Chapter 10

Chapter 10 is about the Behavioral Science domain within Social Studies. Behavioral Science covers psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Anthropology is the study of culture and religion. Sociology is the study of communities and how people interact. Psychology is the study of behavior of people as well as how people think. All three of these topics are closely related and can be easily mixed up. Behavioral science is often tied in with geography. Students would study about a certain location or city but they would also study the people that live within that city. I have never taken a behavioral science class, however in my geography and history classes we would study the culture of people. I think behavioral science domains are very interesting and they should be taught early on. Studying how people behave relates to many factors of life such as marketing for businesses, why people live where they do, and why people act the way they do.

Here are the links to my lesson. https://delicious.com/eowdom/lesson%205

Chapter 9

This chapter focuses on geography. Out of all the social studies genres, geography is covered the most in television. There are 5 themes of geography: Location, place, relationships, movement, region. These themes divide up all the different topics discussed in geography. Geography is a social studies subject that can most easily be added in with other core curriculum subjects. I remember reading Flat Stanley in early elementary. We actually created our own Flat Stanleys and mailed them to relatives across the united states as well as internationally if we knew someone out of the country. Once the Flat Stanleys were mailed back to us, we could compare information gathered from the different areas of the United States as well as a few other countries. Geography can also easily relate to science and mathematics. Earth science is very similar to geography. Part of earth science studies how storms form, whereas in geography you learn about where certain types of storms are prevalent and how they effect the communities. In geography students learn about reading maps and learning how to use the key as well as the distance scales. This relates to mathematics because of the standards that go over measurement. Students could find distances between two cities on a map and the practice converting the distance into different units. I think geography is a very fun topic and is easy to incorporate into many lessons and other subject areas.

Here are my links for my lesson. https://delicious.com/eowdom/Geo%20lesson%204

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is about Economics. I remember taking an economics class in high school. I don't ever remember specifically studying economics in any other class. Economics is often overlooked because it could be seen as hard or that it doesn't quite fit into the social sciences category. It is important for young students to learn about economics because they will learn about need vs. want. As students get older, they can see how the economy is a major factor in our lives because it controls the work force and prices of groceries and any other goods that we want to buy. Just like how civics is intended to create responsible citizens, economics is intended for students to be aware of what is happening in the world around them in the sense of job markets, money, and many other every day factors.

My lesson is about supply and demand. Here is a link to my delicious bookmarks:
https://delicious.com/eowdom/Economics%20Lesson%203

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is about civics and government. The goals for this section is for students to understand social science and history topics as well as become knowledgeable, responsible citizens. This section in the chapter focused on the standards for k-4 as well as 5-8th grade. There were also many helpful links about the judiciary, executive, and legislature branches of our government. I could see myself referring back to this chapter when I teach government to my students because of all the helpful websites.

My lesson is for 3rd graders and it is about the constitution. Here are my links on delicious bookmarks:
https://delicious.com/eowdom/History%20Lesson%202

Links

Here are links to my Weebly page as well as my Delicious Bookmarks page.


http://ete335socialstudies.weebly.com/ - Weebly Site


https://delicious.com/eowdom/tag_bundle/ETE%20335 - Delicious Bookmarks Site

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is about teaching history in the elementary grade levels. I really liked the concept of the Expanding Horizons Curriculum. Thinking back on my schooling regarding social studies, I would say it followed this curriculum very closely. I think this concept is a great way to slowly introduce young students to different social studies and history ideas. The Expanding Horizons Curriculum goes as follows: K- Self and Others, 1 - Family, 2 - Communities, 3 - Cities, 4 - Regions, 5 - United States and Canada, 6 - World. Another visual showed that as the grade level increases, so does the complexity and abstractness of the topic. Teaching history is all about head, hearts, and hands. Students need to be able to learn about the topics to gain the comprehension side of the topic. Then they need to be able to feel for what was going on in the situation. And lastly, students need to be able to create or build something to show off their new understanding of a historical topic.

Here is my link to my Delicious Bookmarks where I have linked five sites about President Abraham Lincoln.

https://delicious.com/eowdom/tag_bundle/ETE%20335

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is all about technology in schools. I really enjoyed the videos posted in the textbook on this section. Seeing the history of classrooms in reference to technology was very interesting. Many aspects of classrooms have changed: chalk slates, chalk boards, white boards, and smart boards. Even though many aspects have changed, the orientation of the classroom, with desks in rows, the teacher's desk near the front, a giant white board or chalk board in the front are all the same throughout American schooling history. Its weird to think how much technology has changed and how much research has been done on how students learn, yet the classroom settings are very similar to how they were in the beginning. I think utilizing as much technology items in a classroom as possible is best for my students because no matter what job they are looking into once they graduate, they will have to know how to use the various methods of technology.

Chapter 4

This chapter is about teaching strategies for social studies in the elementary grade levels. I liked the images of the learning activities repository and of the instructional strategies circle web. These give great ideas for teachers to use different activities and strategies for teaching social studies. I could see myself using these strategies for teaching social studies, but also adapting some of them to teach other subjects as well. The art of questioning diagram was a nice visual to represent what a teacher centered classroom vs. a student centered classroom would look like in terms of questions. The other section I liked was the deductive and inductive ways of thinking. In science, most of us use inductive thinking where you have to think of a hypothesis and then build facts and knowledge onto that based on experiments. I think teaching students about these two ways of thinking would be a good way to challenge students to think about a topic in a different way. These two ways allow students to look at topics from a different point of view and allows students to collaboratively work and think about how events connect to one another.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 is about lesson planning for social studies classes in the elementary grades. This chapter went in depth on Bloom's taxonomy and how each of the levels should be used when teaching social studies. I liked the chart in our notes that showed the percentage of retention based on the type of classroom activity was going on. This really shows how important it is to be using the top layers in Bloom's taxonomy. Also noted in this chapter was the head, hands, heart model. When teaching social studies, teachers need to keep in mind all three of these aspects when it comes to learning. Students need to engage in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor areas of each topic discussed. When I begin teaching social studies I need to be able to balance out these three areas so students aren't primarily doing only one of the three. Overall, social studies teachers need to balance out mode of instruction based on Bloom's taxonomy for difficulty levels, as well as head, hands, and heart so students are able to not only know the cognitive sides of the topic, but the affective and psychomotor aspects as well.

Chapter 2

Chapter two is all about the standards used when teaching social studies. Common Core has recently been implemented primarily for language arts and mathematics. Social Studies uses ISBE state standards and the National Curriculum Standards when teaching within Illinois. A small portion of the language arts Common Core standards are dedicated to literacy of historical documents and other sub topics of social studies. As I am training to become a teacher at the K-9 grade range, I find social studies standards to be confusing because there are so many different groups of standards. Also these standards can be vague so that teachers teaching the material in different schools may interpret the standard in a completely different way. I do like how ISBE has the different documents for each sub topic for social studies. I will find this helpful in the future when creating lesson plans. If I am wanting to do a history lesson, I can easily find the grouping of standards by looking up the history document from their website.

Chapter 1

Chapter one touched on the different domains, taxonomies, and frameworks when teaching elementary students. Three of the domains referred to head-heart-hands. Head is in reference to Bloom's Taxonomy which is the cognitive domain. Heart is in reference to Krathwohl's Taxonomy on the affective domain. Lastly, hands is in reference to the psychomotor domain. Teachers need to keep in mind all three of these domains when creating lesson plans. In order for students to really understand the given topic, students must experience each of these three domains so that they are thinking, feeling, and producing throughout the learning process.

This chapter also goes into the different models associated with lessons. I really liked Hunter's Mastery Learning, Karplus and Their's 5-E Model, and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Hunter's Mastery Learning goes over a skeleton version of a lesson plan. This shows the different aspects that should be included in lesson plans. I also found the 5-E model to be interesting. I have never seen this model before. This model is: Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, and Evaluate. This is a nice way to remember how the basic outline of lessons should be. Students need to be engaged in the beginning of the lesson, students need to explore the new topic, explain what is happening with the new topic, extend their knowledge on the topic by adding other discussion points from previous knowledge and by exploring new possibilities that could relate to the topic, and finally an evaluation to see how well the students were able to grasp the new concepts. The other framework I enjoyed was Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. As a teacher I need to mix up the way group work and evaluations are done. By using Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, I can change how my lessons are by changing which intelligence to use. Mixing up how lessons are taught and mixing up how evaluations are taken allows students with strengths in different intelligences a stronger opportunity to succeed because they are never stuck doing the same task over and over. If I always had my assessments be logical and mathematical, students who don't do well with these assessments would never score as high as they could only due to the format. By mixing up the assessments I will be more able to assess the student's knowledge on the topic and their application of the knowledge instead of their ability to successfully complete the given assessment's format.