Explicit vocabulary needs to be a part of every social studies lesson.

Not only the content knowledge that will be tested over in the exams, but also higher-level words the students may not be familiar with should be inserted into lessons and given a brief lesson of what that word means. By sandwiching new words in between familiar words, students can develop their own meaning for the word. I also reinforce previously learned vocabulary words to help give students a better grasp on the idea, and like to introduce new ideas and concepts that are not immediately important, but will become important in future units. In the form of a PowerPoint presentation to ensure all students have the same background knowledge, I purposefully include higher-level vocabulary alongside the content vocabulary in an attempt to help students development by giving them a chance to learn new words. These lessons are intended to give students the tools needed to do well on the exam, and designed to push their thinking. I try to break students away from simply memorizing what they will know on the test, and attempt to scaffold and build knowledge across lessons. I feel the best way to start this process is introduce new words to the students, and then use the words again in future units. The beauty of history classes is that words will resurface later in a semester, due to the cyclical nature of history. Below are examples of slides from my presentation over a unit of American history from 1870 to 1900, dealing with immigration, urbanization, the problems of the immense wealth gap, and how people elected to mitigate the effects of the gap.

This was the first slide on a lesson on groups of immigrants coming into America in the period of 1870-1900, referred to as the Gilded Age. I wanted students to learn a few new ethnic groups (one of my pushes in any history or political course is at least give students cursory knowledge of the world), so I included groups like the Poles, Slaves, and Armenians. Every class had at least one student ask where a specific group was coming from. Poles were the most common, as they come from Poland and some students can assume Poles means Polish. I informed them the Slavs are in the area near the Balkan Sea in Eastern Europe, and the Armenians will come up once more during World War 1 with the attempted extermination of the Armenians by the Turks. I also explained what Scandinavia was, and students recognized the names of the Northern European countries.

This was the second slide, and I used the word compulsory instead of mandatory. I asked each class what they felt this word meant based on the rest of my discussion, which all of my five classes had several students use the context to determine it meant forced. I thanked them, and then explained to the class that compulsory military service pushed people out of European countries and into America, where the draft is rarely used. These push and pull factors are on the exam, so I used a chance to teach them a word alongside content they would need.

On the next slide, I used a callback to a term from two units prior the Homestead Act, which made cheap land available to anyone with a small amount of money. I asked students why land was plentiful in America. When they struggled to come up with anything, I prompted them that it was an act that made land plentiful in America. I attempt to impress upon students previous units lessons are not to be forgotten.

Here, the Taiping Rebellion was expanded upon to give students a global perspective on what was occurring in the world and how China was having massive problems with rebellion and inefficient government. In a few units, the First Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion will come up in lessons on US Imperialism and I feel introducing one of Chinas major problems at the time will remind them how China fared in the global stage at the time. These push and pull factors were also exam material, so I implanted future knowledge into what they would need for the unit on US Imperialism.

In the next lesson, the discussion focused on where the immigrants were going the cities, and how the cities exploded in the Gilded Age. This lesson focuses on why immigrants went to cities, an introduction of the class system, and how miserable conditions in the cities were. This slide came after a brief introduction of the upper and middle classes, with comparable wages and living conditions. Here, the exam vocabulary word is tenements, designed to give students an insight into how the poor lived while the rich lived very well off. Class separation will occur later in my class, and will certainly come up again in later history classes. This is likely the first time the students have explicitly been taught what constitutes the classes, and I explained the likely jobs, placing the lower class with the worst jobs.

Political machine was a vocabulary term, and so was party boss. The new word I wanted to explain here was informal, drawing the distinction between a formal political group (Democratic Party) and informal political group (men who decide to work together for the same goal).

Here, the textbook deems graft to be an academic vocabulary term. I did not, so it did not appear on the exam. However, I felt it was important enough to teach the students crimes the upper class can commit, so explicit definitions and examples of graft and fraud were used to teach students about the beginnings of financial crimes. As I guide them through the following Progressive Era, these terms are more important. I decided I would introduce these terms now and have students provide them as examples of crimes the Progressives sought to stop when we discuss them.

Assimilate is the word I introduced here, explaining it means the process of an immigrant becoming adjusted to American culture, society, customs, and means. This lays the groundwork for explaining the difference between naturalization (an immigrant becoming a legal citizen) and Americanization (assimilation). Students have trouble with this distinction, and I wanted to introduce assimilation before I start to teach students the difference in order to avoid confusion of learning three words at once. Tammany Hall was also a content vocabulary word, but I also wanted to introduce a new idea to the students complexity. Yes, machines were horribly corrupt and a blemish on American democracy, but they did help the immigrants and poor (albeit for selfish reasons). When we begin to move into the modern era, Woodrow Wilson will come up. He was a Progressive who fought to regulate big businesses and a white supremacist who segregated the federal government. I want students to realize that most subjects in American are complex, and this began laying some groundwork.

Section 3 of the unit dealt with the problems of the Gilded Age specifically how the immense wealth gap and industrialization caused new philosophies and pastimes to appear in America. This is a slide introducing the idea of Social Darwinism, with a quote from Herbert Spencer. The quote wonderfully sums up the tenants of Social Darwinism, but the word folly is a word they have not seen before. I explicitly call the word out, and ask the class what it meant. It took some guiding, but each class eventually determined it meant failure. When they replace the word folly with failure, the quote becomes that much stronger in their minds with what Social Darwinism meant.

Here is the next slide, defining the tenants of Social Darwinism. It calls back to the term laissez-faire from the previous unit on industrialization. It also mentions evolution, and informs students the evolution/religion problem has existed for a long time.

Philanthropy is the content vocabulary word in this slide, with another mentioning of Social Darwinism and laissez-faire, while mentioning Andrew Carnegie from the previous chapter. I desire to stress the importance that social studies terms are not to be forgotten once a new unit is introduced; every lesson tries to tie back to a previous lesson in a previous unit and lay the groundwork for a future unit.

The final lesson introduces the idea of reform, the topic of the next unit. The lesson on the problems of the Gilded Age prompted students to realize there were major problems, and this lesson deals with the beginnings of how Americans dealt with these problems. The first slide reinforces words from the previous lessons and units, and briefly explains what reformers want. I asked students if they understood the idea of regulating the economy, and when they realized laissez-faire meant no government involvement in the economy, they concluded that regulation means intervention to stop these practices.

Naturalism is a counter to Social Darwinism, so it is natural to include a brief definition of Social Darwinism to help better explain why naturalism countered it. Students were able to provide good definitions of naturalism by comparing it to Social Darwinism.

Finally, this slide introduces Americanization and uses two other vocabulary words to help make it distinct assimilation to remind students this is an informal process, and naturalization, to explicitly call out the possibility of confusion between the two words. I had students complete an exit slip on defining naturalization and Americanization; they did a great job as a whole of not getting the two words confused. Across these four lessons, I introduced vocabulary words students would need for the exam, and took time to reinforce previous lessons and lay the groundwork for future lessons by referencing ideas and terms the students have used and will use again.