K-6 Social Studies
January 2015
Uping the Rigor through your Questions
What do you do each day to push your students? Hopefully, you were thinking by asking them questions I push my students to learn more.
Every one of your lessons should be planned based on the question, "What do I want students to know at the end of the lesson?" We want students to come away with a goal of their learning and thinking for each lesson you prepare for students.
Each lesson only needs one goal and it could even take more than one day for the students to reach the goal. By the questions you ask, there should be no simple "yes" or "no" answers. We know that students become more engaged based on the activities, content, and questions we ask.
Do you plan your social studies lessons focusing on a goal or do you just teach the content? We need to develop thinkers and the more rigorous questions we expose students to, the more critical thinking students we create. Our students are pretty good at answering the "right there" questions, but what if we bumped up their thinking. How would the questions we ask students change our classroom in all content areas?
Examples of different essential questions:
How do readers use authors' clues to make inferences?
What were the advantages of both the North and South during the Civil War?
Essential questions reflect a concept or skill you teach. Higher Order Thinking questions are embedded into your lessons and provide opportunities to push students and challenge their thinking.
These types of questions must be pre-planned and not just asked "on the fly." Push yourself this week to write down your essential question or your higher order questions. You could put them on a notecard in your pocket, write them in your lesson plans, tape them to your computer/document camera, place it somewhere you will see it.
"A good teacher makes you think even when you don't want to." (Fisher, 1998, Teaching Thinking)
Source:
Examples of different questions for each content area:
https://www.med.wright.edu/sites/default/files/aa/facdev/_Files/PDFfiles/QuestionTemplates.pdf
http://www.nscsd.org/webpages/jennisullivan/files/hots_questions.pdf
http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/league/esques.html
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109004/chapters/What-Makes-a-Question-Essential%A2.aspx
Check out these picture books!
House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter Barnes
Congress is in session and the Squeaker of the House and the Senate Mouse-jority leader have a big job to do: they have to pass a law designating a national cheese for the United Mice of America. In House Mouse, Senate Mouse, bestselling and award-winning duo Peter and Cheryl Barnes give kids an entertaining and educational look at the legislative process while teaching them the values of hard work and compromise. From drawing up a bill and committee discussions to voting and signing a bill, House Mouse, Senate Mouse teaches children about the Senate, House of Representatives, and the Capitol building. House Mouse, Senate Mouse also features “The Tail End: Resources for Parents and Teachers” at the end of the book to help moms, dads, and educators teach their little mice even more about our legislative branch. Fun and informative, House Mouse, Senate Mouse is a great book for any child who might one day aspire to be a Congressmouse and work in our nation’s capital.
The Squeaker of the House and the Senate Mouse-jority Leader have a big job to do: Miss Tuftmore's second grade class in Moussouri has written Congress with an idea for a law to declare a National Cheese! But in a big country, it's not always easy to get everyone to agree on an important isssue.
Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo
Category: Biography
This book is beautifully-rendered study of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, told in simple, straightforward language for even the youngest of readers to understand. Pinkney's scratchboard and oil pastel illustrations convey both the strength and gentleness of King's character. Both text and art carry his central message of peace and brotherhood among all people.
An introduction to a great civil rights leader.
P is for Passport: A World Alphabet by Devin Scillian
A passport and rhyming text celebrate the author's adventures discovering differences as well as similarities, from "A" for the variety of animals that populate the planet to "Z" for the time zones that mark the days around the world.
Test or Not to Test
Let's brainstorm a few different assessment ideas:
1. Have students use the different databases and create a smore newsletter.
2. Students can create a presentation using emaze.com, prezi.com, PowerPoint, Glogster, iMovie, etc. (Ask your Instructional Technologist for ideas)
3. Students could write a play based on a certain time period and present it to their students.
4. Students could write their own picture books or ABC books to explain a concept you discussed during your social studies class.
5. Have students work in groups to create a newspaper front pages with many different genres of writing.
6. Students could be given the freedom to show you what they learned with little direction from you by picking a form of a presentation that meets their interests and shows mastery of the content.
It is scary to have studnets pick their assessment tool, but you can always give them options. I suggest to always use a rubric to grade an assignment when it is a little more subjective in nature. There are different websites that will help you create a rubric in about the same amount of time it would call for to create a test.
You can do it! Be more brave when selecting your assessment tools. Give students freedom to show you what they know through their interests and creativity and not just a recall, multiple choice test.
Meredith Davis
Email: meredith.davis@southlakecarroll.edu
Website: www.southlakecarroll.edu
Location: 2400 N Carroll Ave, Southlake, TX, United States
Phone: 817.949.8247
Twitter: @carrollcurric