Reflection Of Teaching Social Studies

Before taking this class, I had a whole different outlook on what I would be learning, but I am grateful that the instruction I had made me reflect on the kind of classroom and practices I believe are important especially when it comes to teaching social studies. Practices and approaches that I would have never considered including into an elementary classroom curriculum such as research, flooding a terrain model, and role play have opened up my eyes and created a very different vision of my social studies classroom. In thinking about what children need and keeping their interests in mind, I honestly do believe that when students are learning about social studies, they need more than to just memorize names, dates, places and to worry about …show more content…
I thought that I knew everything I needed to know about conducting research, but when you take each step of what goes into doing research, and you break it down that’s when you start to think about how you can teach your kids to do productive research. It is never too early to start exposing them to concepts and to teach them skills that they will use throughout their lives. I like that we are teaching students to take learning into their own hands and to be investigators. Isn’t that what education is supposed to be about, learning based on inquiry? Because research has so many steps, it is important not to skip a step. Through research, students learn to be consistent and follow through to the end. “We teach research to make students self-reliant problem-solvers, life-long inquirers, to foster intellectual resourcefulness, for the intellectual empowerment of students” (Brian 3). Many times the student is expected to know how to do research on their own. When a project is given and children have to search for information the teacher (if teaching upper elementary) goes through some steps, but not all of the steps that it takes to do successful research. However, when each step is briefly explained students are left feeling satisfied because they know what is expected of them. What I found most helpful was having a list of “key words” that would be useful when locating information on a specific topic. Being able to …show more content…
Even though, yes, it can be difficult at first when it is being introduced to students, but there is a reason why primary source material is so important. Primary sources present a firsthand account of life in a specific time period. Primary history is not like reading a text book with countless of information that a student is expected to recall. Primary source material can be interesting and engaging to students if the material is chosen wisely. It also offers opportunities that other texts don’t such as allowing the student to make their own interpretations based on facts and not someone else’s point of view. Exposing and using primary sources in the classroom will benefit students mainly because each primary source is unique in the way that something different is learned every time. Exposure to such documents can help students appreciate the past, make connections between the past and the present, and encourage them to search do additional