TLT 431, Fall 2010 - Course record

Owned by Tom Hammond
Last updated: Dec 07, 2010Version comment
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Session 1 - Tuesday, 31 August

Before class

  • Buy (borrow, rent) a copy of the textbook: A Practical Guide to Middle and Secondary Social Studies (June R. Chapin, 2007; Amazon page -- also available in the LU bookstore)
  • If you can, check out the course resources linked from the main course page: this wiki, the bookmarks list, the Moodle site.

During class (ppt)

  • Introductions
  • Tour of course sites, resources
    • Textbook: A Practical Guide to Middle and Secondary Social Studies (June R. Chapin, 2007; Amazon page -- also available in the LU bookstore)
    • Public face of the course: Wiki
      • Intended curriculum: Map
      • Enacted curriculum: Record, built session-by-session. See previous version of this course for an example.
    • Private face of the course: CourseSite.
      • You're probably familiar with Blackboard; we'll be using a different courseware system called Moodle. Lehigh has named theirs CourseSite.
      • Note that Moodle is a free tool. If you're interested, you can set up your own Moodle and use if for teaching your classes--an example is here.
    • Course bookmarks--some websites that you may find useful during the semester.
    • And in case you don't have one already in front of you: classroom laptops
  • Reviewing syllabus
    • Static copy (pdf) vs. dynamic copy (Google doc)
      • Please flag any corrections or questions as we go along! That's the whole point of the dynamic copy....
    • Part 1: General overview, expectations
    • Part 2: Assignments
  • Conceptual work:
    • What is social studies? (via Jigsaw(-ish) / LGL activity)
      • Form SIX groups
        • Group A: NCSS materials, publications (NCSS website)
        • Group B: PA standards (electronic versions), textbooks
        • Group C: Content-area groups' materials (links to content-area association sites)
        • Group D: "Education market" materials
        • Group E: Teacher materials; high school course catalogs.
        • Group F: Discussion: What do you remember from your middle & secondary social studies experiences? What topics did you address? What did you read? Watch? Discuss? What sorts of tasks, assessments, or projects did you complete?
      • Group work for 10 minutes
      • Report out: Describe what you looked at, what you discussed. Instructor will make a list.
      • Group: Look over the list and create GROUPS or blocks of items that appear (to you) to be similar to one another.
      • Label: Identify each group by a short (1-4 word) label.
  • Instruction presentation: What is social studies? A natural evolution in education? A historical oddity? An ill-defined object? A battlefield?
  • What is a social studies methods course?
    • Content? Techniques? Lesson planning?
    • Significance of model lessons: LGL / Jigsaw, Hilda Taba** Why does social studies matter?
  • Closure: Discussion of WLT, original instructional materials assignments

After class

  • Reading: Chapin, Ch. 1; NCSS, 1993
  • Assignments
    • WTL (start your thread in CourseSite forum)
    • Please update your profile (e.g., add your photo) in CourseSite
    • Start thinking about assignments: tech products, course plans, etc.

Session 2 - Tuesday, 7 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading; post in CourseSite--if you have questions about the upcoming assignments, post them in the 'Help Me!' forum

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work
    • What is a social studies educator? 
      • The playing field: Standards, organizations, journals, publishers, and interest groups
      • The reality: Students, parents, administrators, teachers, and communities
      • Paradox of democratic education
      • One way to structure your experience and thinking: TPACK
      • Teacher as gatekeeper; social studies that matters
      • Teacher dispositions
      • Demo lesson: Story of Aaron, with materials drawn from the Geography of Slavery database at the University of Virginia. Whole-class, collaborative examination of primary sources...very deliberate arrangement of materials. 
    • Who are you as a social studies educator? 
    • Social studies resources; we'll be using the course bookmarks for part of this. Be sure to experiment with concatenating tags. For example: TLT431+history; TLT431+history+games. (Unfortunately, there's no way to use 'not' or 'or')
    • Building your toolbox as a social studies educator
      • "Toolbox" concept
      • Organizing your toolbox: Preview of Hammond & Manfra, 2009
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Chapin, Ch. 1 (review)
    • Shulman, 1986
    • Thornton, 2001
    • Hammond & Manfra, 2009
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Complete first original instructional material product
    • Start lining up classroom observations, HTCE participant

Session 3 - Tuesday, 14 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Demo: European voyages of discovery framed with a driving question, via Google Earth. Kml file here. Whole-class, teacher-centered
  • Original instructional materials assignment, product #1: Get into pairs/trios and share.

After class

  • Reading
    • Chapin, Ch. 2 
    • NAEP data (in CourseSite) 
    • Smith & Niemi, 2001 (skim) 
    • Barton & Levstik, 1996 (connect to HTCE assign) 
  • Assignments 
    • WTL 
    • Start second original instructional material assignment 
    • Work on first course plan---start with your own "big ideas", go to standards, etc. 
    • Work on first classroom observation 

Session 4 - Tuesday, 21 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading; move forward on second original instructional materials, first course plan, and first observation 

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work
    • Opening demo: Silent timeline
    • Second demo: Early US History via GIS, using this file, courtesy of Mr. Jeff Snyder.
    • Think back to: Story of Aaron
    • Challenges of history ed
    • Frameworks for thinking about teaching and learning: Bransford (et al.), Wiggins & McTighe 
    • Pedagogy that matters: Inquiry, active learning, and direct instruction (or, in my terms: Prompting, Making, Giving)
    • Closing 
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Chapin, Ch. 3, 4 -- read carefully, take notes!
    • Hammond & Manfra, 2009 (review)
    • Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000 (selections)
    • Keeler & Langhorst, 2008 (to help plan for original instructional material product #2)
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Complete your first course plan; see my (partial) sample for guidance, ask questions as needed.

Session 5 - Tuesday, 28 Sep

Before class

  • Complete the reading.

During class (ppt)

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments

Session 6 - Tuesday, 5 Oct

Before class

  • Complete readings
  • Complete instructional material product #2

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
    • Conceptual flipping: Geography and civics
  • Conceptual work
    • Re-visiting / closing off history ed (for now)
    • Opening up civic ed
      • Intersection between civics and history
      • What's so special about civics?
      • 'Doing' some civics
        • Bill of Rights bingo (adapted from [this lesson plan|http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=533])...what kind of civic ed is this?
        • Constitution Day, celebrated each year on September 17, MANDATED into school curriculum from 2005 onwards. Use thomas.loc.gov to figure out when & how this happened. 
      • Three views of civics ed
      • Demo lesson: Branches of the government via PowerPoint mark-up
      • What kind of citizen? Westheimer & Kahne...and the PDE standards. What kind of citizen do the PDE standards suggest?
      • Content area organization to know: Center for Civic Education.
      • Introduction to Project Citizen by Myron Yoder, ASD Social Studies Curriculum Supervisor. (See also: We the People project.)
      • Opportunity to volunteer with students doing Project Citizen: Susan Siegrist, Jefferson Elementary
  • Closure: Micro-teaching: expectations, sign-ups

After class

  • Reading
    • Chapin, Ch. 7 (3rd ed) or 8 (2nd ed)
    • Westheimer & Kahne, 2004
    • Smith, 2004 
  • Assignments

( PACING BREAK - Tuesday, 12 October - NO CLASS )

Session 7 - Tuesday, 19 Oct

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Complete your first classroom observation. If there's going to be a problem with this, LET ME KNOW. Please. 

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Opening up microteaching (methods list, expectations, feedback forms): After expectations and process, a big hand for our starting pitchers...
    • Cory K.
    • Jeff S.
  • Conceptual work: Geography education
    • WTL opening post: In my opinion, geography education is/should be about...
    • First, I need you to tell me about...your clothes. Seriously! It's less creepy than it sounds. I promise! Input form here.
    • Sketchmaps: Draw me a map of...(world, North America, USA, Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Lehigh University campus)
    • Geography vs. history/civics
    • What is geography? Geography is...
      • What is where? Looking at birds' nests; revising sketchmaps
      • The why of where: Looking at our clothing. Follow-up: flickr.com/map. 
      • ...people: Video analysis, looking at images, and then an enactive activity. The enactive and some of the visuals are drawn from Geography Alive! by the Teachers Curriculum Institute. 
      • ...spatial thinking. For example, consider this geological formation: Siccar Point (a Hutton's Unconformity). Or consider the Great Pacific Garbage Patch...that's clearly a non-conformity...for the moment....
      • FUN! Puzzle maps.
      • ...a lie? Consider how we can lie (or distort) and even fool ourselves with maps.
      • ...the future of social studies? Consider interest in global education (or education for globalization), Walter Parker's read on the arc of the field. A contrarian argument: GEOGRAPHY, not history, should be the centerpiece of the social studies.
      • WTL closing post: 
        • In my (revised?) opinion, geography education is/should be about...
        • One thing I'd like to do in a geography class / geography-integrated history or civics lesson is...
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Chapin, Ch. 8 (3rd ed) or 7 (2nd ed)
    • Alibrandi & Sarnoff, 2006
  • Assignments
    • WTL: Brainstorm two or more ideas for integrating geography into a history or civics unit
    • Complete your second course plan

Session 8 - Tuesday, 26 Oct

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Complete your second course plan
  • Don't forget that I have some specific prompts for your WTL to follow up on the last session

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping: First classroom obs -- comments / files / grades up in CourseSite; role of placeholders.
  • Microteaching
    • Alec R.
    • Josh H.
  • Conceptual work
    • Following up on geography ed: Geography as a 'lie' / misrepresentation / simplification. Consider: cartograms (e.g., worldmapper.org) -- is this moving closer to or further away from 'truth'? 
    • Does this same dynamic play out in history ed? Civics ed?
    • Opening up economics ed
      • Economics as integration: Classic lesson topic = Great Depression. Here's a sample lesson from Social Ed, but there are lots of other ways to get at this. 
      • Economics as a representation / simplification / model. Examples: micro S & D, macro AS & AD. Competing policy implications of different models of AS & AD. I'm using ThinkEconomics here -- it's worth playing with & exploring. Bookmark it for later. 
      • Demo lesson (and experience in micro S & D): A market in wheat. This is a CLASSIC lesson. I first encountered it in the 'Morton' books for teaching AP Econ--it's also available in a CEE publication via Google Books: lesson, entire book. [Honorable mention for more great econ materials: Play-Doh Economics, from Indiana's Council for Economic Ed. You can get the first edition online for free; the second edition you have to buy (Amazon).]
      • Activity de-brief -- what was learned: concepts? Skills? Attitudes? Any citizenship development going on here? 
      • A critical stance on economics education (in the US, at least): where's the non-capitalism? Example of Islamic banking
      • Opportunities to think critically & address citizenship/global citizenship: visualizingeconomics.com and the issue of microfinance (e.g., Kiva.org), et al.
  • Closure: Bringing together geography, economics, civics, and history: gapminder.org.

After class

  • Reading
    • Re-visit Chapin on economics (Ch. 8 in 3rd edition, Ch. 7 in 2nd edition)
    • Read Praxis materials, focusing on the sections about economics concepts
    • Check out NAEP materials on economics
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Complete curriculum map. If you're not going to turn it in next week, at least send me an email to let me know what to expect!!!

Session 9 - Tuesday, 2 Nov

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Complete curriculum map OR email me to let me know to expect it next week (i.e., by Tues, 9 Nov)

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Microteaching
    • Wil D.
    • Peter B.
  • Conceptual work
    • Election-related lesson: polling & prediction -- handout t/k
    • Grand unification of social studies: GapMinder.org.
    • Assessment & social studies
      • Generic purposes & assumptions of assessment: sequestered, individual tasks; assessment OF learning vs. assessment FOR learning; accountability / the 'bottom line' vs. the challenges of failure (or being passed along)
      • Assessment in the context of social studies: What's the bottom line, again? Significance of schema, level of non-information in traditional assessments. Examination of the work of Sam Wineburg, Gabriel Reich. Test items as text: compare primary source heuristics & test-wiseness
      • Examples of non-traditional assessment: Take the assessment & then evaluate your work
        • Digital documentary group
          • Individually create your own digital documentary on the Civil Rights Movement
          • View and evaluate a sample documentary by two 7th grade students
        • Essay group
          • Start with the Free Response Question. Individually examine the question and the images, then individually outline an answer. Then read the sample student response and score it with a rubric. Discuss your scoring. 
          • Move to the Document-Based Question. Examine the question and the documents, but skip writing your own answer. Examine the rubric, then look at the sample student response. Score it individually, then discuss.  
        • Collaborative test-taking group
          • Answer the first ten questions on your own. 
          • Answer the second ten questions on your own; then stop and discuss them. Note places where you changed your answers and provide an explanation of why. 
          • Answer the last ten questions on your own. Then use a computer to explore these questions further. Change your answers as needed, and document your changes (i.e., provide new answer, explain your new understanding, and provide links to relevant sites).
        • Transfer task group
          • Individual task ('transferring out')
          • Group comparison & discussion
          • New individual task ('transferring in')
          • Group comparison & discussion
    • Assessment & Backwards Design --> unit plan
    • Other assessment reference points, for good or ill: NAEP, Praxis.
    • What are your own 'bottom lines' when it comes to assessment? What will you value? What bargains will you strike? 
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Reich, 2009
    • Wineburg, 2004
    • Chapin, Ch. 5
    • Review rest of Praxis exam materials in CourseSite
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Outline your unit plan

( SOCIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE - Tuesday, 9 November - NO CLASS )
Session 10 - Tuesday, 16 Nov

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Microteaching: Jessica & Jonathan; Peter? 
  • Conceptual work
    • Closing off our assessment discussion / experiences
    • Democratic classrooms
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading: Manfra, 2009
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Complete HTCE

Session 11 - Tuesday, 23 Nov

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Microteaching
    • (Peter)
  • Conceptual work: Guest presentation on inclusive classrooms
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Cho & Reich, 2008
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • If you haven't already, complete your HTCE. 
    • Work on classroom observations, unit plan

Session 12 - Tuesday, 30 Nov

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Microteaching
    • Travis
    • Jennifer
    • Sarah
    • Brian. 
  • Conceptual work
    • Closing off & bridging democratic classrooms, inclusive classrooms, and the mission of social studies
    • Discussing unit plan expectations
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading -- none
  • Assignments 
    • WTL -- use the special needs scenarios to guide your reflection.
    • Complete your second/third/final classroom observations and turn in
    • Work on your unit plan

Session 13 - Tuesday, 7 Dec

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work
    • Social studies, writing, and deliberation: Respecting the process.
      • First, a quick look at a research overview: Risinger, 1987. 
      • What about the war between coverage and depth? And what preparation do social studies teachers receive regarding how to structure writing? 
      • Examples: Wiki about the French Revolution, and two contemporary people to pay attention to: Whitney Blankenship and Diana Hess
      • Moving into dialog and looking for more detailed advice, structures
        • Student vs teacher talk time; student- vs. teacher-initiated questions
        • Wait time and other conventions
        • Types of questions
        • Dialoging with text: Example of dialectical notebook.
        • Dialoging with one another: Quick look at the work of Hilda Taba.
    • Social studies and gaming
      • Let's all consider a couple games together
        • Consider a drill game. A weird drill game. But clearly one about social studies!!
        • And FYI: You can fit about anything into a drill structure. For example: "Third Grade Map Test". 
        • And here's a classic strategy game...
        • DISCUSS: What might games be good for? What value might they add? By seeking to integrate games into social studies instruction, what are possible deadends / routes forward?
          • Taxonomy: "Edutainment" vs. Commercial-off-the-shelf; instructional hooks vs. "frictionless" (no opportunity for learning / designing instruction)
      • Then split up into groups
        • Group 1 heads to Oregon! Note: USE FIREFOX, not Chrome. You'll have to install a plug-in. Note that this is obviously an archaic version (Apple IIe!!) of the game, but use it to judge more contemporary ones.  Contrast with this (much shorter) game about Jamestown. 
        • Group 2: Geography games. Here is a visually clean, single-player game: Travel-IQ. Once you get the concept, try to match up against other players at [GeoSense.net|http://www.geosense.net/].
        • Group 3: Some items to consider: Sims modding, Muzzy Lane, WoW guilds, an online lab for democracy? 
        • Group 4: Find something, explore it, and report back to the class!
      • Then re-convene to discuss
  • Closure: A methods student is a methods student forever.
  • Evaluation: Feel free to add any additional anonymous feedback that you think of later.

After class

  • Reading: Blankenship, 2009; Hess, 2009
  • Assignments
    • One last WTL. Topic: As I leave methods...what's in my toolbox? What areas do I want to develop next?
    • Finish unit plan, turn it in (paper and/or CourseSite) by Dec 14
    • And don't forget you can continue to add additional anonymous feedback

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