Handbook to Elementary Social Studies

Summary: Teaching Strategies and Procedures (Chapter 5)

  1. Introduction
    1. Distinction between strategy and procedure
      1. Because it was developed through research, Hilda Taba's Inductive Strategy remains relatively stable.
      2. Procedures are modified to suit style, circumstance, content and learning activities.
    2. By applying a strategy broadly and making procedural modifications, there is "…likely to be a marked improvement in the thinking skills of elementary school students as they study social topics and apply the knowledge they gain…" (p.64).
    3. Three of the seven major strategies in Taba's Curriculum
      1. Developing concepts
      2. Attaining concepts
      3. Interpreting, inferring, and generalizing
    4. Minor strategies
      1. Repeating students' responses
      2. Rephrasing responses
      3. Asking for explanations of predictions
      4. Asking for explanations of high-level responses
    5. Procedures cover translation of content into learnable tasks, discussion procedures and the formulation of hypotheses.
  2. Major Strategies
    1. Developing Concepts
      1. Aimed at establishing a firm basis for later development of well-understood generalizations
        1. Concepts are building blocks for generalizations
      2. Students identify a number of concrete items from their experience.
        1. A field trip
        2. A story they have read
        3. (Units they have studied)
      3. After a suitably large list is produced, students group the items that belong together and give reasons for doing so.
      4. Students then label their groups.
      5. Teacher questioning elicits identifying, grouping, and labeling responses.
        1. Questioning
          1. What did you see at the fire station?
            1. Students provide items
            2. Teacher places items on display, writes names of items on board, paper or transparency.
          2. Do any of these items seem to belong together?
            1. Students find similarities as a basis for grouping items.
            2. Teacher marks with symbols or underlines in colored chalk, crayon, etc.
          3. Why would you group these items together?
            1. Students verbalize common characteristics of items grouped.
            2. Teacher seeks clarification where necessary.
          4. What would you call these groups you have formed?
            1. Students verbalize a label (category) that is appropriate.
            2. Teacher records the labels on paper, chalk board, etc.
          5. Could some of these items belong to more than one group?
            1. Students state different relationships
            2. Teacher records or notes.
          6. Can anyone say in one sentence something about all these groups?
            1. Students offer suitable summary sentence.
            2. Teacher reminds students to take into consideration all the groups.
    2. Attaining Concepts
      1. Difference between building concepts and attaining concepts lies in degree of control.
        1. Building concepts
          1. Concept labels are the students' own.
          2. They label a group in the most appropriate way
        2. Attaining concepts
          1. Students are first given a concept word to say and recognize.
          2. Students are then asked to recognize when examples fit the concept.
      2. Attaining concepts can be used in a unit to clarify word meanings that are important for continuity of learning.
        1. Using concept attainment
          1. Make a chart on the board, on paper or on a transparency.
          2. Ask students to suggest examples that fit the category named (Mammal).

Mammal

Not a Mammal

cat

frog

dog

snail

whale

bird
   
  1. Developing Generalizations
      1. The end product of a process
        1. Abstraction from a group of items such as building concepts or concept attainment.
        2. Generalizations are verbalized in the form of sentences rather than in single words as in concepts.
        3. Higher level of thinking.
      2. Generalizations can take two forms
        1. Interpretations or conclusions
          1. Statement of relationships from given data.
        2. Inferences
          1. Statement of relationships that goes beyond the given data.