The lessons and unit plan I created for this class demonstrate my learning for this course objective. Social Studies is a constantly changing topic, and lessons should reflect that. Things that were once very relevant to teaching Social studies might not always be. There may be connections that can be made to previous work, but it is important to always be able to link it back to the curriculum, big ideas, and competencies. A constant question that you should be asking is: “How is this helping students learn what they should be learning?”. Does the lesson do what it is supposed to do? Constant reflection and feedback from students is a great way to make sure lessons and units are effective in the learning progress.

 

Sometimes interactive activities meant to be fun and engaging are just that, but don’t really connect well to the curriculum. It is important to have the end in mind when planning to make sure activities are helping students towards the end goal. The lesson plans I made for this class linked to curricular competencies and allowed students some degree of freedom in how they presented the information. It offered students opportunity to learn about things in the past and make connections with today – allowing them to engage in some critical thinking and analysis. The content is often not as important for students as the process of learning.

 

There are also so many great resources out there that can and should be used by teachers, such as ShareEdBC, the Daily Café, Twinkl. The more we are able to share great resources and lesson ideas the better we will be able to combine curricular competencies and content in creative, thoughtful, and engaging ways.

 

Assignment 1 Social Studies Unit Plan