Page 174 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

146 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
Your Turn: Anthropology
Revisit your social studies curriculum for the year, pay- ing particular attention to anthropology. Add a new layer of meaning to the content.
Example
• Unit Topic: Urban Communities
• Added Social Science Discipline: Anthropology
• Added Big Ideas
• Communities benefit from the influence of people who have come from different countries and who have different experiences.
• Communities celebrate holidays. Holidays can be celebrated in many different ways.
Features
Constructing understandings about why people do what they do (goals and motives of a lot of people)
Connecting new content to students’ prior knowledge, mis- conceptions, and so forth
Providing for the study of culture and diversity
Representing other cultures in ways that reflect goals of the anthropologists and social studies educators
Organizing content associated with past and present societies around cultural universals (human activities)
Addressing issues of diversity including race, ethnicity, gender, and social and economic differences
Addressing production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services
Providing opportunities for students to engage in decision making
• The cultures represented in a community determine in some ways the use of its resources.
• In some communities, people speak the language of the country they came from.
• Cultural borrowing occurs when people share their beliefs, traditions, and customs with others.
To help you plan at the next level of specificity, we encourage you to revisit the section of the chapter that focuses on anthropology. List key features that natu- rally fit with your unit topics.
My Plan of Action
When teaching about the Native Americans, for example,
I will explain that they made decisions about what sort of shelters to build based on the climate, available resources, their need for mobility, and so forth.
When beginning a new unit, I will do some form of assess- ment (e.g., TWL, pose “I wonders,” interview students in groups).
I will also spend time acknowledging students’ exposure to fan- ciful stories and fictional worlds—and explain the differences between factual and fictional.
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