Page 117 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 4 What Social Studies Planning Tools Are Available? 89
If you are expected or mandated to use district-adopted social studies textbooks, be aware that:
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Typically the activities found in the teacher’s manual were written by outside vendors, so you should always ask whether each activity matches the goal and promotes understanding of the big idea(s). Other questions to ask relate to level of difficulty, feasibility and cost effectiveness. (See Chapter 11 for additional principles.)
Social studies time should not be used as a venue for engaging students in round- robin reading (as this is likely to make your students hate the subject). View the textbook as one of multiple information sources promoting silent or paired reading to gather data to be discussed later and expanded through interactive narrative, or perhaps the use of an appropriate literary source, video, or other resource that promotes depth of understanding. The supplemental materials that often accompany the textbook series may be effective for a learner who needs practice on a particular set of skills or who faces comprehension issues. However, they are unlikely to be useful as activities for the class as a whole.
Technology
Social studies-related websites offer a broad selection of lesson plans, instructional resources and activities. Our advice is “Teacher, beware!” Do not assume that an activity is appropri- ate just because it exists in cyberspace or calls for students to use a computer or other tech- nology. We suggest the same guidelines for making decisions about technology that we offer for selecting other activities. The litmus test it must pass is, “Does the technology-based lesson plan or activity match your goals?” Simple relevance to the topic is not enough.
Although we believe the lessons you design will be richer and more relevant to your students’ lives than ones you may find on the Internet, that does not mean you should not consult lesson plans for ideas or resources. For example, many historical sites have accompanying lesson plans, including primary source materials. United Streaming (streaming.discoveryeducation.com/) provides lesson plans and multimedia resources on a range of topics. These multimedia resources (e.g., reenactments of historical events) can be very useful for providing a visual account of the past, which students can have a difficult time imagining through text alone.
Technology Tips
Social Studies on the Internet (Berson, Cruz, Duplass, & Johnston, 2006) is an annotated collection of websites to consider as you plan your units. One of its features is a series of chapters organized according to content topics aligned with the NCSS strands. Another is its listing of professional organizations related to social studies that maintain their own websites. Online journals such as Reading On Line (ROL) (1997–2005) (www.reading.org) also offer information regarding the use of technology to enhance learning in the content areas.
Children’s Literature
Authentic children’s literature selections can be desirable components of social studies units. Often these are non-fictional selections because social studies is about real human activities and experiences. Fanciful stories or folklore selections usually belong in language arts rather than social studies, even if they have some relevance to the social studies unit
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