Twowheeler

Mary's Teaching Website

Category: Free Inquiry

Free Inquiry #6 – Current events in the classroom as social studies curriculum – relevant to students and manageable for teachers?

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On November 24, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Social Studies

Another key question I have had about the use of current events in the social studies curriculum is, is this a proxy for relevance for the students?  The answer I have come to is: sort of but to make it even more, allow student choice in topic.   We know from educational psychology that motivation for learning can be encouraged through several mechanisms including helping students make choices and set their own goals, interpersonal involvement, real life models, and tapping into prior knowledge.  Current events allow us to make connections to real life models and tap into prior knowledge (as students are likely to have heard about many of the current issues, more so than past issues).  Add in student choice on topic with process and content guiding by the teacher, and I think there is a high likelihood that motivation for learning will go up.

So, if we are going to respond to current events/issues/themes, and we are going to give students choice in which current events/issues/themes, then how can this be manageable for the teacher (i.e. how can they be prepared to assist the learning, bring resources and frameworks to explore the topics etc)?  In my conversations with other teachers on this topic, this is a major question that has come up.  There are a couple ways I think this could be done.  One, is to change the concept of current events from the idea that it is responding to daily headlines, and rather think of it as themes or recurring issues.  For example, in my last post, the current event allows a look into the theme of Canadian foreign policy.   I think this way has promise, as it allows a look at what is triggering an issue, but the underlying issue or theme is a universal one for humanity.  The benefit of this is that a teacher also, can look at some of the major issues going on (or about to go on, e.g. in the case of an election year) in the summer and do a little prepping of key issues/events going on that could be covered, or given as an option to cover (if you want to give student choice) during the school year.    Another way that content could be developed would be to let the students be responsible for a lot of the content building. In this case, the teacher would need to be preparing the structured process within which this content building could successfully occur.

Free inquiry blog #4 – Current Events in the Social Studies classroom – keeping it mapped

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On November 24, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Social Studies

One thing I recall from my undergrad in History, is that no matter what classes I would take, no matter how seemingly unrelated, they all would relate somehow to each other.

Matt Doran explores the idea of  making current events a central driving force in social studies in his blog – https://www.21socialstudies.com/blog/teaching-history-through-current-events-every-day-can-be-a-current-events-day.  One issue he identifies as a challenge is study of our history becomes non-linear and quite disjointed chronologically.   But I like his idea for dealing with that which is to start the year with a broad chronological overview in the first part of the year, and also use a regularly-updated wall map and time line to help keep track of connections.

I like the idea of a chronological (timeline) and geographical (wall map) reinforcers to show linkages and relationships.   I also think that because the curricular competencies and content requirements of the social studies are so concentrated into a few areas, it would be possible to structure cluster of current event into these types of buckets, e.g. current events that demonstrate differences in perspective/worldview. These could also be demonstrated in a visual manner in the classroom.

Ed tech blog #5 – PSII visit and Inquiry in the classroom

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On October 24, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Personal Learning Networks, Uncategorised, Understanding Learning

I found the visit to Pacific School for Innovation and Inquiry very inspiring and eye-opening.  I am most curious about how to use an inquiry approach in the everyday public school classroom.  For some insights into this, the founder of the school suggested checking out the work of Trevor MacKenzie who has been using inquiry in his classroom for years (https://www.trevormackenzie.com).  From there, I listened to some of his podcasts and read his first book on the topic – Dive into Inquiry (https://www.trevormackenzie.com/dive-into-inquiry).   There are so many useful ideas in the book.  And while we have been asked to do a lot of inquiry as our assignments so far, the book provides some very good insights into how exactly you would apply this method as a teacher in a public school classroom.  In addition, the PSII website also provides some very good resources to draw from. I was especially interested in the Learning Verbs Depth Chart http://learningstorm.org/learning-verbs/.  With these resources, I’d like to start mapping out a series of activities/lessons to put this into action.

Free Inquiry #3 – James Kendra on Social Studies in the classroom

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On October 18, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Uncategorised

I sat down to watch James Kendra’s Ted Talk  – https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=748&v=yrYGFdzQSmg.

He hit on so many of the points that I have been thinking about in relation to Social Studies teaching.  One of the key reasons that I wanted to look at the use of current events in Social Studies teaching is to explore whether it could be the hook to create relevance for students. I hope to never have to hear the question ‘why do I have learn this’ because it will be so obvious to them the relevance of the material.  The question in my mind is – what makes something relevant to us?

In his talk, Kendra starts to explore some of his answers to this.   He talks about a content-free classroom, but it seems that what he means by that is not so much content-free but rather predetermined-content-free.  He seems to be espousing the idea that by teaching through current events and allowing students to ask questions about events that are relevant to their lives it sparks their passions/interest, and that this in turn leads to better citizens. The questioning that occurs also is bound to lead down the road of history, geography, civics, economics etc. making it easy to cover any pre-determined content that may exist.  He contrasts the approach with the more traditional social studies classroom which not only overall had a major  emphasis on history, but also very often started in the past and too often never made the link to the present.  He speaks about how he thinks students need to be able to understand what is going on now in order to understand what went on in the past.

Given all of this, I’m interested in reading/thinking more and testing a method of Social Studies teaching that looks like:

  • starting in the here and now (i.e. current events)
  • allowing students to ask their own questions (connection to inquiry here) about the current events to get them thinking deeply about what is going on and why.

It seems the recent changes to the curriculum  with a move toward less pre-determined content in the classroom, may create the space and time to do the above.  If what Kendra says is true, teaching through current events and with student-led questioning, may be the way to getting kids inspired and invested in Social Studies.

In my next step in this learning – I plan to take a current event and see if I can identify:

  • what  curriculum big ideas, competencies and content could be covered
  • what kind of strategies I would need to employ to make ‘teaching through current events’ effective.

Free Inquiry blog #2 – Current Events in the Classroom – some observations so far

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On October 10, 2019

In Free Inquiry

I have started to take notes on how teachers in the classroom are using current events.  So far, these have looked like:

  • Use of the stories of fires it the Amazon rainforest as a launching point for the reading and answering of questions on an article that discussed the issues of resources in the Amazon.  The teacher also took the opportunity to introduce some terms from physical geography, like basin.
  • Looking at Bill 21 in Quebec which bans religious symbols for public sector workers.  The students were asked to listen a podcast as well as to review a Global News article on the issue.  Using this current event, the teacher was able to get at what are the legal issues of the case?  What is the Bill about?  What is the media saying about it?  what are some outstanding questions that the students would like better answered?  What are some questions for class discussion?  In addition, constitutional issues were raised as part of this current event. The teacher indicated that by being exposed to constitutional issues now through a current event, it will assist when they look at constitutional issues in a more linear fashion later on.  This made me think of a colleague who had been mentioning that they were learning about a mentor’s theory of teaching practice called EDO – explore, discuss, observe (I think that is what it stands for).  The idea behind it is that it is better to get the kids to explore, discuss and then teach about a subject rather than the reverse (which is usually more traditional).  This method was explained in the context of science, but I am intrigued by its potential merit for social studies.
  • The final example that I saw recently was the use of the federal election and the planning of an all-candidates debate and student vote to explore questions and information like historical voting patterns in Victoria, who should be able to participate in debates and why? How do people vote usually, i.e. for the candidate? or for the party?

Of all the examples that I have seen so far, the class that was most engaged was the one discussing the federal election. I wonder if this is because there was a real decision at stake for the class, i.e. who would they be inviting to participate in their all-candidates meeting being organized at their school.  This made me think, maybe using current events in a classroom to help with relevance and engagement is a good start, but maybe even more compelling is activities that have real implications for them.

Free Inquiry blog #1 – Current Events in the Classroom

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On September 30, 2019

In Free Inquiry

Thanks to the introduction to Trello, I am rolling with my free inquiry – Current events in the Social Studies. So far I have identified the following questions that I want to explore:

-How could I use current events as the anchor for teaching all aspects of the social studies curriculum in the classroom?

-Will using current events help make the curriculum relevant for students?

-How have experts (i.e. current best practices) thought about using current events in the classroom?

-How are the teachers at the school where I am observing using current events in the classroom?

Here are a few resources I think I am going to want to check out for this project:

https://www.facinghistory.org

https://www.21socialstudies.com/blog/teaching-history-through-current-events-every-day-can-be-a-current-events-day

https://www.backstoryradio.org

http://www.choices.edu/resources/current.php

 

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