Context--I teach 4th grade in Saline, Michigan. Most of my students come from fairly affluent backgrounds, and there is not much diversity in my district. I teach all subjects in a self-contained Next Generation classroom, where my students have 1:1 devices that they use at school and at home. To situate the nature of my concerns about Social Studies content, the vast majority of my students have grown up in Michigan, many in small-town Saline, and few have truly experienced life outside of the Midwest. Because they do not regularly interact with people who are different from them, their experiences with empathy and perspective are relatively limited. Also, because of the nature of instant gratification that many of my students are used to, they often struggle to persevere and stick with something long enough to demonstrate creativity and high-quality communication skills. They often choose the “path of least resistance” when asked to showcase their knowledge and understanding.
Content--I am wanting students to understand a place and time different from that in which they live, and use that knowledge to create a product that displays the impact to others. Students often have a hard time conceptualizing places they have not seen and time periods they have not lived in. Developmentally, children are inherently egocentric until they gain enough first hand experiences to be able to empathize with people who live differently from them. Thus, students often have a hard time not only understanding what life is like in a different state from Michigan, but also understanding enough about each state in a region to determine a unifying feature that ties the entire region together. Similarly, students experience difficulty conceptualizing what life was like in early Michigan, and then using that understanding to determine the impacts of that time period on the Michigan they live in today.
The following Common Core Standards would be addressed in the projects:
I can identify questions geographers ask in examining the United States (e.g., Where it is? What is it like there? How is it connected to other places?). [G1.0.1]
I can describe ways in which the United States can be divided into different regions (e.g., political regions, economic regions, landform regions, vegetation regions). [G2.0.1]
I can compare human and physical characteristics of a region to which Michigan belongs (e.g., Great Lakes, Midwest) with those of another region in the United States. [G2.0.2]
Use historical inquiry questions to investigate the development of Michigan’s major economic activities (agriculture, mining, manufacturing, lumbering, tourism, technology, and research) from statehood to present. • What happened? • When did it happen? • Who was involved? • How and why did it happen? • How does it relate to other events or issues in the past, in the present, or in the future? • What is its significance? [H3.0.1]
Use primary and secondary sources to explain how migration and immigration affected and continue to affect the growth of Michigan. [H3.0.2]
Technology--To this end, communication tools such as Google Hangout and Skype, as well as virtual tours like Google Expedition and Google Street View; in addition to green screen technology such as DoInk, would be well-suited for my problem. Communication tools would enable my students to talk with people living in different U.S. regions, or who may have lived at a different time, and virtual tours would allow them a first-hand look at geography different from that with which they are familiar. Further, green screen technology would enable them to create a depiction of an aspect of the region they are studying and interact with it to showcase the deep understanding of what ties it together. These technologies would focus students’ energies on, first, truly taking on the perspective of an inhabitant of an unknown region or time period, then using that perspective to develop unique content. These tools would also afford students the opportunity to edit and revise their final presentation to achieve higher quality work. Unlike other technologies, these methods offer the chance to create content, communicate effectively, and connect globally; rather than simply doing a paper and pencil task differently. These tools allow students a way to get at abstract content that would not be possible otherwise.
Pedagogy--I want to use Project Based Learning to increase ownership, motivation, and enduring understanding in my students. By giving students voice and choice in the topic they’re researching and in some aspects of how they present it out, they will gain more ownership in the material they are learning, thereby increasing motivation. By using a driving question for the unit that places students in an authentic, real-world role, they will be more easily able to connect their learning to things outside of school and in their future careers. Encouraging them to be creators of content and self-managing, positive collaborators are also lifelong learning success skills that will benefit them continuously in the long run. Additionally, emphasizing critique and revision of public products would allow students to run their work through multiple rehearsals, thereby increasing the quality and standard of work. The constructivist theory of learning would support these pedagogical methods, as they encourage students to construct their own understanding from real-world experiences. Unlike other pedagogies, these methods would enable students to connect and take ownership over their own learning, rather than simply learning from a textbook or creating a “dessert” project at the end of the unit, after the learning was already complete. These methods allow students to engage with the content creatively and personally throughout the process. The Total PACKage--Content, Technology, and Pedagogy come together in these Social Studies units, as projects driven by core content utilize technology as a means of constructing understanding and sharing it with others. Students collaborating around a shared topic use the communication technology to bring the world outside of the classroom into it--a necessity when studying places and time periods we cannot physically travel to--and then display their understanding through combining their research with student-created content and innovative presentation.