Archive for October 2008
Chapter 8 Planning Instruction- Group 4 Blog
This chapter deals with planning options for the social studies instruction. Most people use the textbook as their sole resource. Using the textbook as your main tool of instruction is often used to organize how to teach this subject. This is a good order of the material. Another way to organize the social studies instruction is to go beyond the text book. This can be through websites, integrating other subjects, and using materials from other books.
Teachers should not just use the textbook in their classroom. This is a good tool, but this should not be the only activity because this is not as fun and the children will not connect as well to this. Other activities should be planned to keep the children’s attention and hands on activities will be more appealing to the children. Another activity that could be used is a dramatic play of what happened in an event.
No matter what approach is taken, there is a sequence of events to planning that is applied in every aspect of instruction. When addressing a unit, you need to identify what the order of the lesson should be. The focus needs to be laid out because this will keep the lesson specific and the children will get more out of this unit. Activities that are interesting to the students will be more beneficial to them. In my classroom, I will be use hands on activities that will engage the students more. I will also plan the entire unit in an order that makes sense in an sequential way.
3 comments October 30, 2008
Literacy and Social Studies Chapter 7
Literacy within social studies is a very important skill to be aware of while teaching. Students learn first through oral communication and listening. Children do not develop the ability to use language passively they are continually reconstructing language as they learn it. Since this statement is true as educators we need to be sure that we are helping our students learn the language correctly through our speaking habits. As we model this skill we are assisting our students in becoming fluent standard English speakers. However, while modeling English it is important to be careful to respect student dialect. Not all students are going to speak English in the same way, because of this it is important to let your student’s know respect for their dialect will be shown in your classroom. As student’s develop their language listening activities can be be incorporated to help the students start to discuss stories or informational passages to begin the reading and writing processes.
When student’s begin to read, specifically in social studies text or related passages, they can easily become frustrated and confused. Social Studies text are not easily understood, this is where a teacher must begin to help her students by focusing on vocabulary and meaning of the writing. When reading what appears to be a simple passage on page 183, the book shows how much information is really contained in a few sentences. The best approach that can be taken by a teacher to ensure the understanding for her students is to model how to gather information while reading the text. The other step that must be completed is to look at the book before hand and pick out confusing or important vocabulary that can be defined for the students. A problem can arise in these techniques when a non-reader comes into play, as explained on page 186. The book gives four alternatives to help solve this problem. In my personal opinion the best of the options being to group students for reading to assist the non readers or to help them break down material in their own words. These two alternatives are the two that would be used in my classroom and would be most effective.
The last aspect that is addressed with the correlation of literacy and social studies is the writing skill. In 4th and 5th grade this skill can really be capitalized upon within the social studies curriculum. Children at this age pretty well know the writing process itself so now is a a great time to incorporate using that knowledge in a research way. Social studies is a great place to incorporate self discovery in social studies and have the students research topics and write about those topics. There are a variety of writing styles given on pages 189-192. With older children in 4th and 5th grade a wonderful assignment that can be brought into the classroom is an interview. While learning about new people throughout history the students can create a mock interview they may have given that person. Responding with appropriate answers from the knowledge they acquired throughout their research. This is only one example of how to create new writing experiences within social studies but many more can be done throughout the curriculum as well.
Cheryl, Lisa, Carrie, and Cindy
Add a comment October 27, 2008
Source for Grants
Grant Wrangler is a teacher recommended source on grants for educators:
Public libraries like the Dayton Metro Library have staff familiar with grant writing and grant directories who can be of a great deal of help to teachers.
Add a comment October 23, 2008
Strategies and activities for effective teaching
Teacher centered instruction is seen less in 4th and 5th grade. There is a lot more note taking and direct instruction. Working in groups is another learning technique for this grade level. While one group is interacting with each other the instructor can conference with another group. Some ideas for groups are: discussion, decision making, tutorial, and research. You can even use the author’s chair for Social Studies.
Christina Schneble’s Add-On:
I really like the activity given from page 272 to 274 from “Children and Their World: Strategies for Teaching Social Studies“. The activity is called Pine Tree Shillings and it uses the students curiosity to feed the education. The teacher presents a story from an old reader entitled “Stories of Our Country“. The students then develop questions from hearing this story and set out to answer their questions by use of books and the internet. They can present their information in many different ways. This is appropriate for 4th and 5th grade students because it satisfies the Social Studies Skills and Methods OCS for obtaining information through encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers, and multimedia/electronic sources.
4 comments October 21, 2008
Assessing Learning
It is really important to use specific assessments, they are aware of, to hold students accountable for their own learning. The students could perform an oral history project and go in depth without a lot of teacher instruction. For example; students could interview a war veteran to find out about their life, how their life was before and after the war, what their jobs were, etc. A war veteran could come to the class and talk to the students. Students could dress from this period or reenact the war (such as North vs. South).
Christina Schneble’s Add-On:
It is also important to use an eclectic approach when administering assessments. Three of the major categories of instruments of assessment are: nationally standardized tests and scales, achievement tests developed by local, regional, or state agencies, and tests constructed my teachers themselves. Personally, I think the teacher constructed assessments are more accurate than the other tests combined. No one, besides the parents and other family members, knows the students better than the teacher, which can give students an assessment advantage if the teacher prepares tests, rubric, checklists, etc. This is true in all grades, not just in 4th and 5th. In no means am I suggesting that the achievement and standardize tests are less important. They too are needed to hold teachers, schools, and students accountable.
Add a comment October 21, 2008
Planning for Instruction
In 4th and 5th grade teachers use the textbook as their main source for Social Studies instruction in the classroom. Graphic organizers are also a great tool for these grade levels because they can easily organize their thoughts. Students can use these graphic organizers in their research and small group activities which is great for 4th and 5th grade because they are starting to be more independent. Teachers can use textbooks to help plan units, lead instruction and create objectives.
Christina Schneble’s Add-On:
On pages 230 and 231 of the book, Children and Their World: Strategies for Teaching Social Studies, there is a brainstorming list for identifying potential learning activities for teachers that I would find rather helpful. It has a list format for things students might read, view, listen to, write, construct, discuss, research, and complete. This would be an excellent tool for me when teaching any grade because lists just seem to help me organize my thoughts better. This list can be the stepping stone to creating a really involved curriculum that can tap into Bloom’s Taxonomy of questioning, hitting on every level for student advancement.
Add a comment October 21, 2008
Character Building and Social Studies/Literacy Collaborative
Cohort N
Chrissy Previte, Donielle Avery, Jessica Strickland, Jen Keesey, Christina Schneble
Chapter six talks a lot about building character and how to teach it. The purpose of this is to develop good character in our young society. Building character is a subject that can be taught at any grade level. Most classrooms teach about morality, no opposition, respect, dignity, honesty, civic responsibility, trustworthiness, fairness, caring, and courage. In order for students to understand character, they teachers need to model the correct way to handle yourself. A lot of modeling definitely helps build a student’s character and understanding of how to act.
The first part of chapter seven talks about working with ESL learners. It talks about different ways of helping your students break through the barriers and be successful in your classroom. These techniques would work for any grade but, I think would be especially helpful for 4th and 5th grade. These are grades when students are learning more in depth information and all the rules of English. Later in the chapter it talks about reading and textbooks. I know that when I was in school I did not use a social studies textbook until the fourth grade. I also remember how much I hated it. I feel like textbooks are ok to use in fourth and fifth grade, but should be combined with lots of hands on activities and not just assigned readings and worksheets. Overall this chapter talks a lot about writing and language arts. It is proof that social studies and language arts really do go hand in hand.
Chapter 7 focuses on implementing literacy along with the social studies curriculum. No matter the grade level, literacy is an extremely important aspect in a child’s schooling. While they are usually placed on the front burner in the early primary grades, literacy skills are very important to have acquired from Kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade. From a 4th or 5th grade teacher standpoint, a very important activity to do with the students is teaching them how to read and understand a textbook. As the book states, there are usually many different concepts and ideas presented in just one small paragraph in a textbook. If students are unable to understand the text, then they are not able to learn. Having social studies vocabulary words and allowing students to explore their definitions would be very beneficial at this age level. It would help the students construct meaning about the social studies concept and it would make the lesson more valuable to the students. Another activity teachers can do with their students is having them make a word map for a vocabulary word that they may be having a difficult time comprehending. This would help them relate social studies terms to their own past knowledge and experiences.
3 comments October 16, 2008
Social Studies Curriculum Organization
Social Studies curriculum is built on an ever-expanding base of knowledge. Children begin in kindergarten by learning about what is closest to them, which are their families and their school. By the time they reach the fourth and fifth grades they are able to focus on the broader picture. In the fourth grade students are generally either taught about their states history, geography and government or they will focus on the different geographic regions in the United States, covering physical, social and economic geography. By the time that they reach the fifth grade there is so much information to cover that it seems almost impossible. Children are learning about the history of the United States from the very beginning with the founding of the New World, building the nation up and finally to where our nation is today.
One variation of the standard program of study is called CORE curriculum. This program was based on E. D. Hirsch’s book Cultural Literacy (1988); essentially this is a base knowledge of what every United States citizen should know. It has been shown that the program has increased standardized test scores in the schools that use it (Welton, 81). The critics of the CORE Knowledge Program mostly believe that the curriculum is not developmentally appropriate for younger students. I look at it as a way to expand the child’s world beyond themselves and their immediate family.
When preparing to teach Social Studies the two main avenues teachers use are thematic units and the concept-based approach. This occurs not only with the fourth and fifth grades but also with all grade levels. With thematic units teachers are able to integrate several disciplines into one larger unit. It is not unusual for thematic units to last for weeks at a time. In the concept-based approach the students may have several countries to study over the course of the year and one by one investigate the same material for each of those countries (i.e. agriculture, climate, industry…). The other option is to study one area, for example, agriculture, and explore it from the point of view of many countries at one time.
Add a comment October 8, 2008
Multicultural Education in the Classroom
America is no longer a melting pot; it is a mosaic. Our country is filled with diversity of all types, ranging from culture to religion to customs. It is important for students to be educated about the various types of people in the world they live in. In order to teach this to our students, we will teach a unit based on multicultural diversity.
To begin this unit, students will first learn about the different types of learners there are in the classroom. Each student will take Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Test and view the results to identify which type of learner they are. They will compare their results with other students in the class to lead into a discussion about the diverse learners in the classroom. The teacher will emphasize that no way is right or wrong but that they are all unique to the individual. Students will then participate in a lesson that is taught according to each multiple intelligence. This will allow them to witness how diverse the class is and then the class will transition to a discussion about how diverse the world is.
The class will study various cultures from around the world using the four approaches to multicultural education. The first approach, the contributions approach, includes concrete activities and units which focus on holidays and unique cultural practices. For example, our class could study about Native Americans and then hold a “Native American Heritage Day” celebration, focusing on cultural customs and traditions. The next approach is the additive approach. This method adds content to the unit without changing the curriculum. An example would be to add a book on the Chinese New Year while studying the Chinese culture. The transformational approach deals with rearranging the current curriculum so students receive content from a plethora of cultural viewpoints. For instance, the introduction to this unit begins with comparisons in the classroom and expands to differences in the world. This would give students a different perspective on diversity. The final approach, the social action approach, changes the curriculum to emphasize social issues to students. They will see how our ideals may be different than reality and see ways they can take action against social injustice. For example, students could learn about social inequalities placed on women in the Middle East by researching from their cultural viewpoints, as well as the Western perspective.
Additionally, when teaching about multicultural diversity, it’s important for educators to show an awareness of the cultures represented in the class and neighborhood. Teachers can consult cultural groups and parents within the community and even invite guest speakers to come into the classroom to share with the class.
Submitted by: Melanie Platfoot, Sara Randolph, Sara Trollinger, Jess Crowe
2 comments October 7, 2008
