Page 284 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

256 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
Integrative Activities in Which Skills Learned in One Subject
are Used to Process or Apply Knowledge Learned in Another
If planned carefully, the instruction and the accountability expectations may include both knowledge and processes. In a unit addressing social equity in America, for example, assigning a report on an important American who helped make U.S. society more equi- table would be appropriate if the students had developed skills for doing research pro- jects and skills for writing informative/explanatory texts in literacy. However, bear in mind that activities ordinarily should not require students to cope with new processes and new knowledge simultaneously despite what in-service speakers extol as a way to eke out more instructional time for social studies.
The following examples also focus on social studies content goals but integrate skills from other subjects. A history activity calls for students to write an essay explaining how the colonial plantation differed from today’s large farms. With proper structuring and scaffolding by the teacher, this activity could be useful in extending understanding and promoting critical thinking about how the nature and economics of farming have chan- ged over time in response to inventions. A creative writing activity calls for students to imagine that they were among the Native Americans forced to endure the Trail of Tears journey, and to write diary entries describing their experiences, attitudes, and future expectations. This topic provides a good basis for narrative writing. The assignment should deepen understanding of the events involved and help students develop sympathetic attitudes toward Native Americans.
Another activity, part of a unit on the Middle East, asks students to analyze newspa- per and magazine articles to explain how authors use reason and evidence to support claims, to analyze similarities and difference in points of view across articles, to explain the points of view expressed and the factors that contribute to developing them, and to identify biases. Here, reading skills addressed in literacy are applied to a real-life critical- thinking situation in ways that encourage students to begin to see the power in becoming critical, thoughtful, and astute readers.
Activities that Help to Personalize Content, Make
it More Concrete, Enhance Learner Curiosity, or Add an Important Affective Perspective Using Integration
In this section, we present examples of integration using children’s literature, the visual arts, music, and technology and offer suggestions for activities to provide powerful social studies teaching and problems to avoid. We also present potential challenges that we encourage you to consider. Effective curricular integration requires careful planning and focus on the powerful ideas.
Children’s Literature Carefully selected children’s literature has potential for deepen- ing the cognitive and affective dimensions of content (Alleman & Brophy, 1994). In an early elementary social studies unit on families, with a goal to develop understanding and appreciation for peoples’ needs and wants, literature can be used to enhance children’s ideas. The teacher is directed to read a story to the students about a person wanting some- thing (e.g., Cinderella, King Midas), then pose questions such as “Were these people wise to want the things they did?” “What were the things these people really needed?” The teacher can continue the lesson by explaining that certain things that people need and want cannot be purchased with money. Students are then asked to imagine what some of these resources might be (e.g., love, caring, kindness, respect, and friends). This activity provides a welcome departure from the often-sterile conception of needs and wants, and it appropriately adds an affective dimension that addresses the ideas that valuable things cannot always be purchased, and that there are ways, besides material objects, to make people happy.
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.