Blog Post 8: What do You Need to Teach Social Studies?

Supporting Questions: Is the information more important to know rather than having a
strong personality to teach the class? Do the students prefer a participating classroom in Social
Studies or do they prefer lectures?
While spending time at Bowling Green High School, it has given me plenty of time to
reflect on a lot of what we have learned in class so far. First, I truly discovered that students can
enjoy social studies as a subject, but the information has to be presented with some enthusiasm.
On my last placement so far, I have noticed that it seems that the information really does not
matter that much to the students. It doesnt matter if the teacher is the smartest person of the
information being presented, if they have no personality to show for, then the students will not
pay attention to the speaker and do something else for the next fifty minutes until class is over. If
the teacher cannot relate to the students, be funny or just overall an interactive person, then the
history of Nigeria really will not stick in their minds and they will not care what is being
presented. I have also come to the conclusion that in regards to learning the subject, students
have tended to achieve more when participating in the classroom, rather than sitting at their
desks and just listening to a lecture for the entire class. These students, want the teacher to talk to
them, make conversations, helped them understand what is being presented that day. They do not
want to just take notes from slide to slide and not get a great explanation of the notes that they
are having to take. Teaching social studies is tough, but it is only tough when the teacher is not
willing to try something new.
This past week of field placement, my partner and I had the opportunity to sit in two
classes, two classes in which both teachers had completely different approaches in regards to
teaching their subject to the students. The first two periods we were in a classroom that was at

full capacity of about thirty students per period, and there was no interaction between the
students and the teacher. This was all lecture based classes in which the teacher read from his
PowerPoint presentation and the students had to take notes, though from what I saw, not many
students were taking notes. From what I saw, many of the students were either talking to the
person next to them, working on other homework that was probably due that day, or they were
asleep, like the student whom was sitting right next to me. While the teacher was very
knowledgeable in his area, he could not relate to his students so they felt bored of him and his
presentation.
The second teacher my partner and I observed was a complete 180 from our first teacher.
This teacher is very interactive with the students. He talks to them before class begins, relates
topics so they can remember the information better, and he uses many different types of
technology to make the subject fun. The first period with him was a study hall, but my partner
and I helped him with having students that needed help with work. We would help them study to
remember key concepts for tests and helped them not worry about their upcoming exam. The
final period we spent at BGHS was another history class, but this teacher kept the students
attention much better. He would act out certain events that occurred during World War I to make
the students laugh, he would make them act out sounds of explosions, and he would change the
volume of his voice to emphasize more important concepts that the students would have to
remember for the upcoming exam. While this classroom had maybe fifteen students, this
classroom was way more lively and upbeat as compared to the classroom of thirty students that
were sleeping or doing other work instead of paying attention. While knowing the information is
key to being a great teacher, I feel that having a personality to match is equally as important to be
able to reach the students better.

An easy link for this experience could be shown with the Bower article about essential
questions. This article was about how to come up with a great essential question for students to
reflect about each day (Bower, 2010). I feel like this pertains to my field placement because from
what I have noticed, as long as an essential question exists, the students are more active in the
room along with the high energized teaching. In my field classroom, the teacher just read his
notes from a PowerPoint and expected students to write everything down and be active listeners,
and this completely backfired as he received no energy from the students and the majority of
them were not even paying attention. In the other classroom, however, the teacher was very
upbeat with the students and he would constantly ask students very specific questions, and each
time many students were raising their hand to answer said questions. Just the presence of
essential questions in a classroom can help boost student participation. Another source that can
be traced along with my experience would be the Newmann article based upon authentic
instruction. This article explains how there are five key components to teaching authentic
instruction, and teachers need these in order to reach out to their students to keep them active in a
classroom and encourage them to do research on their own as well (Newmann, 1993). This can
definitely be shown in my second classroom I observed. The teacher came up with questions for
students to learn, but he made these questions relatable and even relevant for the students to want
to answer these questions because they wanted to as opposed to feeling like it is a chore to do so.
These two articles definitely have helped shown what it is like to be in polar opposites of
classrooms.
To conclude this blog, I feel that while it is key to really know the content area that you
are wanting to teach, it is also essential that as a teacher, you have a lively personality, can talk to
the students and reach out to them to make them feel comfortable in a classroom environment.

You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you cannot keep the students attention, you
will not get far in the educational process. As teachers, we need to know the topic, but we need to
know our students even better.

References
Bower, B., Lobdell, J., and Owens, S. (2010). Essential questions. Bring learning alive! Methods
to transform middle and high school social studies. Palo Alto, CA: Teachers Curriculum
Institute, pp. 226-228.
Newmann,F.M.,&Wehlage,G.G.(1993).Fivestandardsofauthenticinstruction.Educational
Leadership,50(7),812.