Social Studies Final Review

Effective instructional planning requires a great deal of work by the teacher before a lesson is taught. Before planning a lesson, teachers must decide?

• what we expect students to do; and what the teacher must do in order for our students to achieve what we expect of them

• what we expect students to do; and information the teacher must find on the internet

• what the children want to learn and how to form ability groups

• what activities will keep the student actively engaged

A key goal for the beginning of a unit is for the teacher to:

• group students by ability, always considering the possibility of growth

• determine what students know about the topics the unit will cover

• show a feature film that relates to the content of the unit

• organize all the unit's lesson plans by degree of difficulty, the least difficult activities should come first, the most difficult activities in the unit should come last

An assessment plan for a unit should:

• show how the teacher will determine if the unit's objectives have been met

• be developed cooperatively with students

• allow all children to be successful

• rely on authentic tests

A comment a teacher might make to a student as part of formative assessment would include:

• "You are not meeting Social Studies Standard 4.6."

• "I have great news for you - you have enough points this quarter to get an A in social studies."

• "It is time for recess, please take everything off your desk and fold your hands."

• "I read your journal entry and I think you are having a difficult time understanding how an irrigation system works. Let me draw you a picture."

Constructing a valid rubric to assess student performance on an assignment must allow the teacher to:

• rank every student in the class from 1 to 30 - these ordinal rankings are very important

• distinguish performance in one category on the rubric from performance in the other categories

• provide immediate feedback to all students - the rubric makes this easy to do

• move quickly from one assessment to another

The faculty and the principal at Presley Elementary School agreed that assessment of students would be a high priority for the school year. In a group discussion with other faculty, a second grade teacher stated, "I really don't worry about whether or not students are achieving the objectives of each lesson I teach - it's the state social studies standards that I'm concerned about."

Why should this teacher re-think his perspective?

• The teacher is correct in that student achievement of standards should be any teacher's ultimate concern, but there is little chance his students will meet the standards if he doesn't check to see what students have learned.

• His state's social students standards are too numerous and too wordy

• He shouldn't; he is correct

• He really should have modified his position. If he said that he would assess student learning on 50% of his lessons, he would be correct.

Multicultural education consists of two interrelated dimensions, a curricular dimension and an equity dimension. A multicultural social studies curriculum does not limit itself to presenting information about a wide range of people, rather it:

• Focuses on teaching children about the heroes from every cultural group

• Provides the perspectives of people who frequently have been relegated to the margins in traditional social studies programs

• Provides opportunities for children to pretend that they live in a foreign nation

• Integrates the language arts, the visual arts, and the performing arts

A fifth grade teacher who reads aloud I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier of the Revolution has:

• transformed the social studies curriculum because the roles women played in the American Revolution rarely are mentioned in elementary social studies

• missed the point in transforming the curriculum - the point is to move beyond reading and incorporate the arts

• selected a book that is far too difficult for fifth graders to understand

• an obligation to notify parents that she will be reading a book about a female soldier

The difference between a mural and a diorama is:

• murals are large pictures on walls, they are two-dimensional; dioramas are some sort of three-dimensional display

• murals are large pictures on walls, it is important that all persons and objects be drawn to scale; dioramas are some sort of display using pipe cleaners

• murals are large pictures on walls, they are two-dimensional; dioramas are some sort of three-dimensional display that is life size

• murals are large pictures on walls, they are two-dimensional; dioramas are combinations of images

The most effective way to teach the definition of a word that is an object is to:

• write the word on the board and discuss its meaning - then have the children write the word in a sentence

• write the word on a 3x5 inch card and then show the word to the students - have the students come up with synonyms and antonyms for the word

• help the children break the word into parts - focusing on prefixes, suffixes, and root words

• present the object itself or an illustration of it