Listening to and Nurturing Interested, Passionate, and Thoughtful Sixth Graders

• In Event: Exemplary Elementary Social Studies in an Age of Standardized Testing

Abstract

Objectives

The paper shares an example of a classroom where meaningful elementary social studies survives. Karen, a sixth grade teacher, works in a middle class suburban setting in the Northeast. The paper details an accomplished teacher who models the attributes of an attentive global citizen by seeking out interesting information about the world, asking questions and analyzing it, and then acting on it, and encouraging her students to do the same.

Perspectives

Karen knows her power as curricular instructional gatekeeper (Thornton, 1991), as she goes into depth on topics worthy of discussion, even if grade-level colleagues do not do the same. She uses essential questions (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) to challenge her students to engage in higher order thinking about the world around them.

Modes of inquiry and data sources

Using qualitative methodology, the author observed Karen teach during several social studies units, and interviewed her about her social studies practice and curricular decision-making. Data collected include observations of teaching, copies of lesson plans, teacher notes, interviews with students, classroom artifacts, and interviews with the teacher (Karen).

Results

Karen designs her curriculum and instruction so that students can work through problems and construct knowledge, most often through the vehicle of extended conversations in small groups. She uses a variety of strategies to enhance comprehension, especially co-constructed charts to clarify and evaluate different proposals and a discussion fishbowl, so that students can be as mindful of the process of generating ideas as they are to the ideas. Karen structures her teaching to include formal time for her own reflection, by taping and listening to students’ extended conversations, which enables her to assess their understanding about complex concepts. She is attentive to her students’ needs, in terms of both skills and deep understandings, so that they can acquire the habits and attributes of attentive citizens, themselves.

Karen’s instruction yielded many of the 15 Common Practices of exemplary elementary social studies teachers:

1.establish a learning community
2.design goals-oriented Instruction
3.value depth over breadth
4.foster narratives and discourse around powerful ideas
5.balance constructivist and transmission teaching
6.employ a range of assessment tools
8.emphasize skills instruction
9.model intellectual curiosity
10.promote critical thinking
11.promote intellectual responsibility
13.attend to civic mission of social studies in a democracy
14.reflect on student understandings to assess her practice

Scholarly significance

This case stands as an exemplar of what we know in the field about what happens in intermediate grade social studies: Through ongoing and extensive interaction with their classmates, students are given many opportunities to construct deep understandings of important social studies concepts and global issues. This case study provides elementary teachers and methods professors with the knowledge that it is still possible to nurture students who emulate their interested, passionate and thoughtful teacher and become citizens of the world, able and eager to engage in civil discourse to further their own thinking and that of their fellow citizens.

Thornton, S.J. (1991). Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. A

Author

• Andrea S. Libresco, Hofstra University