Social Studies

Social Studies Framing Statement

Rachel Ostler

ED698 Master’s Portfolio Spring 2023

University of Alaska Southeast

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Social Studies

Candidates demonstrate understandings, capabilities, and practices associated with the central
concepts and tools in Civics, Economics, Geography, and History, within a framework of informed
inquiry. (See NCSS Standards)

In this paper I will discuss the importance of social studies instruction in a general education

classroom. The artifact I have chosen to help facilitate this discussion is a lesson that I did during my

social studies practicum in a fourth-grade class in the fall of 2021. In this lesson, I taught about regions

of the United States. This artifact can be found here.

As classrooms focus more on the core subjects of reading, writing, and math, social studies

tends to get pushed to the side and taught only when there is time at the end of the day. I feel this

struggle in my current first grade classroom, as the time that I used to have dedicated to social studies is

now being taken up by tier 3 intervention literacy rotations. I have been forced to find ways to integrate

social studies in my teaching elsewhere. Beck & Parker (2017) said:

Simply put, social studies education is powerful, and not having access to it is disabling –
intellectually, socially, and morally. Without historical understanding, there can be no wisdom;
without geographical understanding, no cultural or environmental intelligence. Without
economic understanding, there can be no sane use of resources and no rational approach to
decision making and, therefore no future. And without civic understanding, there can be no
democratic citizens and, therefore, no democracy (p. 3).

With this knowledge, I find it important to find a way to teach my students about social studies, even

without a time strictly dedicated to it.

For these lessons, I focused on two Alaska State geography standards. Alaska Department

Education & Early Development (n.d.) Standard A of the geography standard is, “A student should be

able to make and use maps, globes, and graphs to gather, analyze, and report spatial (geographic)

information” (pg. 1). To start this lesson I began by having the students make a birds eye view map of

their own house. They were then instructed to divide their houses into five different sections, or

regions. They were able to choose how to split up their house with the instruction to think about what
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sets each section apart from another section of their house. After they did this, students talked to a

neighbor about how their house divisions were similar and different.

After participating in this activity, we started discussing the vocabulary we would be using. We

discussed what a region was and explained that is an area that has defining characteristics. By providing

students with an activity that focused on prior knowledge and linking it to the vocabulary we would be

using in our lesson, I was able to help develop my students’ schema on the subject. After discussing

what a region is, students came up with ideas on how they thought the United States should be split up

into regions. Students came up with ideas such as weather, location, and activities available. I then

explained that another way to split up an area by region is by physical features. These different features

would make up the geographic regions of the United States.

In order to provide differentiation in the classroom, I provided different ways of presenting the

lesson (Rapp & Arndt, 2012). At this point I moved from direct instruction to showing an engaging video

that included a song that went over each geographic region’s name and what characteristics made up

that region. By providing students with a song that went along with what they were learning, it helped

engage those students who learn through the multiple intelligences coined by Gardner (Slavin, 2015),

such as the musical intelligences. Now, students had a schema that they could reflect on when

remembering the geographic regions and their characteristics.

The second standard, standard B, that I addressed says, “A student should be able to utilize,

analyze, and explain information about the human and physical features of places and regions,” (Alaska

Department of Education & Early Development, n.d.). This standard dives deeper and says that students

should be able to discuss how and why groups and individuals identify with places, describe and

demonstrate how places and regions serve as cultural symbols, and make informed decisions about

where to live, work, travel, and seek opportunities. When creating this lesson, I wanted students to be
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able to research their own regions. I did not want students to simply read from a textbook to find

characteristics of their region and I did not want to sit and lecture to them for a test that they may not

recall due to lack of schema. I wanted to provide many ways for students to demonstrate mastery of the

content and thus give students with different learning styles and needs the ability to reach high

standards” (Rapp & Arndt, 2012). In order to facilitate this, I planned a research project where each

student chose a geographic region where they wanted to live and then became a travel tasked with

making a presentation to convince their classmates to move to that region. Students were given key

points to research about their chosen region such as history, climate and weather, places of interest, fun

facts, food, plant, and animal life as well as natural resources and industry and manufactured products.

They were able to use their textbook, Chromebooks, or library resources to find their information. To

differentiate this, I provided students with a brochure template; however, students were also given the

opportunity to create their own presentations through PowerPoint, a movie, song, or oral presentation.

By providing the students with the basic things they would need to find in their research, the students

were able to organize their plans and were able to focus on keywords when searching for their

information (Koechlin & Zwaan, 2014). After students presented their research on their chosen regions,

we had a discussion on whether or not students changed their mind about where they might want to

live. By listening to other students’ ideas of what might be a great place to live, we were able to get a

small glimpse of multiple perspectives. Lesh (2011) says that the key to teaching multiple perspectives is

to ensure students do not reject a different perspective because it defies their widely accepted ideas.

Instead, “they are taught to recognize the perspectives as reflections of particular texts and subtexts

[historical context], and then to corroborate the various pieces of evidence. Considering multiple

perspectives becomes a tool by which they can develop a nuanced understanding of historical

questions” (p. 114). While multiple perspectives come into play much more noticeably, when talking
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about topics of history, this activity of listening to others’ perspectives can help build a schema for

future, more challenging discussions.

A key point I made when planning this lesson was to use multiple stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Edupress (n.d.) said, “Bloom’s Taxonomy divides the way people learn into three domains. One of these

is the cognitive domain, which emphasized intellectual outcomes. This domain further divides into

categories that are arranged progressively from the lowest level of thinking, simple recall, to the highest,

creating new ideas” (p. 1). By talking about a region and asking students to recall what different

characteristics classify a region, as well as which states belonged to a particular region, students were

engaging in Level 1: Remembering. By comparing and contrasting the regions of the United States,

students were engaging in Level 2: Understanding. By creating their own brochure for their region,

students were engaging in Level 6: Creating. By engaging students in multiple levels of thinking there will

be improved attention to detail, increased comprehension, and expanded problem-solving skills

(Edupress, n.d.).

While core instruction is essential in preparing students to be successful adults, social studies

education is important in teaching students how to function as a community, whether that community

be local or global. Beck and Parker (2017) said:

When children are empowered by knowledgeable and skillful teachers with the information,
ideas, skills, attitudes, and values that comprise the social studies curriculum, their judgment is
improved. Consequently, they can reason historically, help solve community problems, embrace
diversity, fight intolerance and bigotry, protect the environment, and, with deep understanding,
empathize with the hopes, dreams, and struggles of people everywhere (p. 3).
In this lesson, we only planted the knowledge of how the United States is organized into geographic

regions. However, through doing so, we hopefully created a schema that will allow students to develop

and find ways to better help their community and those regions in which they live.
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References

Alaska Department of Education & Early Development. (n.d.). Alaska Standards.

https://education.alaska.gov/standards

Beck, T.A. & Parker, W.C. (2017). Social studies in elementary education. (16th ed). Pearson.

Edupress. (n.d.). Quick flip questions for the revised bloom’s taxonomy. Teacher Created Resourses.

Lesh, B.A., (2011). Why won’t you just tell us the answer? Teaching historical thinking in grades 7-12.

Stenhouse.

Koechlin, C., & Zwaan, S. (2014). Q tasks: How to empower students to ask questions and care about

answers. Pembroke Publishers Limited.

Slavin, R. (2015). Educational psychology: Theory and practice. Pearson.