SOCIAL STUDIES FOCUS
LeRoy Elementary School is unique in
the way they set up their social studies and science instruction. Every quarter, the instruction is focused on
just one of the two subjects. For example,
the third quarter was a social studies quarter, and now, science has just
started as the fourth quarter just began.
I have never seen a setup like this before. Social studies is implemented within the two
hour literacy block in the mornings; however, I have only observed it being
taught one time.
The social studies lesson I observed
was in a unit about early explorers. The
lesson itself covered basic information about the Vikings. To connect this lesson to previous content,
my CT first reviewed the five major reasons explorers had to explore at this
time. This is something students had
been learning about the entire explorers unit, so my CT made sure to tie it
into this lesson as well. As we’ve
learned in our courses, students need that connection.
This is even something we incorporate when we
write and submit our lessons plans.
Next, my CT used a video as a
resource from Discovery Education’s website.
The video was about 18 minutes long and included a quiz at the end. When I first saw the video ran 18 minutes, I wondered
if students would be able to sit still and watch for that long, but the students
did a good job staying attentive. That was
the end of the lesson. I was kind of surprised
to see that there wasn’t an activity or group work or anything after the
video. In my experiences, I’ve learned
that if a video is provided in a lesson, it should be used as a resource,
rather than the lesson’s main instruction.
While I have included videos or video clips in some of my lesson plans,
they’ve always been short, and I typically use them as a sort of attention
getter in the introduction of my lesson.
This is not to say that there aren’t other ways to use videos, of
course. I’m also finding out that
Pinterest has valuable resources and ideas to use. I’ve started my own Early Childhood Social
Studies Board where I’ve pinned my own projects and ones by others, which can
be found here http://www.pinterest.com/daniellegubelma/early-childhood-social-studies/.
In terms of assessment, for that
particular lesson, I did not see any type of assessments being used. More than once, my CT has expressed to me
that they are not big on assessments at LES.
Two weeks later, I found out that my CT had given a quiz on “Reasons for
Exploration” on a day I was not there. This
assured me that she had followed up with the content being taught that unit and
had made a conscious effort to see just how much the students were
learning. She let me know that the
students did well on this quiz.
In comparison to my last semester’s
clinical placement, I’d say the social studies instruction is different. I was in a first grade classroom which had a
unique way of doing social studies as well.
My CT taught social studies to her class and the other first grade
class, while the other teacher only taught science. So, the classes would switch on days they had
social studies and science. The instruction
itself differs from this semester’s placement because it was all textbook based. The students would sit at their desks and
follow along in the book as my CT read the text. Then, there would always be some activity
which usually consisted of drawing a picture about what they learned. This semester, my third grade class does not even
use textbooks to teach any subject. The students
do not have a single textbook in their desks.
My CT does keep them stored in cabinets because she told me she uses
them as a resource once in a while.
In the future, I hope that I can
find a balance between what I’ve seen in my clinical placements in terms of
social studies instruction. To elaborate, I hope to combine what my current CT does with what my past CT did. I don’t believe textbooks are always a bad
thing, but I plan to stay away from the same old boring textbook instruction
for every single lesson. A change I plan
on making in my future teaching is providing more assessments. This is not to say I will give a pencil and
paper test after each unit or lesson. I’ve
learned recently about several assessment tools, both formative and summative,
that I can incorporate in order to find out if my students are learning from
me. Now that it’s the fourth quarter and
social studies is finished for the year, I am interested to see science begin!
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of the way your social studies and science blocks have been set up. I find that extremely interesting to having only one of those subjects a quarter. I feel like students will miss out on a lot of learning by doing that. I wonder why your school does that. I did like how your CT linked the students’ previous knowledge though. We have learned how important that is from our classes these past few semesters. It is good to hear how that is done in your clinical setting. I feel my CT does a good job of this sometimes too. That is very surprising the video was the only form of the lesson. Like you said we have learned how important hands on work are in any lesson. I also found it surprising the video was 18 minutes long. We have learned through our classes that videos are learned as a way to engage students or to further their thinking, not as the whole lesson. I feel we will be able to learn from these experiences in numerous of ways. I feel when we teach our lessons our CT’s will see another way of teaching these subjects. I know after I taught my lesson my CT liked the attention getter I used and the activities that were done. I hope your lesson helps your CT see a new light.
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI found the way Leroy teaches science and social studies to be very interesting and it is something I have never seen before. I feel that I would have to see this type of instruction in action before I could decide how I actually feel on it. On one hand, I feel that switching off subjects by quarters could be an efficient way to ensure science and social studies are integrated into the curriculum but you said in your time there you have only seen social studies once. This makes me wonder if this is because your teacher has not had the time to do social studies or if they switched to science not long after you were there? I do like at the beginning of the lesson your teacher connected the current lesson to their prior knowledge. I agree with you that this is something that is so important and we constantly learn about in class. I do not know if I agree with having the entire lesson be a video with a quiz at the end but I would be interested to see what this video consisted of. I am also curious while the video was playing what your teacher was doing during this time? And was the quiz at the end the only activity that your class participated in? I can somewhat relate to this kind of instruction because the only social studies implementation I have seen have been my teacher going through a PowerPoint presentation. During this time, the students were allowed to ask questions and participate that way. I think that you are really lucky to have seen two types of social studies instruction at your clinical placements. It is so interesting to see the effects of your current instruction in comparison to your last clinical placement. I really enjoyed reading your blog post!
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting and new to me of the way LeRoy has their social studies and science instruction set up. One thing that concerns me about this set up is how the students transition from learning social studies to learning about science and vice versa. Do you know how the students adjust to the change? I also wonder about how this affects the students’ learning of these content areas. For me personally, I think that it would be hard to learn about science one week and then social studies the next and then back to science a couple weeks later. I would find it hard to connect or remember the content previously learned and to apply that knowledge to what is being taught. I like how you said, “The social studies lesson I observed was in a unit about early explorers. The lesson covered basic information about the Vikings. To connect this lesson to previous content, my CT first reviewed the five major reasons explores had to explore at this time.” I like how she connected it to the students previous knowledge; like you, Cate, and Kristina said, this is something that is strongly emphasized in all of our classes and we have learned about its importance every semester. Another question I do have about the way LeRoy sets up social studies and science instruction is if each unit or quarterly content was a continuation from the previous quarter of the subject or just new content to be learned?
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteThanks for providing this detailed description of the SS you've seen and know about at your site. It is interesting how these subjects are integrated into literacy at your site. I'm wondering if you think that doing this allows the CTs to fully cover the content that we know this grade level should be doing and is capable of doing? If you were to add a separate social studies time of day to the classroom schedule where lit and math among other subjects are integrated in, but where the driving force is SS, what would this look like? How might it fit in with your clinical schedule? Might this better help them to fit all of the content in?
Also, I agree with the ladies above that segmenting SS and science like this is interesting. Critiques of this format include that it makes these two domains very disconnected, when they are actually very connected! This is why in class we plan for an every-other week or every-other day format. This allows you to keep the domains closer and whenever possible integrate them!
Good point about the use of video and tech! I'm glad to read you're thinking critically about this!
:)Kira