Role-Play: A Strategy for Teaching Social Studies Essay

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

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.

The book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, begins with an introduction in which author James W. Loewen empathizes with the students. He discusses how History, specifically American History, is taught incorrectly. Loewen is able to share his understanding of why high school students think history is boring. He begins his argument with facts and numbers by saying that out of all the subjects in school, history is almost every student's least favorite subject. He goes on to say that teachers also misrepresent history to students by teaching history as a ¨set of facts¨ rather than ¨showing how we got to this point.¨ Loewen’s writing style is much more relaxed than a typical non-fiction

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

History is a remarkable subject that offers and eagles eye view into the past. With textbooks such as, Hist3, a great deal of interesting information can be acquired. However, a common misconception runs rampant through students minds; the idealism that history is useless and that the subject is that of a drag. Who can blame them? Our text books can only do so much in terms of providing the means in educating ourselves when we’re not in a class room and when given the opportunity to appear in class we have the luxury of (hopefully) having and interesting professor to enlighten us on all the side conflicts, affairs, and bloodshed that has happened. Even so, when we as students have exhausted the book and our instructors, we have the privilege

History can be an intricate and laborious subject to teach and learn. James W. Loewen, author, historian, and sociologist, is the perfect example of someone who appreciates the subject in all aspects, but knows how underestimated it is. As he says in Lies My Teacher Told Me, “Our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest” (Loewen 11). Throughout the book, he further elucidated the idea of that quote by introducing particular topics that deserved more details and acknowledgement. Loewen argues with enough reasoning from numerous textbooks that the writers aren’t involving all facts that should be included to inform the students. Nearly all points

 zone of proximal development. To reach the target that child need lots of help and not steps which are to big as this could knock there confidence. Another stage Vygotsky has is ‘the importance of play’ he believed that play provides essential skills to improve their social, personal, and professional activates. This means that children can play and do things beyond what they can do in real life- such as play mums and dads, pretend to drive a car. Though play they talk to each other and pretend they are in a different world with only their friends. Play is another way they can reach the zone of proximal development. Reconstruction is another stage which means child experience the same situation again and again as they grow up. Each time they have this experience they can deal with it at a higher level. This means

Throughout secondary school, instead of accepting the facts stated in my textbooks, I continued to ask questions. Disillusioned by how complex historical events were taught like equations with a simple cause and effect, senior year of high school I determined that I would become a teacher. As a teacher, I aspire to not be hindered by standardized requirements and teach history in a way that resonates with students and evokes passion.

When it comes to classroom resources in social science and history classrooms, we are kind of limited. I think it is pretty clear that most courses

Writers pile obscure facts throughout their textbooks, making them appear to be comprehensive study aids. With the Internet, publishers assumed that textbooks would become more obsolete as students can have all their questions answered online. The opposite is true. Textbooks are growing at a significantly faster rate than new information about American history is even being discovered. With excessive information (and omission of certain important events), students young or old become overwhelmed by the amount of facts being thrown at them. Loewen asks, “How can students possibly be expected to know anything if they’re too busy trying to learn everything?’ Most certainly, he does not believe this course of study to be in the spirit of historical

Without direct instruction, students cannot learn on their own. They need to be taught how to do certain things to be able to be productive in life. They need to learn how to follow direction to be able to get to the correct answer with understanding.

During my first two days of my placement I got to observe a class role play of the constitutional convention. This allowed the students to think from the perspective of the individuals from the time period and thus led to students better understanding the constitutional convention. It was a real eye opener for me to see how my cooperating teacher created a lesson where students get to place themselves in the time period and serve an active role. The teacher observed and assisted the students, but the lesson was very student centered. Students were placed in groups, each group represented a different group such as farmers, white workers, enslaved African Americans, white women, and Native Americans. Each group had a figure that represented their

When signing up for classes I hadn’t put much thought into my personal goals for this class, let alone any of my classes and being a liberal arts student my main purpose is to find a subject that clicks, something that challenges me, not only as a student but as a person as well. That’s what I want this class to do for me. I’m not looking for an easy grade, I want a class that forces me to think. All throughout middle school and high school history has been somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine. And I say guilty pleasure because so many people have discouraged me from choosing the subject as a major in college. The past has always interested me far more than the future. I want to know our origins before I learn about what may possibly be in

Acknowledges that many factors contribute to the teaching process and require study within a greater social cultural, and historical context

There are various instructional approaches but one that is widely employed by many teachers is the direct instruction approach. This is the classic teaching style that many people remember during K-12 grade school. The teacher would stand in front of the class lecturing while writing on the black board. That is why direct instruction is also known as “Chalk and Talk” (Evans, 2006). Direct instruction is not out of date and is still appropriate in many situations today. The following will discuss direct instruction and a few scenarios in which this teaching approach is appropriate.