A classroom is a very diverse place. Each student has their own learning needs and areas where they are going to excel in. If a teacher is going to create a successful learning environment they must be open to using a variety of teaching strategies to get important information to their students. Teaching social studies is no different. An effective social studies teacher uses a combination of direct and indirect instruction in order to teach key ideas to their students.
As monotonous as it seems there is always a place for direct instruction in a classroom. There are things that the students do not know yet. Teachers can introduce a topic through class discussions, presentations and demonstrations. This allows for students to receive base knowledge that they can then develop a deeper understanding of through other channels. Another channel of learning would be those strategies that are indirect instruction; these strategies allow students to make their own meaning about a topic or subject. Some indirect learning strategies are role-play, interest centers, group projects, independent study, reflective thinking, cooperative learning, and simulations. While students are participating in these strategies the teacher does little instructing and lets students make their own discoveries.
When I have my own classroom I would like to use a combination of both direct and indirect instruction in order to have the most meaningful learning happen. I hopefully will be teaching in the primary grades which mean that they need a lot of direct instruction but that does not mean that they are not capable of learning independently. The imagination of primary age students is some of the greatest that there is so there is plenty of room for them to use that creativity and imagination to learn about social studies. I hope that my direct instruction will spark the interest of my students, so that they will continue to question and make discoveries about each subject.
Learning about and eventually implementing strategies helps to fulfill almost all of the endorsement competencies including those for social studies, pedagogy, understanding learners, learning communities and instruction. The only competencies that they do not really help to fulfil are the assessment competencies, except that some of these strategies could lead to good student productions that a teacher could use as assessments. I feel that learning about these strategies will someday make me an excellent educator.
Ms. Jena Machin 