O2. – Offer appropriate challenge in the content area.

Teacher-candidates plan and/or adapt curricula that are standards driven so students develop understanding and problem-solving expertise in the content area(s) using reading, written and oral communication, and technology.

Teachers have the opportunity to take a required standard and turn it into a fun, meaningful and appropriate lesson that their students will learn from. What teachers teach is mostly up to their own discretion so it is important that teachers be able to create challenging lessons for their students.

In my social studies method class we were asked to make a unit plan that would span 3-5 days and integrate other subjects with social studies. I have attached a copy of my unit plan on wants and needs below.

J. Machin%2c Unit plan

This unit plan helps to demonstrate my competency in this area because I created 3 days’ worth of challenging, meaningful and fun activities for my students to learn the difference between wants and needs and what happens when you choose too many wants and not enough needs. This also demonstrates my competency because I planned a unit for first grade instead of kindergarten. It is important to not limit yourself to one grade like I normally do.

In the process of completing this assignment I learned that sometimes it is better to be brief in your statements. When writing a unit overview all you need to do is give brief descriptions of what each day’s activities will be and it is not necessary to include step by step information.  This is the first time I have ever created a whole unit that worked together and each lesson built upon each other. I think that I did well for my first time.

Since I was making the lesson for a primary grade I tried to make a lot of my teaching done through literature because students can relate to stories told in books. I also tried to provide them with a variety of different kinds of activities ranging from hands on activities to group discussions.

I think that In the future I will flesh this unit plan out more into three whole lessons that I could eventually teach to a class if I taught in first grade where wants and needs are a standard.

Social Studies Teaching Strategies

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.

Three Approaches to Social Studies Teaching

Every child learns differently. There is no cookie cutter way to teach children. This includes teaching students a subject a wide and varied as social studies. In Arthur Ellis’ book Teaching and Learning Elementary Social Studies he gives readers a brief look at the teaching styles of three different elementary school teachers who feature dynamic social studies instruction in the classroom.  In the learner-centered approach the teacher facilitates learning by providing opportunities for the children to discover knowledge through a variety of mediums. In the society-centered approach the classroom is treated as a mini-democracy in which students have voice in rule making and in community projects.  Students in a society centered classroom learn about how to be good citizens by taking action in their community. In the knowledge centered approach academic knowledge is the focus. Teachers use lots of different styles of instruction to appropriate the learning of their students but they use quizzes, tests, and essays to gage learning much like most mainstream classes.

I really like a lot of the ideas that these teachers had about teaching social studies and I think that they all had excellent approaches to how they think about and teach social studies. Much like every learner is different each of the teachers featured in this book all learn differently and view different features of social studies as important. In my own classroom I would like to take bits and pieces of the way these teachers teach. Personally I really resonate with a learner-centered approach to the classroom. I think the ultimate goal of being a teacher is to help students discover a lifelong love of learning. I also agree with the society-centered approach. Teachers should encourage students to take action in their own lives and in the community. I also think that there is importance in academic knowledge. Students can make connections across time and across subjects with the help of a structured learning environment.

I see merit in all three of the approaches to teaching social studies and I believe that they make it very easy to meet the competencies for my endorsement.  The society centered approach is a great way to fulfill the competencies for civics, economics, and pedagogy. While the learner centered approach is a great way for students to learn about geography and history. I think that bits and pieces of the knowledge center approach can fulfill all of the competencies and it is essential for pedagogy.

I have been fortunate enough to see these approaches in my own life. In my eighth grade social studies class we learned about central and South America by watching videos, doing art projects, eating Hispanic food, using Spanish in our classroom. It was my teacher’s first year teaching and he was very much a learner-centered teacher.  The learner centered approach actually reminds me a great deal of how a Montessori class is run. Learning happens through student discovery. In my fifth grade class we learned about the different branches of government, we got to take turns being each of the branches and we got to debate important issue. We also tackled a current event a week as a class. This class was very much society-centered.  Finally I have had plenty of knowledge centered social studies instruction, all of the other times that I learned social studies it was always, we read the text book, we watch videos, we write papers, take quizzes and tests.

NCSS Position Statement Response

The National Council for the Social Studies is a resource for the benefit of teachers and students in the United States of America. In one of their position statements entitled A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civic Efficacy; is to give a basic introduction of the principals of teaching and learning social studies for the purpose of instructing the future American citizens. It outlines why we should teach social studies and how to make the teaching and learning powerful.

Social Studies is more than just history, Social Studies is a group of content areas in which American citizen should be competent in if they are to make informed decisions about how to govern the country.  In order to make informed decisions in their lives American citizens need to have a background in history, civics, economics, and geography.  Citizens need history so that they can learn from the people of the fact and we can avoid making some of the disastrous decisions of the past.  Citizens need civics so that they can know how our country is run and how the government works. Citizens need economics so they can better understand government spending and they can better control their own financial spending. Finally citizens need to understand geography so that they know how all of these things are interconnected.  In order to do their jobs correctly teachers need to be instructing and teaching their students how to critically think about each of these areas as well as reflecting and revising their own beliefs as they gain more knowledge.

In order for students to actually think deeply about social studies concepts teachers need to provide opportunities for students to interact with these concepts by problem solving, discussions, debates, projects and hands on exercises. These activities can be done at any age as long as the prompting is age appropriate. This is where the state standards come into play they help teachers stay on track with what their students need to be learning to think about now so that they can build upon it late. Learning and deciding upon rules in kindergarten lead to critical thinking about laws and legislature in high school. Helping students learn these skills will help them to become good, responsible, and competent American citizens. It is our future students who will be making the big decisions about policy and government someday so why wouldn’t we want to put an emphasis on teaching social studies?

It is my hope that when I get into the classroom I will be able to help my students think critically in the 4 subject areas. The vision set by the National Council for Social Studies is one that I completely agree with. I think education in these areas is vital for the next generation of Americans and the ideas that the Council has are ones that align with the Elementary Endorsement Competencies. I for one cannot wait till I get to see students being to think critically about the different cogs in the machine that is this country and begin to understand how it works. I believe this is important for my students to become successful adults which is really the purpose of becoming a teacher.