Page 52 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

24 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
neighborhood to build context and structure into your learning community. The main idea is to let your students get a sense of what it means to satisfy needs and wants and to participate in a community where rights and responsibilities are exercised in ways that allow community members to feel in control of their destinies. There is probably no better way to build a sense of personal efficacy—a contributing factor to student achievement.
The classroom community provides a forum for living informal social studies in a safe, orderly, and enjoyable environment. It serves as a natural way to connect cognitive, socio-emotional, and moral development. It also facilitates Dorsett’s (1993) concept of a good curriculum as one that respects and balances the need to educate “three people” in each individual: the worker (in this case, a student whose work is to attend school), the citizen, and the private person. All of these dimensions can be experienced first hand in a laboratory-like setting in your classroom community.
The story of Mrs. Paul launching her community is intended to position your think- ing about a powerful teaching and learning opportunity that considers knowing, under- standing, appreciating, and applying a “hands-on” approach to democratic life in your classroom (a microcosm of society). If you decide to give your community a name, be sure it does not distract from the values and expectations you want your microcosm to represent.
Your learning community and the strategic moves you make as you develop it pave the way for building an environment for addressing social studies and its foundational academic disciplines. For example, every child in the community has a place in space (geography), a cultural background (anthropology), a set of experiences across time (history), needs and wants (economics), roles, norms, and expectations (sociology), the need to be guided or governed (political science), and a developing personal identity (psychology). Through structured discourse, students will begin to realize that social studies is dynamic and an integral part of their lives across the school day—even without leaving the classroom.
The remainder of this chapter expands on the notion of developing a sense of com- munity, presents a series of steps for creating it, and discusses how to ensure the learning community meets the needs of all learners. It also describes a lesson on specialness from a unit on childhood (adolescence for upper grades), and explains how the unit can provide a natural segue into substantive social studies content, yet deepen the students’ understanding and appreciation of their community and its members. This chapter addresses strategies for motivating students to learn within the learning community con- text, paying particular attention to student diversity.
Productive Communication and Interaction Patterns
Research on powerful social studies teaching underscores the importance of establish- ing a productive context for learning by encouraging the class to function as a learning community. This involves articulating and following through on expectations relating to both teacher-student and student-student interaction patterns. A learning commu- nity atmosphere is an open and supportive one in which students are encouraged to speak their minds without fear of ridicule of their ideas or criticism for mentioning taboo topics or voicing forbidden opinions. Students appreciate that the purpose of reflective discussion of the meanings and implications of content is to work collabora- tively to deepen understandings. Consequently, they are expected to listen carefully and respond thoughtfully to one another’s ideas and to work together to solve problems collaboratively.
Both in advancing their own ideas and in responding critically to others, they are expected to build a case based on relevant evidence and arguments and to avoid
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.