Kevin Wallace

EDSE 584

Education is a constantly changing field that is always being adapted to meet the
demands of students in this modern society. As teachers, flexibility is a key component to
adapting our unit plans to meet the requirements of the different social studies knowledge areas
through a new concept known as Depth of Knowledge.

Usually when a person hear the term social studies they mostly associate it around history
instead of focusing on the other social studies knowledge areas that are associated in this large
content field. To introduce my knowledge on the different contents of social studies I will start
out by focusing around the geography standards as a starting point. One of the best reasons why
geography is so important is because it gives teachers a better understanding of the other social
studies knowledge areas is because geography is broken down into different areas that students
will learn more in depth from the other social studies classes. I have found that a great way to
incorporate history, economics, civics, and social/behavioral science into a geography classroom
that I learned from a geography education seminar is through a great resource known as Story
Maps. Through these electronic maps students can explore different aspects of the different
areas of geography through reading human stories, pictures, and mapping connections; which
according to Saye (2014) it promotes “Higher Order Thinking, Substantive Conversation, Deep
Knowledge, and Connectedness to the Real World.” (pp. 34). One of the best Story Maps that I
found that incorporates the impact of Urbanization with our home state of South Carolina is the
Story Map that shows the revitalization of the downtown area of Greenville, South Carolina.
From this Story Map students discover the process of how the city of Greenville has grown &
developed over the years and how it revitalized its redevelopment by giving back developed land
to Mother Nature. Also students can learn more about the geography of different countries
around the world by creating a booklet that incorporates the five different themes of Geography.
These five themes are location, place, human/environment interaction, movement, and region.

To wrap student’s minds even further knowing the history of these different cultures
around the world and the culture within the United States students will not only focus on the
past, but will focus on different types of current issues that are currently taking place all around
the world. In the History of Minority Groups in America class that I am currently teaching my
students are studying current immigration issues on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
laws passed by President Obama in 2012. To ensure that the students understand is political
issue they will read primary sources in the form of news articles as evidence. One of the best
ways to get my students to dig deep down to critically think about how current issue on
immigration will be through a Fishbowl discussion on how Hispanic-American Immigrants are
seen in the United States and discuss why President Trump’s immigration policy is so focused on
protecting the United States border with Mexico instead of continuing President Obama’s Policy
around the DACA protection. Another type of teaching strategy that my coaching teacher
introduced to me was where the students travel around to different stations around the classroom
to analyze and answer deep thought questions about political cartoons and historical images.

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Through my understanding of Anyon’s article on Critical Issues in Education (1980), the idea of
using “a ‘hidden curriculum’” (pp. 255) is one of the best ways to dig deep into each of my
student’s critical thinking skills.

Economics and Governmental Civics throughout the United States are looked upon as the
knowledge standards that pair with each other because one cannot exist without the other.
Through United States Government students dive deeper into the foundations of our country’s
founding fathers laid during the American Revolution that were originally viewed when the
students took United States History during their junior year of high school. To build upon this
foundation of governmental civics I created for Dr. Hébert in teaching Gifted & Talented
students where I had students create their own campaign to run for a political office by using a
local college’s student body legislation as mentors. This concept is crucial for students because
they learn to communicate and work with each other to campaign for a political issue or a
political office. In my History of Minorities class I had students focus on different past issues
such as the Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage movement by digging down deeper into these
issues and how they can make real world connections to current political issues by focusing on
evidence found in court cases. Through Potter’s article on Teaching Difficult Topics With
Primary Sources (2011), having students focus on these political issues using “primary sources
to discover important details about horrific events of the past” (pp. 285), political cartoons, and
images will help each student to dig deep down by giving them the opportunity to come with
their own words & pictures by creating their own political cartoon to portray their message.

What makes economics coincide with governmental civics is that the different rules and
regulations that students will learn throughout economics are created by different types of
governmental procedures from the international level down to the local level. This includes
trading agreements between countries, trade barriers/sanctions, and trade networks within a
country. To dive deeper into economics it goes beyond just looking at international & domestic
trading. Students focus on supply & demand, currency exchange rates, and much more. In my
world geography class my students are going to learn more about the economic perspectives of
the Latin American country of Mexico by comparing different data points to the United States
and Canada using the CIA World Fact Book website. Another way for students to learn more
about economics was where I assigned a group of students a different area of the Seven Goals of
the United States Economy and they were to conduct research on that particular economic area
by becoming experts known as a Jigsaw strategy. Later in the class period the students will
collaborate with each other to gain the knowledge of the other economic sections of the Jigsaw
activity and to provide the students of other groups with the knowledge of their economic
section.

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 The most misunderstood of all of the social studies knowledge areas is social-behavioral
sciences. Through this area a social studies students’ focus deeply around physical and mental
human behaviors taught in either psychology or sociology. In medical sociology taken at the
University of South Carolina this past fall the task was to create a group paper on a particular
issue in South Carolina that our group wanted to cover. Our group focused on educational and
health issues that so many students face after they graduate from high school and prepare to enter
the workforce through additional education. By focusing on a local based issues our group found
great ways that we will be able to bring our future classrooms by having students dive even into
this health based educational issue as they prepare for college and vocational training. While
preparing for a career in education I was introduced to psychological ideas presented in
Educational Psychology a few summers ago. While in the class I was required to write a paper
on child psychology. According to Coffey (2013) the “use (of) Socratic method in a variety of
subject areas challenges students to examine both contemporary and historical issues” by
promoting student to dig down into their minds to think about psychological issues.

To promote student growth in a twenty-first century classroom teachers are starting

advance past the Bloom’s Taxonomy pyramid model and are pushing towards the Depth of
Knowledge diagram as based around the new concept of the community teaching model. As part
of the pedagogy in the classroom using knew types of teaching strategies are great ways to
advance students to the next level of DOK by having them dive in deeper into what they are
learning. Case (2013) believes that teachers should not heavily rely on Bloom’s Taxonomy
pyramid but to look at teaching that indulges student through “‘high order’” of thinking by
“tweak(ing) almost any level of question(ing).” (pp. 198). Some of the great ways that I have
used in my classroom include Jigsaw strategies where students are assigned specific parts of a
reading and are in charge of becoming experts of that reading. When students are instructed they
are to travel around to other groups who had a different reading by sharing their knowledge and
collaborating with the other students to build their communication skills. By building these
skills with students as a teacher I am promoting the wisdom that the students’ have gained
through reading and collaboration and are able to pass this knowledge on to other people.
Through this passing of knowledge Delpit (1988) show that as a teacher you are“‘giv(ing) voice’
to our children(.)”

Other ways that I can use to promote student growth and get them discover other great
resources is through research. Many of the great teaching strategies that I observed other
teachers use in their classroom requires student to indulge in the research topic(s) that the
students are wanting to learn about. According to Dr. Hébert use of Renzulli (2009) is known as
type II or type III enrichment triad models. The use of these enrichment triad models help
prepare teachers for the “rampant in today’s highly prescribed curriculum and all manner of
reform initiatives dictated by agencies far removed from schools and classrooms.” (pp. 1). In
this style of teaching you are conducting higher order of thinking by having students research
through primary sources, secondary sources, internet, and scholarly articles. To keeps students

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from coming to dead ends in their research teachers find cleaver ways to entice their students by
creating open ended questions that are nether too broad or too concise. This gives students the
opportunity dig deep down using their critical thinking skills to help them come up with their
own peculations to what these questions are asking. Another way that I learned from Dr. Oglan
is that you can ask your students a series of questions by providing them a Reading Strategies
Inventory, which gave me the insight of what my student already knew when it came reading in
the classroom.

Additional evidence that I found through taking different classes at the University of
South Carolina that promote higher order of teaching are Dr. Oglan’s Read to Success
endorsement classes. Most of the teaching strategies that I learned from her is that promoting
different reading strategies in the classroom prepares me as the teacher to teach students who are
reading at different reading levels. One of the activities to really get to know your students was
titled a Profile of a Reader which gave me an insight to where each of their students stand in the
classroom by focusing on one particular student. Using these different type of reading strategies
will help me promote different reading skills and student growth in my future classroom. To
help promote these reading skills in the classroom I learned from reading Schwebel (2014)
article Historical Fiction that teaching fictional history helps “social studies teachers’ (promote
the) essential role in teaching reading and writing by acknowledging . . . historical learning
without also engaging in disciplinary ways of thinking.” (pp. 21).

One of the hardest things for me is figuring out different ways to really get to know and
gain the trust of my students. Without building that trusting relationship component you’re your
student any teacher can feel they are being left out. I have been taught from other teachers that
just because teachers think they know their students does not mean that they truly know the full
story about their students. According to Medina (2012) the “acceptance of individual students’
voices, and . . . being able to recognize multiple cultural perspectives, collaboration with each
other, community importance, and communication between students & adults” (pp. 1, 21, and
22) will help me grasp a better understanding of their students. Some of the many different ways
to help me learn more about your students is to sit down and have mini conversations with them
while they are working on class assignments. Through these conversations I have found that
students start to gain my trust because they know that I am here to listen to them when something
is bothering them or they just want to share something that they did exciting. According to
Daniel & Zemelman (2004), teachers “need to make (their) classroom a community, a place
where students feel safe . . . (by) connect(ing) (our teaching) with the (students) lives instead of
(focusing on students) as isolated individuals.”

During my time in my many internships I have had many conversations with my student
and have discovered that many of my students are involved in extracurricular activities, which

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with no surprise involves different types of sports from the high school level to little league.
Other students that I have talked to at my current internship take part in the JROTC and are in
the school orchestra where they have come in first place in different competitions. To help me
promote different ways to know my students, I learned from Dr. Hébert in the two Gifted &
Talented classes that I have taken at the University of South Carolina is that you can send out a
questionnaire giving the students a chance to respond to multiple types of questions that you may
not have time to ask during class time. Also Dr. Oglan had me write a literacy narrative about
myself, which I found very interesting and I feel that it will be a great alternative to having the
students fill out a questionnaire. I also discovered from Bean and Karnes (2015) article on
Developing The Leadership Potential of Gifted Students, that by building these bonds through
communication you are gaining “hold (of the) many valuable lessons in life . . . (that can be
found) at home, school, work, and in the social arena.” (pp. 513). Through this discovery of
knowledge that I have gained from my students I can find ways to build my lesson plans around
some of the student’s responses. This can also be seen through Duncan-Andrade (2009) because
“the most effective educators, in every discipline at every grade level, connect the academic rigor
of content areas with their students’ lives.” (pp. 187).

Assessment is another unique way that teachers can determine where each of their
students stand in their classroom. One of the best ways that I have learned from my time at the
University of South Carolina is through pre-assessment. By pre-assessing your students at the
start of every unit as a teacher you will gain a feel of what your students already know and what
areas need to be strengthen. By having the students make the critical connections between all of
these different types of resources Feathers (1993) shows that students are learning to link all of
this new information they are being taught in the classroom to their preexisting knowledge. (pp.
79). One way that I learned from Dr. Hébert is that you can provide your students with
curriculum compounding assignment as a pre-assessment so that I can understand what the
students already know and what areas of a social studies unit I need to focus more on. This can
also be seen through Bell (2010) perspective on Project-Based Learning where the use of pre-
assessments by giving students the opportunity to “solve real-world problems by designing their
own inquiries, planning their learning, organizing their research, and implementing a multitude
of learning strategies” (pp. 39) throughout the entire social studies unit. As I teach my units I
will provide students different opportunities to grow by providing different levels of assessment
by mixing up the balance within the classroom through the use different formative and
summative assessments.

To provide great assessment I also need to think about academic feedback as part of the
assessment process. Without this feedback students have difficulty figuring out where the
student stand in the classroom and where to improve. Academic feedback can also be vice-versa
where I am learning from the students on what areas of their lessons need improvement. To
combat this issue I found that my coaching teachers use evidence that they gained from assessing
their students to see which types of teaching strategies work best for some classes and which
teaching strategies need to be modified for another class. This can be seen in Tovani (2011)
article Assessment: It Doesn’t Have to be the Enemy, by showing that teachers can “adjust their

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instruction (by) giv(ing) targeted feedback so that students can improve their performance” (pp.
13) in the classroom. According to Dr. Oglan from the University of South Carolina her ways of
teaching focused heavily on formative assessments where you use smaller teaching strategies and
to keep a tally of each student to ensure that they are understanding what they are learning as
they complete their tasks. By focusing on this type of assessment in this way you are ensuring
that students are prepared for the summative assessments. Also, I discovered through Wormeli
(2006) article on the Principles of Successful Assessment that “students achieve more when they
have a clear picture of (what) the (teacher’s) expectations” (pp. 21) are in what they want the
students to know.

To reflect on what I have learned from the Masters of Teaching program at the University
of South Carolina there is so many material that I learned that it is hard for me to decide where to
begin. One of the many area that have improved my strengths and brought out the areas that I
need to really focus on includes the several classes taught by Dr. Hébert and Dr. Oglan on
reading & writing skills and gifted & talented students that I learned at the University of South
Carolina. Through this knowledge and wisdom I was able to look at teaching in a whole new
way to figure out how to question my students and solve problems through problem based
learning. From Daniels & Zemelman (2004) perspective in Reading for Real, teachers need to
use their strengths and weakness to focus on different types of thinking strategies as tools that
will give our students the opportunity to understand what we want them to accomplish in the
classroom. (pp. 4). By looking at my teaching skills from this perspective I am preparing for the
future by providing my future students with great opportunities to learn and gather new skills.
Also Greene’s article (1995) on Imagination, Community, and The School shows “that all
(students) over time will develop the habits of mind that may enable them to take initiatives in
the learning process, to become critical and self-reflective learners and ultimately practitioners.”
(pp. 34).

Other skills that I have learned involves the use of technology and how to incorporate in
the ever evolving classroom. As part of what I learned about introducing technology in the
classroom, Dr. Hébert showed that teaching should also follow guidelines that are present in
Renzulli’s different levels of Enrichment Opportunities. As part this type of teaching model Dr.
Hébert had me create different types of teaching strategies. Some of these teaching strategies
involve technology while others involve presenting students to learning opportunities found
outside of the classroom. According to Wineburg, Martin, and Monte-Sano (2013) “engaging
students in historical question(ing) spark(s) their curiosity and (to) make them passionate about
seeking answers.” (pp. ix). To cap off my reflection as a teacher Dr. Cook provided our cohort
how to create unit lesson plans, which prepares us as teacher to think about how plan an entire
social studies unit instead of focusing on the individual lesson plans.

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Kevin Wallace
EDSE 584

Bibliography

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Thousand Oaks, CA.

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Bell, S. (2010). Project-Based Learning For The 21st Century Skills For The Future. The
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Case, R. (2013). The Unfortunate Consequences of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Social Education,

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