Page 333 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 14 What Is the Research Base That Informs Powerful Social Studies Teaching? 305
Copyright
TABLE 14.1 CONTINUED
Principle/
Related What it Looks Like up Close:
Chapter Explanation A Snapshot Examples of Enactment
In another scenario, the students are learning about the powerful idea that in democracies, citizens chose their leaders through voting. In this lesson the students are learning the differ- ence between the popular vote and the electoral college. The teacher shows a graph that displays each state and its respective number of electoral votes. For an assessment, students are assigned a state, and from the graph they determine how many electoral votes the state has and then hypothesize the relative importance of that state in national elections. This assessment is aligned with the lesson’s big idea, the instruction, and with students’ lives beyond school.
4. Establishing Learning Orientations Chapter 3
The teacher can pre- pare students for learning by providing an initial structure to clarify the intended outcome and cue de- sired learning strategies.
The teacher shares with the students what they will be learning before instruction begins. The teacher may even write the goals on the board or whiteboard for easy and frequent referral throughout the lesson.
On this day the teacher sets the stage for the importance of government by talking about all the ways government influences our lives. He explains that government serves to protect us and provide services that people can’t afford on their own. He gives examples. Then he says, “I am going to share with you a digital story of how government impacts my life on a daily basis. Watch carefully. See how many ways government connects to my life. After the story, I want you to share your observations. We will talk about them tomorrow along with your opinions about government involvement—and the tradeoffs.”
5. Coherent Content Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 12
To facilitate mean- ingful learning and retention, content is clearly explained and developed with em- phasis on its structure and connections.
When using textbooks or during teacher directed instruction or guided discussion, information is easier to learn and make sense of when the content is coherent. The ideas and events make sense when relationships among them are made clear.
The students are reviewing some of the main ideas they have learned about life long ago. The teacher refers to objects and events depicted on the co-constructed timeline and she underscores the students’ ideas by adding....”people were living in caves long, long ago. They didn’t need clothes because they lived in warmer places and they had more hair on their bodies. But as people started to move to places that were cooler and we started to get shorter hair on our bodies we needed ways to protect ourselves. One of the things that we were already doing for food was hunting—animals such as buffalo and deer. So we took what we knew about those animals and started using their skin to make clothing.” (Brophy, Alleman, & Knighton, 2010, p. 75).
In another scenario, students are studying the causes of the American Revolution. Whereas some curricula and textbooks focus on all the major events leading up to the Revolution, this teacher selects a few events to study in depth, using primary and secondary sources such as writings, speeches, and maps. For example, in
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