Fostering Student Understanding in the Social Studies Classroom

Catalog description

& Spring In this course, Relay students will learn and apply multiple strategies to develop student understanding and elicit students’ ideas. They will begin by exploring interactive strategies for building students’ background knowledge, a foundational step that must take place before historical evaluation or analysis can take place. Next, Relay students will harness skills required to effectively plan and facilitate rigorous social studies discussions in both small-group and large/whole-class settings. Relay students will then explore how to incorporate technology in the context of a collaborative social studies classroom as a way to both enhance instruction and remove barriers to learning that students may experience. In the second half of the course, Relay students will deepen their understanding of the importance of planning formative checks for understanding and anticipating student misconceptions in planning and implementing social studies lessons; using their own understanding of social studies concepts alongside their understanding of their students’ misconceptions to strategically plan rigorous and illuminating formative assessments. Relay students will then respond to the data gathered from these assessments to make adjustments to their instruction and provide culturally responsive, effective feedback to their students.