ERDG 617: Teaching Social Studies, B-6

Program Requirements and Prerequisites: This course is required for the MS in Childhood Education and MS in Early Childhood Education programs. It is an elective for the MS in Literacy B-6 and MS in Reading degrees.

Course Description:This course focuses on history, culture, economics, government, and geography, for teachers to learn the theoretical and practical applications of historical and current concepts. Drawing on national and state standards, the course will emphasize materials, instruction, and assessment to promote conceptual understandings, including a diverse range of perspectives on social studies content.

Attributes
  • Literacy as Social Practice**
  • Equity
  • Generate Productive Learning Communities**
  • Engagement*
  • Reciprocal Relationships Across Modes of Communication*
  • Strategic Teaching to Promote Self-Extending Learning*
  • Assessment of Literacies and Their Development*
  • Research Based Professional Learning*
/ Attributes(continued)
  • Respectful Representation of Students, Families and Communities**
  • Critical Literacies**
  • Disciplinary Literacy/Knowledge Building**
  • Data Based Decision Making
  • Technologies and Digital Media*
  • Materials and Resources**
  • Prevention and Intervention
  • Standards**

Core Content / Possible Assignments / Possible Readings
What children and teachers need to know to develop historical and literate competencies:
Historical inquiry
Literary inquiry
Historical debate
Multiple Perspectives
Specific content knowledge: civics, government, history, citizenship, geography, economics. Multicultural understandings
Social and cultural traditions, beliefs, and values
Sense of historical themes across time and cultures
Evaluating texts for historical validity, reliability, and significance
Instructional and
Assessment Materials
Choosing appropriate literature
NYS standards, curriculum guides, assessment
Common Core Standards
Variety of Primary Sources, Secondary sources
Moving beyond historical fiction
Use historical evidence and analysis it for reliability, significance, and validity.
Contexts of Learning
Develop Interdisciplinary practices
Use instruction situated around "powerful ideas" to guide conceptual understandings
Developing Pedagogical Knowledge
Develop a sense of what students know, the basis for their idea/understandings, and methods to move the thinking forward
Collaborating for problem solving and examining assumptions
Engaging in reflective teaching
Developing a culture that promotes self-extending learning
Accessing and evaluating technology related resources / Powerful Idea Project
Students will design a project to implement in preschool and/or elementary settings. They will be developing a "powerful idea", including connections to standards, gathering primary sources, using literature selections, and writing a unit description.
Primary Source Collection and Analysis
In this project, students will collect primary sources, discuss the process of collecting the sources, evaluate the sources using the NARA evaluation sheets, and discuss how they might use the sources within their classroom. This includes sources from families and communities.
Final Exam
Students may have a final exam requiring them to synthesize content from across the course in response to questions/issues.
Museum Centers
Students gather primary source and educational information/materials from a local museum, historical center, or state park and interview a staff member. Then, produce a written project connecting these sources to standards and curriculum guides. / Levstik, L. & Barton, K. (2010).
Doing History: Investigating withChildren in Elementary andMiddle Schools. Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.4th edition.
Edinger, M. (2000). SeekingHistory: Teaching with PrimarySources in Grades 4-6.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Grant, S. G., & VanSledright, B.
(2005). Elementary Social
Studies: Constructing a PowerfulApproach to Teaching andLearning. Houghton Mifflin.
Selected Children’s Literature
NYS Social Studies CoreCurriculum with Resource Guide (1999)
NYS Common Core Learning Standards for ELA & Literacy (2011)
Ereserves with articles primarily from:
Social Studies and the Young Learner
Social Education
Educational Leadership
Language Arts
Reading Teacher
Sample Articles:
Potter, L.A. (2009). Teaching with documents, documents, and more documents.: The National Archives Digital Partnerships. Social Education 73(3), 109-112.
Risinger, C.F. (2010). Using online field trips and tours in social studies. Social Education, 74 (3), 137-138.
Berson, I.E. (2009). Here’s what we have to say! Podcasting in the early childhood classroom.Social Studies and the Young Learner, 21 (4), 8-11.
Barnes, M.K., Johnson, E.C., Neff, L. (2010). Learning through process drama in the first grade. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 22 (4), 19-24.
White, W.E. (2010). Historic sites and your students. Social Education 74 (2), 74-75.
Williams, T. (2009). A closer look: The representation of slavery in the Dear America series. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 21 (3), 26-29.
Meyers, L.E., Holbrook, T., May, L.A. (2009). Beyond heroes and role models: Using biographies to develop young change agents. Social Studies and the Young
Learner, 21 (3), 10-14.
Oldendor, S. B., Calloway, A. (2008). Connecting children to the bigger world: Reading newspapers in second grade. Social Studies and the Young
Learner, 21 (2), 17-19.