New ways to bring social studies to life

Instructor, Oct, 1994 by Jane Schall, Meg A. Bozzone

How six teachers connect kids with issues and concepts that affect their lives.

Creating 3-D murals, sending electronic mail, and writing a classroom newspaper What do these activities have to do with the textbook? Not much. But they have plenty to do with social studies. Just ask teachers who are bringing social studies front and center. These teachers have learned to capitalize on students curiosity about other people and environments, nurture kids' growing, awareness about the past and present, and open doors to new worlds. The pay-off, they report, is their students'--and their own--palpable enthusiasm for social studies and students' increasing empathy and sense of citizenship. Here, six colleagues share how they create exciting learning opportunities through hands-on activities, interesting strategies, and a bounty of resources.

Lucy Baker West Lake Elementary, Apex, North Carolina

Her social studies goal: To build regional awareness

Her tools: art, language arts, parent volunteers, cooperative learning

Her approach in action: Cooperative learning groups study the southeastern United States by plastering a 3-D montage of the region--a huge relief mural--o their classroom walls. Once the background is complete, groups pick a location, research it, design visual symbols to represent it, and tack the symbols to the montage. So far this year, her fifth graders have used everything from papier-mache to their own ingenuity to create a lighthouse, cotton fields, and traditional hats. Mountain ranges and the Kennedy Space Center are in the works

But in Lucy's class, linking art to regional history is only the beginning. Kid select personalities from the past or present, do "background checks" on them, write first-person journals in their name, make costumes for them, and visit th class in character. The class also writes a "what's happenin'--and what happened--in the Southeast" newspaper, learns songs of the region, and investigates inventions born of creative sons and daughters of the area. Lucy enlists parent volunteers to prepare regional foods and to host a tasting party

Why she teaches this way: "Social studies is a work in progress, because my students and I continue to find new avenues through which to expand our study."

Dorothy Dobson Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Logan, Utah

Her social studies goal: To tackle issues of prejudice and equality.

Her tools: role-playing, literature, critical thinking

Her approach in action: Dorothy, the 1992 National Social Studies Teacher of th Year, has her students delve into issues of race and bias by stepping into the shoes of literary and historical characters and acting out their roles. To spar interest, Dorothy starts by reading Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (Thorndike, 1992), about a boy, homeless by choice, who travels to a town that is divided down the middle--whites live on one side of town and blacks on the other. Although he is white, the boy decides to live on the side of town where the blacks live. After reading the book, Dorothy assigns her fourth and fifth graders parts to role-play in a week-long dramatization of a town that is facin desegregation.

Why she teaches this way: "I don't want my students to have narrow perspectives Role-playing helps all of us see a variety of points of view and tackle subject children might face later in their lives."

Sandie Sing Marvin A. Dutcher Elementary School, Turlock, California

Her social studies goal: To help students understand their place in time and space.

Her tools: on-line network, fax, letter writing

Her approach in action: Sandie brings the theme of a child's place in time and space--part of the California social studies framework for first grade--to her classroom in a tangible way via a spectrum of communication tools, from the traditional to the high-tech.

It all started last year when Sandie went on-line on Scholastic Network to ask if any teachers were interested in doing a writing exchange with her class in which students use invented spelling. Jane, a first-grade teacher in New York, responded and the two exchanged class letters--first by "snail mail" (students began to understand how far away New York was because the letters took a long time to arrive), then by fax (this helped the students learn about time zones), and finally on the information highway by live chatting via electronic mail. (A first, it boggled students' minds to see responses typed back immediately, but then they appreciated the speed of this mode of communication.) Students on bot sides learned about their similarities and differences by writing about their rooms, schools, communities, local weather, and so on. Sandie and Jane were abl to learn about and from each other, too.

Why she teaches this way: "What the world is all about--that's what social studies is for me. And maybe because I'm a minority, I especially want children to appreciate the similarities and differences among people worldwide. I like social studies to build memories and continuity between children and the community--experiences they'll remember when they grow up."