Page 79 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 3
HOW DO I SELECT POWERFUL GOALS AND POWERFUL CONTENT?
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Danielle Doski, First-Year Teacher
Among the long list of responsibilities assigned to me as a teaching intern in a third grade classroom, my masters-level professors would continually push my peers and me to reflect on the content we selected to teach our students. One exer- cise we would frequently engage in was digging into our memories as elementary or middle school students when determining how we could create a positive and productive learning community within all of our classrooms. Certainly no one dwelled on the textbooks lessons; instead, it was the out-of-the-box projects and activities that intrigued and pushed us to work harder than we thought was possi- ble. I can still remember dressing up as the Wright brothers with a friend and teaching my classmates about what contributions these brothers made to society. It really personalized learning for me. It was in these moments of reflection that I
decided I wanted to create units that students would remember years later.
Achieving “powerful social studies teach- ing” can appear overwhelming and impossi- ble. There is no way that teachers, even with a social studies major, will know in depth all of the content they will be teaching; nor should a teacher pretend to know everything. But teachers should learn the content they are teaching by diving into the material them- selves, modeling a spirit of investigation to their students. In doing so, they will be able to determine the powerful ideas that are most important and worth spending time teaching.
© Keith Knighton
TEACHER VOICE