What Else is Social Studies?: Law Related Education/Civics Education/Social Action

In class, we were assigned a project called "What else is Social Studies". There are many other topics that are considered "Social Studies". We were each assigned a partner and a topic and I was instructed to work with Nicole S. on Law Related Education/civics education/ social action. We decided to use the website, Prezi, to present our research.



Prezi is a tool used to present information as a slideshow similar to PowerPoint. Prezi is easy to use and navigate and provides templates that can be appealing to the audience. For our presentation, we decided to use a template that resembles a map of the world. When working on our Prezi, we had some difficulties because it was a new tool we've both never used before but once we became familiar with it, I noticed that it is easy to use.


Our topic was Law Related Education. Before starting our research, I thought Law Related Education was just learning about the government but I've learned so much as a discovered what it includes and how to teach this topic. Law Related Education (LRE) is education that teaches individuals how to act as citizen and how the law affects them. It's used to develop an understanding of how to respond to the law and legal issues in society. LRE should be included in the Social Studies curriculum for four reasons: development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for citizenship, prevention of delinquency, growth of student interest in the Social Studies, and facts and concepts are necessary in order to understand history. To help students learn more about LRE, the class can be provided with programs, debates, mock trials, and activities that would engage the students about law related education. Another way to engage to have the students interact students with resource persons, including lawyers, judges, police officers, and legislators. This is helpful for the students to get an experience where they can see that the material is important in real world situations.

Here's a blog on Mock Trial Resources in the classroom. I will use mock trials in my classroom because it is a good activity to engage students in the material by role-playing. Students can understand the importance of the law and see how it works.

The next part of our topic was Civic Education and Social Service. In our presentation, we talked about social action and how it is defined as taking steps forward to change things in our society. We also talked about how civic education is education teaching how to participate in outdoor activities related to education, how to be active outside the classroom, and how to help the community. When explaining social service, we explained why it is important for students to learn the leadership skills. The reasons were: when working with someone or a group of people to achieve something, teaching someone, engaging someone to take a point of view, helping a group arrive to a conclusion, showing appreciation for a contribution, and finally, giving feedback. Here's a video in civic awareness to educate students:

We then provided the components to civic awareness which are: knowing the history of the US, the processes of the local, state, and national governments, and unique rights and responsibilities as citizens. 

Here are lesson plans for teaching LRE.

Here are lesson plans for teaching civics education. 

Overall, LRE/Civics Education/Social action is very important for students and be taught and explained in ways where students understand a real-life perspective and how important the topics are. 

Current Events Lesson

On April 20th, I conducted my Current Events lesson using QR codes. To teach our lessons, we were assigned to use to Newsela. Newsela is a website that contains articles that deal with issues all over the world. Newsela can be an effective tool to get students to read about certain topics over the world. The website has articles about war and peace, science, kids, money, law, health, arts, and sports. I liked using Newsela because it was easy to use and access articles. The articles on this website contain important topics that students should learn about and I would definitely use this website when teaching current events in my classroom. The website seems to get updated often with new articles and the articles an easy read for students. It's important for students to learn about what's happening in the world to be informed about different cultures and societies which helps make them well-rounded. Reading these articles can also increase students' comprehension and vocabulary skills. I am glad to have been introduced to this website and I will keep this as a resource when I start teaching.

For my lesson, I provided articles dealing with struggles students deal with in school. I struggled with coming up with an activity so Dr. Smirnova suggested to create a QR code treasure hunt activity for my lesson. I liked this idea because it was a fun activity to get the students involved and active in the classroom. To create QR codes, I used a QR code generator. You just simply type a question and it creates a QR code. You can download it, save it, print it out, and put them all over the classroom. To make it a treasure hunt, students can be given iPhones or iPads and search the classroom for the QR codes. When they find it, they can scan it to figure out the question, record it on their recording sheet, and answer the questions. This is a great activity to get the students out of their seats and provide them an activity to engage the students. I liked this activity because it is entertaining for students yet educational as they are learning about their given topics. 

Here is my presentation on my lesson.

To start my lesson, I asked my classmates if they got a chance to read their assigned articles. If they didn't have a chance to read the articles, I let gave them a couple of minutes to read it. I also assigned them into groups of two or three. After they read the articles, I explained the activity to them. I also explained how a QR code works and what they were supposed to do. I created three QR codes of questions for each article and set them up in the classroom. I didn't get a chance to spread them all over the classroom so I just placed them on the desks. I also pulled up the articles for my classmates so they can look back for the answers. The goal of this activity is for each group to teach their assigned article to the class. I provided three questions that I felt were important to know for each article. I gave them ten minutes to answer the questions. During this activity, I realized that I should have included one question including their opinion of the articles. After they answered the questions, I had them present their articles to the class. Then, I had them fill out a peer evaluation form to evaluate their performance as a group.

Before this project, I never really knew how important it is for students to be taught current events. By learning about current events, students can be taught global issues and learn how to reflect and give opinions on the issues. Students, when learning current events, can see that topics that they have been taught happen in real-life situations and current events can be meaningful to students. To make current events integrative, I could have integrated geography by having the students research the places these issues took place. I failed to make my lesson challenging but one way to make current events challenging is to have opinion-based questions to establish thoughts on the issues and reflect on them. I made current events active for my classmates by providing a hands-on activity for them to be engaged in. Current events is important and should be incorporated in social studies. As stated in one article we read in the beginning of the semester, "social studies is used to promote civic competence" ("What is social studies"). Current events can also be used to promote civic competence as it introduces issues to students and they can reflect on the issues and understand what is good for the world and what isn't.

Overall, I feel like this would be a good activity to use for elementary students. As I mentioned, the only thing I would change is to incorporate opinion-based questions to get them thinking about the article and explain how they feel about these issues. When teaching current events, the questions would be different in each grade level. First grade students would get easier questions but could challenge them well enough. Six grade students would get more challenging questions and instead of having them present their questions, they could create a project to teach the class about their topics. I also would put more students in a group in the lower grades to have more students answer the questions and create opinions on the articles in less time. Also, I would provide articles containing issues that are appropriate for the grade level. Here are three resources for teaching current events. I found these websites interesting as I searched for an activity and I will use these again. I also like Dr. Smirnova's resource she provided for us. I liked this project the only thing I would improve was the selection of dates. My selection for what day I would present didn't process and I didn't know when I would present. I felt a little rushed when I was given a couple of days to create my lesson. Teaching current events can give students a deeper understanding of the topic being taught to them. "When a student has a deep understanding, the can explain in their own words, give examples that demonstrate knowledge, apply the knowledge to a concept that has not yet been studied, justify or support their positions, compare and contrast the material learned to previously studied material, use new knowledge in the context of the general subject area, and make generalizations related to the subject (Perkins. 2003). As a teacher, I would want my students to portray these understanding performances to fully understand the material. This activity can be very effective in the elementary education classrooms and I will use this activity when teaching current events to my students.

Works cited

Perkins, D. (2003). Deep and fragile knowledge. Smart Schools. Retrieved May 1, 2015, from http://www.learner.org/workshops/socialstudies/pdf/session1/1.DeepFragileKnowledge.pdf

What is social studies? (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2015, from http://www.learner.org/workshops/socialstudies/pdf/session1/1.WhatIsSS.pdf

Engaging Students in Learning Economics

What is Economics? 

Economics is a discipline of social studies how individuals make decisions that effect the distribution of scarce resources to meet their needs and wants. Economics deals with the management of goods and services and how they are produced. 

Economics Project

This week in class, we were each given a topic to research and had to create two slides on a class slideshow on what economics is and how we can effectively teach it to students. It was interesting to see what everyone came up with and everyone's information is very useful and applicable in the classroom. 

I presented my research on my topic which was using the five social studies principles when teaching economics. I was also asked to give resources for teaching economics and how to teach economics while teaching my unit plan. The five principles of teaching social studies are meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active. To make social studies meaningful, teachers should use real life problems to understand that there are real life issues in the world dealing with economics. When learning about wants and needs, teachers can have students bring in everyday items and classify them as a want or a need to learn how to make connections. To make social studies integrative, teachers should try to draw on more than one discipline. When talking about the production of goods, teachers can choose items to see where they are produced and they can be instructed to research that place. To make economics value-based for students, teachers can teach students the benefits of a good economy. To make economics challenging, teachers can have students role play. Role playing is challenging for students because they are forced to think as someone else but it also increases their understanding. Students can role play as producers, sellers, and consumer by making the classroom a mall and having students make, sell, and buy items. To make economics active for students, they should be involved and participate. Students learn the importance of money by doing an activity where students "pay" for different items with change. 

I provided two resources for teaching economics. One website had games and blogs. Another website had useful games and lesson plans. When teaching the American Revolution, I provided two activities to incorporate economics. The first activity was to write a letter to students explaining that they have to pay taxes throughout the day to understand what it was like for the colonists. Another activity was to role play as tax collectors, the king, and colonists. Students will get a better understanding of what taxes are and get to experience what the colonist felt. 

Nicole S presented her research next. Her topic was microeconomics and macroeconomics. She presented her information into columns and also provided an image of the differences of them and an example of each. I liked that she provided this to get a better understanding of what both terms mean. 

Christine presented her topic, which were the concepts of economics and economic decision making. I like how she provided many pictures of different graphs and tables. She also provided two lesson plans that go along with the concepts of economics which I would definitely use when I teach economics. 

Kelli's topic was to explain why scarcity and decision making are considered the key to economic understanding. Kelli provided a good explanation of scarcity and also a picture book about economics. I liked how she provided that to teach economics through literature  for a different type of learning. 

Lindsay talked about how to teach and use the economic decision-making model with students. She provided the steps for the decision making process and a worksheet for the students. I liked how she provided examples for which students can use the decision-making model. 

Nicole B explained how economics influences the lives of all people, communities, and nations by providing multiple graphs. She also provided a video of a teacher teaching the importance of economics. 

Ainsley identified ways in which economic education into the social studies curriculum through such topics as career education, geography, history, community studies, and consumer education. I like how she provided examples of each topic and she showed us the Skype in the classroom to learn about different cultures' ideas and issues on certain topics. 

Everyone's information and research is very useful when teaching students economics. Economics is a very important topic to learn about and I will use the resources presented in this slideshow. 

Artifact Bag

This week in class, we were assigned to make our own artifact bags on our unit plan. Artifact bags are bags with objects of the past that relate to a certain topic. This activity can be efficient in teaching an inquiry based lesson to get students to use their reasoning skills on guessing what the artifact is and how it can be related to the unit plan. My artifacts symbolized important events during the American Revolution. I decorated my bag to make it American themed to relate to my topic. 

My first artifact was tea bags. I used tea bags as a symbol of the Boston Tea Party. Students can understand that they actually used tea to dump into the Boston Harbor and they can also get a better understanding of the Boston Tea Party. 

My second artifact was a two dollar bill. On the front of the bill was Thomas Jefferson. On the back was the signing of the declaration of Independence. Students can understand the importance of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.

My third artifact was the Treaty of Paris. Students can visually see the treaty to learn more about it and understand how important it was since it officially ended the American Revolution. 

It was very interesting to see what everyone else brought in and how it tied to their lesson plans. This is a great lesson for students to get a hands-on and minds-on experience. I will use this activity when I become a teacher!