Post 139: The Best Way to Teach Social Studies

Post 139: The Best Way to Teach Social Studies

Ovando says the traditional definition of Social Studies is "to promote curricular themes such as culture, people, and global connections to promote civic competence." (145). Ovando states that Social studies poses a variety of challenges for language minority students due to incomprehensible input and improper assessments. (245). Social Studies classes tend to be overly dependent on the excessive use of literacy skills and both reading and writing assignments involve writing and reading structures unfamiliar to language minority students. In addition, Social Studies involve too much abstract English vocabulary. Yet, social studies does not have to be boring if taught in a meaningful, integrative manner so that the content is relatable to ELL.

My ELL would complain to me, "Social Studies is too much reading. I don't understand all that vocabulary and all those hard English words." Or "I don't know enough English to understand the history lesson." or "All we do is listen to hard English we don't understand, then we take tests in hard English we do not understand. If we get low grades, the teacher is mad at us or thinks we are stupid because we get low grades."  With my ELL students I had to spend a lot of time teaching them reading comprehension skills, teaching them American sentence structure, teaching them American essay structure, in addition to teaching them the actual history content so they could succeed on the test. Let's just say when I taught that Sheltered History class, my ELL students couldn't wait to finish that school year and get out of that class." This is what happens when ELL are taught history in the traditional 'Passive Transmission' Approach method. Not only do ELL do not understand the history material, but the history material is also taught from a European American point of view that they are not familiar with.

To make Social Studies more meaningful to non-European language minority students, social studies needs to include the contributions of minority cultures so language minority students have enough scaffolding to understand the historical material and they can see how their ancestors contributed to the growth of the United States making Social Studies meaningful not only for European American students but to everybody else as well.

There have been two approaches to teaching Social Studies:

1. The Passive Transmission Approach

In the Passive Transmission Approach, you have a teacher centered classroom where the teacher gives the lecture and the students passively take in information. The teacher gives the facts of history and the students memorize these facts for the history test. Students read the history book, listen to the history teacher give facts, and then memorize said facts for the multiple choice history test.  The students take no active part in the class. Students are just empty vessels into which teachers pour information. The purpose of the Social Studies class is to learn World History or to learn American History. Social Studies also helps students learn American culture, values, customs and history from a European American point of view.  European American students learn about the contributions of other European Americans in American history and in World history.

2. Transformative Approach

In the Transformative Approach, you have a more student centered classroom where the teacher guides the students in the history lessons, and the teacher lets the students make up the curriculum or lets the students participate more in the history lesson.  Students do more discussion, talk about their experiences, talk about their home life, their culture, and they get to read history books that reflect the contributions of all cultures, and they get to learn history not just from a European American point of view, but from all points of view. The contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, White Women, Black Women, Asian Women are all interwoven into the fabric of the history curriculum and different points of view are discussed by the student themselves and by the different cultures in the history book. According to Ovando, Social Studies is best taught if the Social Studies class is 'meaningful, integrated, value-laden, challenging and 'active' (254).  The Social Study lesson should connet the student experience with the curriculum. Students best construct meaning when students can identify with the historical event so that students from different ethnic groups can 'see' themselves in the history lesson.  When students can relate to the lesson more, they will retain the lesson more according to Ovando (251).

Ovando, Carlos. Bilingual and ESL Classrooms. Teaching in Multicultural Contexts. 6th Ed.