As a future elementary educator, I will be involved in developing and/or executing social studies curriculum. It is pertinent that I not only understand how to accomplish the development and execution for lesson planning, but also the importance of social studies education for young children. My background of social studies is relatively insufficient, which is why this course is essential to my education. Even though I have not completed the whole course, I can already tell how uninformed I am in this area of study. However, the important aspect to reflect on is not what I do not know, but how much I can learn. The first thing I learned about social studies was how it contrasts to the social sciences. Initially, I assumed social studies …show more content…
I could not tell you one thing I learned from his class. He was a great person and an entertaining advisor, but not an effective teacher. When I advanced to tenth grade U.S. History, I was dreading the continuous memorization and lack of meaning and understanding. However, on the first day, my teacher told the class that he was not worried about the dates, but about the significance and understanding of the material. This was the biggest relief in my entire high school career because he was the first teacher that gave me hope for learning relevant material. His teaching was incredibly effective because I was challenged to build my own understanding. For example, I could tell you anything you want to know about JFK’s assassination because he made me so interested in the subject.
My eleventh grade teacher was comparable to this teacher. She taught World History, which was far more difficult considering she had traveled around the world plenty of times and was entirely overqualified to be teaching at a high school. Nonetheless, her passion for the material encouraged me to put forth my best effort. My senior year was a blur; however, my government and economics teacher left a lasting impression on my future as an educator. Instead of telling us why it was so important to learn the
Social Studies is a very complex subject for educators to teach and for the students to be interested in learning, this is because it includes so many different disciplines. Not to mention, society is rapidly changing socially and technologically which affects what social studies content is being taught to our students( Passe,J 2002). In past years students were forced to learn at a relatively low cognitive levels, it lack the full meaning social studies that could be transferred into real life situations. It is because of this
The ugly truth about my education was that I was not being taught the whole history of the United States. In my classes, historic tales were being told. Beginning with Once upon a time on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria came the settlers along with their servants indentured and otherwise to Jamestown, and ending with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement left gaps, no, canyons, that needed to be filled. To get a glimpse of what I had been missing in History class for the past twelve years was overwhelming, especially since it often required me to alter my thinking about my world; the events and people in it.
Of the many classes that I chose to take, my two favorites were an English course and Health course. I may want to be a K-9 Officer, and these have few things in common with that career goal, but they were my favorite courses because of the professors who taught the course. Janice (Meredith) Privott for the English course, and Matthew Harpold for the Health course. These two teachers helped push me to better myself in almost every way. Mrs.Privott helped me on a personal level with stress and trauma; from her support she made me a much stronger person. Mr.Harpold helped me with my self-esteem, he took the time to help me when I needed it, even when I wasn’t in his class, just as Mrs.Privott did.
There are a great number of things that can create problems for students in regards to their academics. One such issue is misunderstandings. There are some that are more common than others and will be identified in order to recognize potential problem areas and solutions. In addition, there are some misconceptions that are associated with particular content areas. One content area that will be under scrutiny will be the Social Studies classroom. These potentially problematic instances will be identified and methods will be devised using the “Backward Design” (Wiggins, & McTighe, 2005) approach in an attempt to reduce issues the teacher may face.
According to the National Council for the Social Studies, “In a world that demands independent and cooperative problem solving to address complex social, economic, ethical, and personal concerns, the social studies are as basic for survival as reading, writing, and computing” (2013). The council argues that Social Studies must be an essential part of the curriculum in the early childhood/elementary years. However in schools across the country, an increased amount of instructional time is spent on English, Language Arts and Math while Social Studies, Science, Art, Music, Physical Education, and Recess is neglected. In a
For example, when I was a freshmen in Clear Lake High School. My favorite subject is math because I’m good at it and also math is interesting for me. My Algebra 1 teacher was Ms. Brodus. Her class rules was so strict. She always told students to put their cellphones away but, she was so enjoyable, delighted and pleasant talk to. Also, she always gave her plenty of time to every students. She was so organized about her every assignment. Whenever a student has trouble in any problem she helps them. She always teach each problems step by step so, the students can better understand. She always shows students two ways how
Social studies ultimately about civic education, or civic competence. The idea being that all students need to have a certain amount of knowledge, skills, and democratic dispositions to be an active participant in their community (Chapin, 2013). The Arizona standards are quiet complex and thorough when it comes to social studies in the fourth grade, but only in some areas. Asking Mr. Aleman a few questions regarding his personal feelings on social studies as a content area, I was ill-prepared for the honesty of his responses. First, was the question of whether or not social studies was a subject that students needed. This teacher felt that social studies was extremely important because it was a way to connect students with their past and cultural identity. I think that this is reflective of the Arizona state standards, which emphasis learning about the history of civilizations in Arizona and the Southwest. While the focus is on Arizona, it stresses the
It overlaps with other topics and considered everything could be considered social studies. Teaching and learning social studies should be incorporated into other lessons and is better learned through ecperiences related back to the topic and making accomodations for individual students like discussing a holiday a student celebrates alone. In this lesson, the topic was birds and they specifically focused on activities for birds in their community so they could create experiences rather than just staying in the classroom and seeing pictures of birds. The strategies used were to make food for the animals so they could look at a bird from different perspectives, but the children were more intrigued by the tool that made the bird noises. They would listen to them repeatedly and laugh every time one was
The aim of Social Studies is the promotion of civic competence the knowledge, intellectual processes, and democratic dispositions required of students to be active and engaged participants in public life. Proverbs 19:2 (ESV) states," Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way."For example it is essential for there to be commonalities across the grade levels so that there is a scaffolding of concepts to build from one grade level to the next.
Students come to the classroom with their own ideas and pre-conceived notions. As a future educator it is important for me to understand what students know and where there are misunderstandings. These incorrect ideas about our world and history translate into misconceptions, gaps in knowledge, and stereotypes that will be taken as fact until otherwise taught. To better understand the missing pieces in social studies education and to find ways to address these gaps, I delved into the minds of two third-graders, one male, Sawyer, and one female, Brooke. After conducting my interview I have a better understanding of topics that students are not clear on and would benefit from more instruction. One topic students have missing information about is knowledge of famous women in history. A second topic students seem to be confusing is basic geography understanding.
When I began my high school career, I had the opportunity to be exposed to a range of social studies courses in and outside of my high school, all of which have reinforced my interest in history, and have provided me with a different perspective on history. For instance, during my junior
Through this video I saw that Rita Pierson was a big inspiration because she expressed the way a child should learn and the way a teacher should approach their students to achieve each child's educational needs. Rita Pierson delivered a very true an inspirational message about what is the true core of being a teacher and building great relationships with students in order to inspire them as well and watch them succeed in life. As I watched this video many teachers came to mind but only one really deserved to write about. When I was in high school I had one of the most amazing science teachers, Mrs. Mccown. She was my physics professor and as well another human being who I could call my mom. She had a very deep passion for teaching and always
Social Studies can be a very broad term and can represent many different things. Coming into this class I really didn’t know what social studies was, I just knew that I had always liked what I thought it pertained and knew that I wanted to teach it. I had no idea that teaching social studies involves so many different topics, strands, and content statements at so many different age levels. Coming into this class I thought I knew a decent amount of information about social studies. I thought I had a strong knowledge of how to teach the subject of social studies based on what I learned in my other education classes that I have taken and the field placement that I had previously been in. This class really opened my eyes about Social Studies, what it is, and ideas and methods to teaching the subject. In this class, I have learned what social studies really is, how and why we teach it, and why I feel that I am a good candidate to teach it.
This problem stems from two issues: 1) education of preservice teachers and 2) emphasis on high stakes testing. First, elementary education programs focus on the modern two cores, English and mathematics, paying only lip service to science and social studies. This leads to teachers becoming unconformable with the content in these two subjects. This level of uncertainty produces a focus away from social studies and a focus on the other two contents. The second reason for the marginalization of social Studies in the elementary classroom is high stakes testing that places great importance on mathematics and English, but barely recognizes the role social studies plays in a student’s education. Teachers recognize this discrepancy and naturally chose to downplay the role of any subject other than English and mathematics. After all, they will be graded based on how their students do on the standardized test that places little focus on social studies.
The teacher that stands out most in my head is my eleventh grade English teacher. She had a liberal arts background, and enjoyed the classic American writers; Hemingway, Steinbeck, what have you. She was in the class of teachers who was more impressed by actions and honesty