Technology in the Social Studies Classroom

I can't stress enough the importance of bringing technology into the social studies classroom, especially for teachers of the middle grades. Pictures are the most important tools, besides videos, for my seventh-graders. Most children are visual learners, so pictures and videos keep them engaged and help them make connections between concepts. This nine weeks, my students have been learning about pollution in the Ganges and Yangtze Rivers of Southeastern Asia. Without pictures of what water pollution looks like, and what the actual rivers themselves look like, and of the suffering caused by pollution, I'm not sure they would care much about such far-away topics at all. And so there's very little chance they would actually have learned about them.
Far away and long ago seem to be the most commonly-associated phrases with social studies. It's tough to get students to find relevance, for example, with the cultures of ancient West Africa if they are, say, Hispanic (or of any other ethnicity not related to West Africa) , and living in the twenty-first century American South. Students are more generally interested in the here and now, absorbed into and trying so hard to keep up with their own culture that social studies topics of history and geography can take a back seat. As social studies teachers, one thing we can do to help here is to bring the places, people, and times of content standards into the classroom. We can do this through videos, photo journals, simple photo slide shows, documentaries, and web quests. There are so many technological resources available, even if your school is limited in funding. Be creative, be thoughtful, and inspire your students to do the same. Aim to help them get real meaning out of what you spend your days teaching in social studies. Social studies already gets a bad rap in so many districts that it's a wonder it still exists in some places. Let's not let that happen wherever we are; there is real, critical value in social studies teaching & learning and it's up to us to champion for it...help yourself out with technology!!!

On the Curriculum Treadmill

CRCT time is one month away, which means my school and most others are either already in serious review mode or gearing up for it. This eases the pressure very slightly on teachers in that there is no more new curriculum content to teach, so lesson planning doesn't have to be such a challenge. The pressure is turned up full-blast in other ways, though. We have to figure out a way to jog students' memory about EVERYTHING they've learned over the past seven months, and get them to learn it once more if it's been forgotten. For teachers who teach accelerated, gifted, and maybe even mainstream students, this might not be such a hard time of year. Perhaps these teachers only have to find a way to make reviewing all that material fun and engaging. Jeopardy, Bingo, and other popular games can do the trick here. But for others like myself, who teach lower-achieving and ESOL students, it seems like we are literally running for our lives and those of our students! Re-teaching, covering INSANE numbers of curriculum standards each day, jumbling dates, countries, people, and concepts together, and doing it for an entire month is NO FUN for anyone. I feel sorry for my students, and sorry for the teachers who will be on this treadmill until May arrives. But, we do this for a reason, and for those of us who passionately believe in that reason, I want to encourage you to give these next several weeks-and more importantly, your kids- your all!!!