Our current classrooms are on the verge of change with the pedagogical shifts demanded by the common core state standards. The use of integration and seamless teaching throughout multiple content is becoming increasingly more apparent within the classroom. This study looks at the use of integration of the arts and Social Studies through the use of cooperative learning groups which help students achieve cognitive engagement and a deeper understanding of content. The researcher observed a third grade teacher deliver a lesson to a group of third grade students. After the lesson the students were to work as individuals or within a cooperative learning group. The researcher then interviewed the students about their experience either working independently or with their peers in a cooperative learning group. The data suggested that the use of cooperative learning groups has a positive effect on student learning and mastery of specific learning targets.
The traditional classroom is seeing a slow transformation as integration of subjects across curriculum is paving the way for a balanced education for students. However, high stakes testing and content standards can funnel down learning for students into a narrow one-size-fits-all method of learning. This study looks at the meaning of achievement and the various methods in reaching the objective of a lesson plan. Both cognitive and non-cognitive engagement serve as indicators of a student's achievement and understanding of the curriculum. Cooperative learning groups are fast becoming a tool used in enhancing the engagement of students while allowing them to work collaboratively rather than independently.
Give your students the opportunity to think, discover, and learn together in social studies! Teamwork helps students strengthen individual retention, improve performance, and promote meaning-making in the classroom. To give adolescent minds practice in critical thinking, the authors use their considerable teaching experience to present more than 40 problem-solving activities that are ready for immediate use in the social studies classroom. This updated edition of Catch Them Thinking in Social Studies demonstrates how to use collaborative learning strategies to fully engage students in meaning-making. Cooperative Problem-Solving Activities for Social Studies, Grades 6–12 offers lessons in five areas of social studies instruction: geography, politics, economics, culture, and history. Each activity includes background information, clue cards, objectives, tasks, and worksheets. This updated edition helps teachers: • Develop students' decision-making, analysis, and communication skills • Foster teamwork and interdependent learning • Construct cooperative problem-solving activities using their own curriculum Through the activities in this book, students will work together to learn about social topics while developing important, real-world skills. Featuring current research and new activities, this hands-on resource helps teachers facilitate cooperative problem solving in social studies and provides teacher tips throughout the book.
Make history in your classroom with an engaging, integrated approach to active social studies learning. You'll motivate your students with powerful strategies for brainstorming, language arts integration, discussion, primary sources, and deductive reasoning. The included Teacher Resource CD features modifiable students pages, and assessment materials. This resource is aligned to the interdisciplinary themes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. 304pp.
Featuring current research and new activities, the second edition offers collaborative learning strategies and more than 40 ready-to-use lessons to fully engage students in social studies.
Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century, Third Edition weaves theory, curriculum, methods, and assessment into a comprehensive model to guide middle and secondary teachers in setting objectives; planning lessons, units, and courses; choosing classroom strategies; and constructing tests for some of the field's most popular and enduring programs. It offers practical, interesting, exciting ways to teach social studies and a multitude of instructional and professional resources for teachers. The text includes separate chapters on teaching each of the major areas of the social studies curriculum. Its reflective and integrative framework emphasizes building imagination, insight, and critical thinking into everyday classrooms; encourages problem-solving attitudes and behavior; and provokes analysis, reflection, and debate. Throughout the text, all aspects of curriculum and instruction are viewed from a tripartite perspective that divides social studies instruction into didactic (factual), reflective (analytical), and affective (judgmental) components. These three components are seen as supporting one another, building the groundwork for taking stands on issues, past and present. At the center is the author's belief that the heart and soul of social studies instruction, perhaps all teaching, lies in stimulating the production of ideas; looking at knowledge from others' viewpoints; and formulating for oneself a set of goals, values, and beliefs that can be explained and justified in open discussion. New in the Third Edition: * Summaries of recent research, particularly in history education, that have been published since the last edition; * Increased attention to social studies standards, as well as those for civics, economics, and history; * An enriched view of teaching history and social studies with a wide array of sources ranging from material objects through primary sources on to art, music, and literature; * Tightening of the text to make it shorter and more pointed, including a few provocative new ideas; * More and better-organized ideas for classroom group and individual activities and cooperative learning;* Expanded appendices on instructional resources include the rapidly growing use of websites; * New visuals that are better integrated into the text and which teachers can use in their classrooms as lessons in visual literacy; and * Continued efforts to inject a bit of humor and self-criticism into a field of education most students view as a sizeable trunk of dead and deadly facts. Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century, Third Edition is a primary text for secondary and middle social studies methods courses.
