Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary Grades

Catalog description

Social studies transforms the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence (National Council for the Social Studies, 2002). In this course, teacher candidates learn to coordinate and conceptualize the richness of anthropology, economics, geography, history, civics, and sociology for elementary classroom pedagogy. Candidates become familiar with various instructional strategies that support social studies. Candidates gain an understanding of the information, concepts, theories, analytical approaches, and different perspectives-including global and multicultural perspectives-that are important to teaching social studies. Candidates also learn how to assess social studies learning in a variety of ways. This course stresses technology, content integration, social science competence, differentiated instruction, multicultural/global knowledge, teaching social historical inquiry, and constructing democratic learning communities. Teacher candidates learn how to apply the State Learning Frameworks and National Standards in their classroom instruction. At the conclusion of the course, candidates have a good understanding of elementary social studies and are able to develop and demonstrate powerful social studies curricula. Being a "W" course, SSED 430 incorporates both formal and informal writing into in-class and graded assignments to encourage teacher candidates to develop as critical thinkers and productive writers. This writing includes an essay describing one's own experiences as a social studies learner, reading responses, the creation of a unit of instruction, and several lesson plans that describe significant activities. These writing tasks are meant to professionalize the communication skills required to effectively teach social studies as well as to effectively communicate with parents, educators, and administrators. SSED 430W is a part of a block of courses in a PSU teacher education program that is unified by a basic set of principles and a field experience component.