Category Archives: Social Studies

Inquiry, Philosophy, Social Studies

SS: Theory to Practice

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The culture unit was my first inquiry-based unit and I initially had no idea where this was going to go. I have only been with my students for 5 weeks when I started this unit and knowing they had not much experience with an inquiry based learning made me worry a little.

Lessons:

During the lessons, discussions were a great way to get into the students’ mind. I tried to give many opportunities for everyone to talk. It was interesting to see how many things the students knew as an individual. I also found it interesting how students knew specific facts and not necessary the rationale behind it. It really was like pieces of puzzles that they had – not the full picture.

Motivation and Curiosity Level:

The students throughout this unit were very motivated and remained curious about the topic. The biggest way to maintain their curiosity was to conduct the lesson in a game-like manner. I planned each lesson as interactive as I can – thanks to SMARTboard -, which made the students look forward to the lesson.

Students’ motivation level was highest during the inquiry research project. The students did an amazing job and were very excited to work on the project. Every morning they would come up to me and ask whether we were going to keep working on the project or not. The pairing also worked very well because the students were helping each other understand the passage and discussed the material, which led to another question or curiosity. The shift of curiosity was very quick during this process and students were frantically searching for interesting facts.

This curiosity did not only stay within their assigned country but to their friends countries too. During silent reading, students were asking me if they could read the country book we were using for our research. Many students started checking out country books from the library to take home too.

Presentation: Sharing with the Buddy Class:

The students were extremely excited about this presentation. This became another motivation for them to learn the material well. They wanted to “Wow” the older students with their knowledge. After the presentation, we had a little discussion period where we shared our feelings towards the activity. Everyone was very happy and excited at the fact they knew more information than the older students and were able to teach them.

Bulletin Board:

By the end of the project, they had a strong sense of ownership and accomplishment towards their work. When I posted the work on the bulletin board along with the pictures I had taken during the presentation, students were proud to show it to their parents.

Being proud of their work made them want to share their knowledge with whoever was interested in the matter. During this project, students were able to come across so many opportunities to share their knowledge (i.e: during research, with their partner, with the buddy class, with parents) that they were experts by the end of it.

Although I was worried in the beginning, this unit turned out to be a big success. I was able to observe the power of inquiry and experience the amount of enthusiasm it generated.

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Inquiry, Social Studies

SS: Culture < Inquiry >

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Inquiry Research Project: Country 

At the end of my Social Studies unit on culture, we conducted an inquiry research on various countries. There are the countries my students explored:

IMG_1072 We used a formatted sheet to fill in the information. The fast facts were pretty straight forward but other sections were inquiry based. Questions asked mostly about what the students found interesting regarding certain topic.

This was a pair activity and each pair was assigned one country to research on. Students were encouraged to discuss amongst themselves and share their newly obtained knowledge.

After the researching process was over, we shared our experiences and knowledge with our buddy class (Gr.6/7).

Here are couple of picture of Grade 2 students sharing their newly learned knowledge about the country they studied to a Grade 6/7 students. My Grade 2 students were extremely excited and proud they got to teach the older students.

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After they finished sharing their knowledge and talking about various countries, we posted it up onto the bulletin board along with the pictures of them sharing!

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Resources, Social Studies

SS: Culture < resources >

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Throughout this unit, I used many storybooks to introduce different topics being explored that day. Here is a list of books I used for my culture unit:

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Resources:

Caribou Song: Atihko Nikamon – Tomson Highway

My Mom Loves Me More Than Sushi  – Filomena Gomes

Everybody Brings Noodles – Norah Dooley

My Friend Mei Jing – Anna McQuinn

My Friend Jamal – Anna McQuinn

Mirror – Jeannie Baker

Tripper’s Travels: An International Scrapbook – Nancy Kapp Chapman

Toot & Puddle: Top of the World – Holly Hobbie

Let’s Celebrate!: Festival Poems from around the World – Debjani Chatterjee

Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions From Around the World – Selby B. Beeler

Zachary’s Dinnertime – Lara Levinson

Can You Count Ten Toes?: Count to 10 in 10 Different Languages – Lezlie Evans

 

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Pedagogy, Social Studies

SS: Culture

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During my 10 week practicum, my Grade 2 students and I explored the meaning culture via studying different countries.

KWL chart: I usually start my units with a KWL chart. I find KWLs useful – I get to collect the puzzle pieces students already have and gives us an opportunity to see where we stand as a class regarding the topic. Here is the KWL for culture:

kwl cultures

There were some really interesting questions raised during this activity. I did some research on my own to find out the answers to these students and shared them with the students when we had the time to do so within our lesson.

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Providing answers to their wonders kept their interest level high throughout the unit and motivated them to generate more questions. In the actual lesson, some of the answers are hidden so the students and take a guess, which makes the process seems like a fun game!

Throughout the unit, we deconstructed the meaning of culture by looking into various cultural factors such as languages, traditional clothes, food, sports, holidays, etc.

Here is a screenshot of one of my SMARTboard lessons:

Activity: What countries do these represent? Observe the pictures here and find out what cultural factors are represented here.
Activity: What countries do these represent? Observe the pictures here and find out what cultural factors are represented here.

The students were fascinated to find the differences between each culture. During the discussion period that followed after this activity, students were eagerly talking about their own culture and the times they felt culture around them. More and more curious questions were being raised too. Many of our boys were curious about different sports that were around the world and wanted to learn more about it.

If you are interested in some of the resources I used, click here.

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