Topic 2

Social Studies
Knowledge
 Teacher’s Tip:
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your job is
to teach the social studies basal textbook supplied
to you by your school. Your job is to:
1. Evaluate the book in terms of how it will help you
achieve your objectives.
2. Design lesson plans that choreograph the book and
other resources.
3. Focus on Big Ideas, Procedural Knowledge, and
Basic Skills.
4. Use the Information Knowledge from the text and
other resources.
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 Topic 1 List Group
& Label: Social Studies
Subject Information Procedural Basic Skills Academic Ideas &
Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Disposition Beliefs

History Character & Character &

Citizenship Citizenship

Geography Character & Character &

Citizenship Citizenship

Economics Character & Character &

Citizenship Citizenship

Government Character & Character &

Citizenship Citizenship

Social Character & Character &

Sciences Citizenship Citizenship

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 NCSS Goals Statement
The Purpose of Social Studies
The purpose of social studies for young children, K–6, as for all
age groups, is to enable them to understand and participate
effectively in their world.
Social studies
– explains their relationship to other people, to institutions, and to
the environment.
– equips them with the knowledge and understanding of the past
necessary for coping with the present and planning for the future.
– provides them with the skills for productive problem solving and
decision making as well as for assessing issues and making
thoughtful value judgments.
– Integrates these skills and understandings into a framework for
responsible citizen participation, whether in their playgroup, the
school, the community, or the world.
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 Social Studies and Social Sciences

• social sciences typically refers only to the

academic disciplines of sociology, psychology,
and sometimes anthropology
• social studies also includes history, economics,
geography, the humanities, and philosophy.
• At the elementary level, social studies typically
integrates all of these fields of study.

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 Basic Skills Knowledge

• Generic Basic Skills

• Social Studies Basic Skills

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 Information Knowledge

Information Knowledge Teacher’s Tip

Non-fact-based generalizations
(sometimes referred to in are a necessary part of age-
the academic literature as appropriate instruction and
Propositional Knowledge, textbooks. But teachers should
use them either to teach children
Declarative Knowledge
how to read social studies
content critically (i.e., is this
• Facts material supported with facts?)
or to serve as a launching pad
• Concepts for a lesson on how to develop
facts around a generalization.
• Generalization

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 Procedural Knowledge

A record of knowledge (Information Knowledge)

and knowledge (both Information and
Procedural Knowledge)
• Generic Procedural Knowledge
– Thinking Skills and Critical Thinking
– Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
• Evaluation, synthesis, analysis, application, understanding, and
knowledge
http://www.educ.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/sstudies/part3a1.htm

– 35 Dimensions of Critical Thought

• http://criticalthinking.org/resources/TRK12-strategy-list.shtml#s17 .

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 Procedural Knowledge

• Modes of reasoning, executive processes,

and habits of mind.
• Includes
1. Deciding on the nature of the problem
2. Creating a mental image of the problem
3. Developing a strategy to use basic skills and
executive processes
• Ten NCSS Themes http://www.ncss.org/

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 ASSIGNMENT2.1

• Text Structures
1. Generalization supported by examples
2. Enumeration (lists of items)
3. Time patterns (items or events placed in
chronological order)
4. Climax patterns (items arranged from least
important to most important,
5. worst to best, or smallest to largest)
6. Compare-and-contrast patterns
7. Cause-and-effect patterns
• Houghton Mifflin’s Reading 9, “Using Money”

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 Academic Disposition

If Procedural Knowledge is how to think more like an

expert in a domain or discipline, an Academic
Disposition is the instinct to use Procedural Knowledge
and the expertise to use the appropriate type of
Procedural Knowledge.

1. Fact finder: instincts to probe, refine, and simplify

2. Follow through: instincts to organize, reform,
and adapt
3. Quick start: instincts to improvise, revise, and stabilize
4. Implementer: instincts to construct, renovate,
and envision

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 Ideas and Beliefs
• An idea is a thought or • A belief is an idea that is
initial opinion that a person transformed because we
formulates on the basis of embrace it, value it, and
his or her unique believe it to be correct
accumulation of Information
and Procedural Knowledge.
Racism and sexism are
• Ideas may be correct or
undemocratic beliefs, yet some of
incorrect; all ideas are only
your students may come to school
partially formed and,
affirming them based on their
• Naïve ideas parents’ beliefs. How is a teacher
• Grade-appropriate ideas. to reconcile the conflict between
family belief systems and those of
a democratic society?

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 What Is an Education?:
Primary Document
We know you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in these colleges, and the
maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you.
We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and
we thank you heartily. But you who are so wise must know that different Nations
have different conceptions of things; and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our
ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have
some experience of it. Several of our young people were formally brought up in
the colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences;
but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means
of living in the woods, unable to bear either the cold or hunger, knew neither how
to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly,
were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally
good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged for your kind offer, tho’ we
decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of
Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education,
instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.

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 ASSIGNMENT2.2
Web of Social Studies
• Webs, like all concept organizers, are an important
part of teaching at all levels because they allow
people to create mental maps.
• Draw a web depicting your understanding of the
structure of social studies education using the
major terms from this topic, plus Citizenship and
Character Education.
• Be prepared to turn in the web and to share your
ideas with the class. The web should be attractive
enough to put in your portfolio.

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 Web of Social Studies

Strategy - Analogy: Provide a bridge to a new concept

(how to construct a web) by using the familiar and
modeling, then require students to apply the concept.

If you were asked to create a web of the

elementary school, what would it look like?
First, you would start by brainstorming terms like:
classrooms, people, school buses, cafeteria, etc.
Then you would create a web.

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 Web of a School

A
? School

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 Web of a School

? Students
Teachers

Facilities People Parents

Bus
A drivers
? School
Cafeteria
workers
Rules ?

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 Create a Web of Social Studies

• First, develop a list of the 16 most important

terms from the chapter plus Citizenship
Education and Character Education.
• Social Studies Will be the hub for a total of 19.
• Draw your web.

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 Assignment 2.2: Web of Social Studies
Facts Generic
Information Procedural Procedural
Knowledge Knowledge
Concepts Knowledge

Generalizations Social
Studies
Procedural
Knowledge
Social
Generic Basic Studies
Basic Skills Abilities
Skills Knowledge Academic
Disposition
Motivations

Social Sensitivities
Ideas & Beliefs
Studies
Basic •Character Inclinations
Skills •Citizenship

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 Video

• Learner.org’s Creating Effective Citizens explains

how social studies concepts are necessary for
effective citizens and democracy.
http://www.learner.org/channel/libraries/socialstudies/
issues/citizens/index.html#

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