My Thoughts about the Social Studies Curriculum

Over the past couple of days, I have taken a very close look at the Social Studies Curriculum. I have come to understand some of the big ideas for each grade level and can see how many of the social studies concepts interconnect and build off of one another. Key themes, such as, significance, patterns and trends, interrelationships, perspective, continuity and change, and cause and consequence, are seen across the curriculum expectations. Although each grade may cover different content, aspects of these concepts are prevalent at all grade levels. This following picture is taken directly from the curriculum document and describes how these 6 concepts are integrated within the social studies curriculum

I also feel like this document fosters student interest and inquiry-based learning. The expectation requirements or topics are fairly general. For example, in the grade 7 curriculum, students are often expected to investigate a social studies "issue," or the interactions between various "groups." Because these topics are so general, teachers are able to incorporate student interests into lessons. Real life events can also be incorporated into lessons so that students can relate "issues" in their surrounding environment to social studies concepts.

I found that the verbs used within each social studies expectation are very specific. For example, verbs such as analyse, communicate, demonstrate, describe, identify and evaluate are used within the expectations. These are all verbs that should inform a teacher's lesson. Each verb represents a skill, and these skills are key to student success in an inquiry-based classroom, where questioning, analyzing and proving are extremely important.

As I read through this document, I began to think about the resources that students and parent could use at home, in order to develop these important "verb skills." I came across a couple of resources that I think will help to achieve this goal. The website BrainPOP provides a variety of different activities for students to complete, based on the social studies expectations. Students can participate in games that require them to answer questions and discover new meaning through analyzing brief scenarios. Students also have a wealth of choice on this website and are able to pick from a variety of scenarios that would apply to multiple interests. Here is a link to the website page with these resources. Feel free to check it out and write comments about your experiences below this post.

If you are looking to learn more about inquiry-based learning, a teaching strategy that the new social studies curriculum encourages, then check out this video. It explains what inquiry-based learning is and how it can be used in a classroom.