Elementary Social Studies
| Study Guide, Key
Concepts & Exam Review
|Guaranteed success|
, Develop good citizens for our society ◦ Students to feel positive about themselves
◦ Students want to positively contribute to their communities
◦ Students become economically independent
◦ Students be involved in the decision making process that goes on their
communities
◦ Be aware of the world around them
◦ Be free from prejudice
◦ Be fair-minded in dealing with others
◦ Believe in justice and law
◦ Take leadership roles
Teaching Social studies is a challenge • Society is changing constantly
• Teachers need find new approaches to teaching social studies
Teachers need find new approaches to teaching social ◦ Different cultural backgrounds
studies ◦ Active learning
◦ Solving problems
Teachers teaching social studies • Become mindfully, curiously, and purposefully in teaching
• Be aware of their students and their world
Social Studies in elementary schools • A subject that should be taught only of time allows it
• Reading, math, and language are "fundamentals" and has to be taught before
social studies since it is not considered a "fundamentals"
Fundamentals are based by the society, administrators, and elementary teachers
"Back to the basics" movement in the 1970s to early • Social studies was disappearing in the early grades
1980s
Educators and politicians • Effective social studies curriculum is basic and fundamental in the earliest
grades
Help students • Learn about themselves
• Take their place in society
• have responsibility to their society
The National Council for the Social Studies Task Force • Help students to understand, participate in, and make informed decisions
(2009), the purpose of elementary school social studies about their world.
is to: • explain relationships with other people, institutions, and to the environment
• Provides them with problem solving and decision making skills
• assessing issues and making thoughtful value judgments.
• integrates these skills and understandings into a framework for responsible
citizen participation locally, nationally, and globally.
• beginning with the youngest learners in our schools.