Social Sciences

Independent Learning Activity One: What is effective pedagogy in Social Sciences? 

There are four mechanisms that are used in social studies as part of effective pedagogy that helps to explain what works for diverse learners in social sciences. These are connection, alignment, community and interest and are explained below. 

Connection: Connection involves teachers ensuring that connections are made between students own lives and the learning that is taking place. This might also involve making connections between students home lives  family, school life and the learning  content. Teachers should also seek experiences, resources and activities that include all students and seek to represent all experiences students may have. 

Alignment: Alignment involves teachers finding out what children already know and then aligning the learning activities to this. This means building on students' prior knowledge and therefore ensuring students work at a level that is neither too hard or too easy (ZPD). Teachers may also seek students misunderstandings or gaps in their knowledge to ensure they know where to aim the lesson in terms of content. 

Community: Community involves students and teachers both learning from and teaching each other. Therefore reciprocal learning is taking place where there is a co-construction of ideas between students and the teacher. Students should be given responsibility and decision making tasks and dialogue between students should be promoted. Teachers need to ensure that effective relationships are developed in the classroom for this reciprocal teaching to occur. 

Interest: Interest involves teachers taking into account the vast range of intersets of students in the classroom and basing lessons around these interests. Different students will enjoy and succeed in different activities, approaches and tasks as they are all motiveted in different ways. Therefore teachers must have a variety of learning approaches and learning content to ensure all students are engaged and can have accurate recall of activities due to their individuality.

Independent Learning Activity Two: 

Complete a Social Sciences inquiry planner. Place this as a pdf file on your blog. 

Independent Learning Activity Three: 

Find an image of people celebrating - describe how can you develop this as an igniter? 

 

In the classroom you could show this image as an igniter for a lesson about chinese new year. You could ask the children to look at the image and ask what they think the children are doing? What are they celebrating? Where might they live? What celebration might this be. 

This would be interesting and interactive for the students. It will allow them to see that children their age also celebrate certain events, however they do this in a different way. This will help show them others perspectives across cultures. 

Independent Learning Activity Four: 

Complete your planning assignment. 

Independent Learning Activity Five: 

Identify a place to take children on a visit - EOTC link. 

Toi-tu Early Settlers Museum Dunedin is a great place to take children for an EOTC visit outside the classroom. The musuem has a EOTC teacher who is specially trained to take the class around the museum and teach them about the different stages of Dunedin history. There are interactive exhibits set up at the museum such as the Ship chambers where students can dress up as a child from that time and pretend they were on the ship trip that went from England to Dunedin. This makes children think about what it would be like to live during this time and how they would feel if it was them. This creates deep learning where students will come away from the experiences remembering the event in detail.

Independent Learning Activity Six: Give an example of a picture book that supports teaching and learning in Social Sciences. Scan the book cover, annotate and link to a social science strand. 

Book - "My Grandad Marches on ANZAC Day" written by Catriona Hay and Benjamin Johnson.  

This picture book could be used during a unit/lesson on anzac day. The book focuses on a family and how they celebrate anzac day. It focuses on this special day through the eyes of a child which may resonate with students in the class. The book will help children realise the importance of remembering soldiers who died and how we can share this with out families. Children in the class may also have grandparents who found in the war and therefore this book will link with their personal experiences.

This book would also link to the social sciences strand "Continuity and Change" - "Students learn about past events, experiences, and actions and the changing ways in which these have been interpreted over time. This helps them to understand the past and the present and to imagine possible futures.