Page 265 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 11 How Can I Design, Implement, and Evaluate Instructional Activities? 237
required for these tasks, but the skills would be developed through authentic applications rather than artificial exercises.
Different types of activities serve different functions, and these functions evolve as units develop. When introducing new content, you might emphasize activities designed to stimulate interest, establish an anticipatory learning set, or link the new learning to prior learning (such as by providing students with opportunities to compare/contrast or make predictions from the old to the new). When developing content, you might stress activities that allow students to extend and apply their learning. When concluding the unit, you might plan activities that help students appreciate connections or that provide opportunities to synthesize their learning.
In combination, the assumptions stated so far imply that sets of activities embedded within units should be assessed with reference to the degree to which they are cost- effective as methods for accomplishing major goals, and that particular activities should be assessed within this larger context. Given a unit’s major goals, an activity under consideration for inclusion might be considered: (1) essential, (2) directly relevant and useful, although not essential, (3) directly relevant but not as useful as another activity that serves the same function more effectively, (4) tangentially relevant but not very use- ful because it does not promote progress toward major goals, or (5) irrelevant or inap- propriate to the goals. For example, we have noted that we would emphasize the development of American political values and policies in teaching U.S. history to fifth graders. With these primary goals, a unit on the American Revolution would emphasize the historical events and political philosophies that shaped the thinking of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Certain activities might be considered essential for such a unit: activities calling for research, debate, or critical thinking and decision making about the issues that developed between England and the colonies and about the ideals, principles, and compromises that went into the construc- tion of the Constitution. Other activities might be considered less essential but still rele- vant and perhaps useful: studying more about the thinking of key framers of the Constitution or about the various forms of oppression that different colonial groups had experienced. Still other activities might be rejected because of their focus on peripheral content: studying the lives of Paul Revere or other revolutionary figures who are not known primarily for their contributions to American political values and policies, or studying the details of each of the economic restrictions that England imposed on the colonies. Finally, certain activities would be irrelevant to the unit’s goals: studying the details of particular Revolutionary War battles or constructing dioramas depicting these battles.
The key to the effectiveness of an activity is its cognitive engagement potential—the degree to which it gets students actively thinking about and applying content, preferably with conscious awareness of their goals and control of their strategies. “Minds on” learn- ing is essential. If the desired learning experiences are to occur, student involvement must include cognitive engagement with important ideas, not just physical activity or time on task.
The success of an activity in producing thoughtful student engagement with important ideas depends not only on the activity itself but also on the teacher structuring and teacher-student discourse that occurs before, during, and after the time period in which students respond to the activity’s demands. Activities are likely to have maximum impact when the teacher (1) introduces them in ways that clarify their purposes and engage students in seeking to accomplish those purposes; (2) scaffolds, monitors, and provides appropriate feedback concerning students’ work on the activity; and (3) leads the students through appropriate post-activity reflection on and sharing of the insights that have been developed.
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