Social Studies Focus

SOCIAL STUDIES FOCUS
At this point in the semester, you have been learning the components and importance of social studies in ECE in TCH 277. Additionally, you have considered when and how you will conduct your social studies lesson in your clinical classroom and may have observed social studies practices there. Draw on this knowledge and these experiences in this discussion. 

What have you noticed about social studies instruction and assessment in your setting?

·         When does it take place? Does it take place? Think critically.

·         What does it encompass?

·         During social studies instruction, what does your CT do/ say?

·         What do students do/ say? How do they respond?

·         What are your opinions/ feelings about this?

·         How does what you observe about social studies at this site connect with past clinical experiences/ early childhood theories/ and or social studies practices you have been learning about at ISU?

·         How does knowing this inform what you will do when teaching and assessing social studies (either this semester, next semester in student teaching, and/or next year)?

What other additional reflections/ concerns/ questions/ musings do you have after spending these last few weeks on the site? Use your own experiences, especially those from your activity log for the last few weeks.
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After being in my clinical placement for a few weeks now, it is nice to be able to reflect on some of the different things that I am seeing. One thing that I am SO happy to say that I see in my placement this semester is the teaching of social studies. As a child, I LOVED social studies. I found that history was my favorite and learning so many different things that people did in the past really intrigued me.

I relate this to myself because the children in my classroom have just finished working on what seemed to be their history unit. They focused a lot on famous people from the past, such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. This was deeply integrated with literacy. For the most part, what I saw was that they were given packets about these famous people and a worksheet that matched it. They had to read the informational packet and then answer the questions.

 My CT was having them focus on pulling important information from the information text, a very important common core standard. However, I felt that it could have been implemented differently to maximize the learning for all of the children in the classroom. I noticed that these assignments were assigned at the same time as a handwriting assignment, and they had to finish both of these assignments before they were free to go to centers. Well, from what I saw, only the higher leveled students finished their work in time to go to centers. The middle level children finished right on time, and the lower leveled students did not finish at all and they had to take it home for homework. The lower and middle leveled children were very upset, because either they had lost their center time, or they had both lost their center time and now they have more homework.

While I am ecstatic to see that the children are at least learning social studies, I feel there are better ways to approach it. So, for the lesson that I am preparing for my class, I decided to approach it differently. I will be starting the next unit focusing on communities, and my lesson focuses on geography. I will be teaching them about landforms, and they will be researching and creating their landforms in small groups and then presenting to the rest of the class about their landform. While working in groups can be stressful on the teacher, I think that it is very beneficial for the children’s learning. I am excited to see how it goes!

Another way that social studies that I have seen taught was through guided reading. The stories that the children read were biographies of famous people. The lower leveled group that I taught read a story about a famous Olympic athlete. They really seemed to enjoy it because it was very relatable to them. The story made it seem like anybody could be an Olympic athlete if they tried really hard, and one boy actually told me “I’m gonna make it to the Olympics in basketball, just wait, one day you’ll see me with that gold medal around my neck and I’ll say I told ya so!” It was so cute. The highest level group that I taught read a story about President Theodore Roosevelt and his impact on the environment. They also seemed to enjoy the text too. I actually learned quite a bit from that story myself! J 

From what I have learned in my own social studies course so far this semester is that differentiation is key. Children do not all learn the same way, therefore we as teachers cannot teach the exact same way to every student. It isn’t developmentally appropriate, and it really doesn’t benefit anybody but the teacher, just because it is easier. Another thing that I learned from my course is that social studies can be combined with just about every single other subject area. My CT decided to focus the integration on literacy, however there are many other ways that we can do this. Our next science unit is on dinosaurs, which also integrates well with history in social studies as well as geography a little bit as well, so I am excited to see how those are implemented in the classroom.

Overall, seeing any social studies is very beneficial for me. I really have a passion for social studies, so I know as a future teacher that I will find integrations within the curriculum to teach it. Seeing it implemented is very good experience for me, but I will probably have a higher focus on social studies in my classroom in the future because it is SO important. I really feel that social studies and science get totally thrown away now that the new common core standards are in place-teachers feel there just isn’t enough time to get through all the material, which I TOTALLY understand. Maybe teachers working together across grade levels and schools to create a curriculum for social studies that aligns with common core is the best option? Who knows? I will have to wait and see what my future school district has to offer.

Here is a cute video that I found that I think would have been better way to learn about Abe Lincoln- still integrates social studies with literacy and probably great alignment with common cores speaking/listening standards!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3vFA8Pp5k

Well, that’s all for this week J

Jessa