more.   As future teachers, they realize just memorizing facts for the Subject Area Exam is only surface learning and will be forgotten by the time they are teaching in a classroom.

“If a student asks me where a country is located, I want to be able to point to a map and show him/her”.  2017 Spring COE student

Students acting out the sad life of Thomas Paine and the impact his pamphlet “Common Sense” had on the American Colonists before the Revolutionary War.

COE students Brenna and Emily practice using Morse code while studying the dramatic impact this invention and the telegraph had on the Civil War.

“Lincoln instinctively discerned the transformational nature of the new technology and applied its dots and dashes as an essential tool for winning the Civil War.”  -Tom Wheeler, “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails”. 

 Student comments: 

-Feeling so happy I had this class right before my Subject Area Exam.  So much of what we did in class was on the exam and I nailed it!!

-I feel confident taking the SAE in Social Studies now that I have taken this class.  I learned so much and had so much fun.

-This course is an excellent preparation for the Subject Area Exam.

For more information on the College of Education degrees and Areas of Study, email roper.pat@spcollege.edu or call 727-712-5410.