Running head: FINAL REFLECTION

Final Reflection on Social Studies Teaching Methods

Richelle E. Colucci-Nunn
Drexel University

Running head: FINAL REFLECTION

Final Reflection on Social Studies Teaching Methods

I have a love for the social studies, and I was therefore very excited to take this class.
Because of my personal interest in the subject matter, I expected this class to be less than
challenging. I was so mistaken! I had not realized the depth and scope of the social studies
standards, nor had I any concept of either constructivism or integrated curriculum, and how
essential they both are to providing rich, engaging learning experiences for students, not just for
the traditional social studies skills and concepts, but for all traditional classroom subjects.
As I reflect back on this class, I find that learning about the constructivist approach and
related concepts and theories has really helped me envision my teaching style. What was once
an unfocused desire to inspire my students to be lifelong learners is now a focused philosophy,
replete with strategies that will help me fulfill the primary role of teaching, which is described by
Maxim as not to lecture, explain, or otherwise attempt to pass on knowledge, but to guide,
facilitate, and support children as they pull together their own ideas and conclusions (2009, p.
33).
While I originally imagined my future classroom simply as a visually appealing learning
environment, I now plan to fill it with co-constructed time lines (O'Mahony & Siegel, 2008) and
maps, images reflecting diversity, children's literature of all genres, learning (Wallace, 2005) or
interest (O'Mahony et al., 2008) centers, a showcase displaying student projects and other work,
and a classroom museum (Maxim, 2009) filled with artifacts relevant to our unit or theme. I
have a new appreciation for how a carefully planned and executed physical environment shapes
students' incidental learning and reflects and expands upon students' understanding of
themselves and the world, makes them feel part of their classroom community, and evolves
throughout the year (O'Mahony et al., 2008, p. 24).

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While I had had been determined not to allow social studies instruction to fall prey to the
pressure of high-stakes testing and its focus on literacy and math, I did not have any real
strategies in mind to achieve that goal. I now have an understanding of how thematic
organization will help me to not only use classroom time more efficiently to achieve my original
goal but also create connected relationships and meanings that foster higher levels of thinking,
feeling and understanding (Wallace, 2005, p. 59). Integrating the curriculum will also offer me
so many opportunities to help students see the relevance of the content to their lives and to the
future of our world, and therefore create that enduring learning for themselves.
While I had originally been confident in my ability to design engaging and successful
lesson plans based on my coursework in the Professional Studies in Instruction class, I now
have a deeper understanding of the importance of not only designing the lesson backwards but
also designing the unit backwards as well (Wiggins & McTighe as cited in Maxim, 2009; Ronis,
2007). I also have a better sense of how varying instructional strategies (Maxim, 2009) and
incorporating the arts (Wallace, 2005) in my lessons will not only reach more children by
accessing their multiple intelligences but will also provide opportunities for more engaging
learning experiences.
While I had planned to incorporate many different activities into my lesson plans, I had
not fully understood that tasks and activities designed for surface knowledge alone do not
develop a student's critical thinking skills (intellectual engagement) and therefore cannot be
considered meaningful activities (Ronis, 2007, p. 23). I now plan to build daily opportunities
for content-focused constructivist inquiry as well as cooperative and collaborative learning
(Maxim, 2009) into my lesson plans.
While I knew intuitively that intrinsic motivation was better than extrinsic motivation to

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encourage students to engage in the learning, the only approach I had in mind was a
cheerleader approach, in which my own enthusiasm would certainly inspire the students. I
now have specific strategies to hook the students on the learning, such as storytelling and
children's literature (Wallace, 2005), KWL charts (Maxim, 2009; Wallace 2005), and culminating
tasks (Ronis, 2007).
When I began this class, my loftiest goal was to inspire my students to be lifelong
learners. While I learned specific strategies in this class to meet that goal, I have also been
inspired to set my sights a bit higher. I now aspire to be a teacher who leads her students to a
path toward lifelong civic and social responsibility.
In summary, I feel as though I learned far more than social studies teaching methods in
this class; I have learned how to develop the framework and specific strategies for a studentcentered, democratic, constructivist environment that will help me teach not only concepts and
skills for the social studies, but also for literacy, math, science, and the arts.

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5
References

Maxim, G. W. (2009). Dynamic social studies for constructivist classrooms: Inspiring

tomorrow's social scientists (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
O'Mahony, C., & Siegel, S. (2008). Designing classroom spaces to maximize social studies
learning. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 21(2), 20-24.
Ronis, D. L. (2007). Clustering standards in Integrated units (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin Press.
Wallace, M. (2005). Social studies: All day, every day in the early childhood classroom.
Belmont, CA: Delmar.