Page 189 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 7 How Can I Teach the Other Social Sciences Powerfully? 161
on concepts such as democracy versus dictatorship, the branches of government and their functions, and legal contracts and their implications.
Mini-Society requires a considerable commitment of time, space, and teacher prepa- ration (guided by a detailed manual that includes many duplicate masters). The program offers a great deal of excitement and enjoyment to students and provides them with a variety of experiences that can become valuable grist for learning economic concepts and principles. The degree to which their understanding is developed, however, will be determined heavily by the degree to which the teacher recognizes and exploits teachable moments and consistently leads the students through good debriefing discussions.
Laney (1997, 2001) provided a step-by-step example of good debriefing discussions. Students are confronted with a scarcity situation at school and then asked to describe it in detail in their own words and role-play it. Next, the students identify the central prob- lem, and the teacher helps them to recognize that the existence of scarce resources is a relevant decision-making issue. Next, the teacher reviews the concepts needed for dealing with the problem. Students supply their own invented definition and label for the concept of scarcity, such as not-enough or too-few-for-so-many, and the teacher provides the con- ventional label and definition (e.g., scarcity occurs whenever wants exceed the available resources, which they usually do). Finally, the teacher guides the students in relating this new information to the current problem and to their own knowledge base and past expe- rience. The students address the problem by brainstorming possible allocation strategies, discussing and role-playing positive and negative consequences of each strategy, selecting the one that appears best, implementing it, and living with the consequences.
Kourilsky (1992) also developed Kinder-Economy, an experience-based economics curriculum for Grades K–2. It also calls for students to experience situations that focus on real-world economic decision making and living with the consequences, but it does not involve creating a society, starting businesses, and the other more complicated aspects of Mini-Society. Students are asked to choose between two alternatives (e.g., which playground activity to participate in or which supplies to use in creating an art project), and they are then guided in using cost-benefit analysis to determine whether they made a good decision given their choice of alternatives.
Other economic materials worth noting are Small Size Economics and Children in the Marketplace. These are less ambitious and more conventional than Mini-Society, but are designed to teach many of the same concepts. Small-Size Economics (Skeel, 1988) includes 20 lessons, 10 for kindergarten or first grade (addressed within the contexts of self, family or school) and 10 for second or third grade (addressed within the contexts of neighborhood or community). Children in the Marketplace (National Council on Economic Education, 2005) is a series of eight lessons designed to teach basic economic principles to third and fourth graders. Each lesson is designed to provide opportunities for students to first hear about economics concepts and principles, then apply and expe- rience them, then review them, and finally generalize their applications to concrete situa- tions. Other resources include Storypath with integrated units, including Soup Company and Understanding the Place: the Toy Company and a Money Unit in Alleman and Brophy (2003b), Social Studies Excursions, Volume 3, pp. 123–208.
Financial Literacy
Financial literacy is an emerging economic topic garnering increasing educational inter- est. The Jump$tart Coalition offers a set of personal finance standards to be met by Grades 4, 8, and 12 (www.jumpstartcoalition.com). However, the methods through which teachers implement these standards have strong bearing on their students’ abilities to master financial skills. Activities that allow students to discover the meaning of financial
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.