Presented By: Joe E. Hart jhart@clayton.k12.ga.us

 What is Social Studies?
 Goal of Social Studies Curriculum
 Ten Themes of Social Studies
 Social Studies and Social Sciences
 Community as Source of Data
 Typical Scope and Sequence

 Instructional Strategies
 Bloom’s Taxonomy
 Learning Concepts
 Citizenship
 Maps and Spatial Sense
 Multicultural Education
 Assessment

 The social studies are:
 selected information and modes of investigation from the social sciences
 selected information from any area that relates directly to an understanding of individuals, groups, and societies
 applications of the selected information to citizenship education.
Social Studies for Elementary School Classrooms
(Martorella and Beal, 2002)

Goal of the Social Studies
Curriculum
 NCSS states the following view:
 “The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informal and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
Social Studies for Elementary School
Classrooms (Martorella and Beal, 2002)

 The National Council for Social studies (NCSS) has created ten themes that form the framework of the social studies standards
<title>socialstudies.org | Curriculum
Standards for Social Studies:
Executive Summary

 Culture
 Time, Continuity, and Change
 People, Places, and Environments
 Individual Identity and Development
 Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

 Power, Authority, and Governance
 Production, Distribution, and
Consumption
 Science, Technology, and Society
 Global Connections
 Civic Ideals and Practices

Social Studies and Social Sciences
 Geography
 Organized according to five central themes
 location- describing positions of people and places on Earth
 place- detailing the human or physical characteristics of places on Earth
 relationships within places- cultural and physical relationships between humans
 movement- relationships between and among places
 regions- the ways areas are identified

Social Studies and Social Sciences
 History
 A selective representation of reality with selective interpretation of events
 Cause-effect relationships
 History websites
 www.historyplace.com
 http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com
 Click on Explore
 Click on US History Timeline
 Economics
 relationships among people that are formed to satisfy material needs
 cost, supply and demand, labor, standard of living, etc.

Social Studies and Social Sciences
 Political Science
 analysis of power and processes by which individuals control and manage one another
 Anthropology
 study of humankind
 Sociology
 study of human interactions within groups
 Psychology
 understanding individual mental processes and behaviors

 Garbarino’s Four Spheres of Influence
 home, peers, community, and school
 Community is a great resource
 Resource people
 Field trips
 Oral histories
 Surveys and interviews
 Community service projects

 “Expanding Communities Pattern” (Hanna)
 Students are introduced each school year to an increasingly expanding world, starting with self and family to the world at large
 Start with child as center and move out
 http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/DMGetDocument.as
px/social.studiesK-
5.pdf?p=4BE1EECF99CD364EA5554055463F1FB
BF5D074D5FB1F2CAEB3B63B3ECB220CDD26C2
114F3C57D8D2ACA0D35EC5A9A538&Type=D

 K-1: Self, Family, School
 2: Neighborhoods
 3: Communities
 4: State history, geographic regions
 5: United States history, culture, and geography
 6: World Cultures

 Activating prior knowledge
 Constructing knowledge
 Metacognition
 Coaching
 Modeling
 Informal Reasoning
 Demonstration
 Cooperative Learning

 Guided oral and silent work
 Graphic organizers
 Inquiry method
 Role-playing
 Simulations
 Small-group work (social skills)
 Jigsaw

 Levels of questioning
 Ordering questions in sequence to stimulate the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills
 Bloom's Taxonomy
 www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htm

 Concepts: categories into which we group information within our experience
 Identify misconceptions and stereotypes in students’ understandings of concepts
 Analyze concepts according to examples and non-examples
 Assess concept learning
 Transportation vs. Not Transportation

 Skills needed to function effectively in our complex society
 Social skills
 Conflict resolution skills
 Participation in democratic process

 Maps furnish 8 basic types of information
 land and water forms
 relief features
 direction and distance
 social data
 economic information
 political information
 scientific information
 human factors

 Introducing maps and globes
 Body maps
 Start with “me” and expand out
 Students must understand:
 maps represent a place
 maps use symbols
 maps show a perspective from above
 maps reduce the size of an actual place

 America is a multicultural nation because of so many cultural and ethnic groups that are represented
 Addressing perspectives is crucial to multicultural understanding

 Multicultural education will help students:
 learn how and where to obtain accurate information about a cultural group
 identify and examine positive accounts of diverse cultural groups
 encounter positive experiences with diverse cultural groups
 develop empathic behavior
 practice using perspectives
 improve self-esteem of all students
 identify and analyze cultural stereotypes
 identify cases of discrimination and prejudice
 teach social studies multiculturally all year

 Observation
 Oral Reports
 Portfolios
 Performance samples
 Tests