When teaching the subject matter associated with Social Studies, it is extremely important for the instructor to understand that they are not just teaching history. Yes, social studies does include history as part of its content, but the other elements of the content – geography, economics, and civics, are of equal (if not more) importance. The goal of a good social studies teacher is to place events in past history into the current frame of the events occurring today, while also exposing the students to civics, economics, and geography at a level that is relevant to them as individuals and citizens.
The thematic unit lesson plans that I presented to the class were based upon the role of the United States in the emerging global theater. The unit was designed for 12th grade social studies, using the scaffolding principle of Lev Vygotsky to construct each individual lesson upon the foundation of the prior lesson. The initial lesson was based upon the students prior knowledge of World War I, and involved the repercussions of the war with respect to both the participants and the periphery. Students were required to form work groups to act as individual nations which comprised the League of Nations, and form an argument that would justify or rationalize their nation’s stance.
The subsequent lessons addressed the United States attempts at imperialism in Latin America via President Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy”, the failure of the League of Nations, and the onset of World War II. The final lesson in the unit dealt with intense issues of human rights violations, genocide, war crimes, and the ultimate formation of the United Nations. These lessons were designed to incorporate global thinking (the big picture) within the realm of not just the United States, but the world as a whole. Students were shown political cartoons, online maps, war footage (including concentration camps), and primary source documents – and then participated in rational, instructor-moderated discussions.
The purpose of these discussions was to allow the students to view the topics from different perspectives, to gain a better understanding of political, social, geographic, and economic factors which played a part in the evolution of mankind in the early twentieth century. Students were required to keep an individual running “KWL Sheet” for each lesson, with a “Master KWL Sheet” for each group. The students were then required to transcribe their master sheet to an online database (Weebly Blog) for use by the instructor when formulating the final assessment for the unit. This practice allows the students to have input in creating their own test questions, while also requiring them to use critical thinking skills.
To further to scaffolding approach, while bridging into the next unit plans, the students were shown a YouTube video of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The video is a visual and auditory prompt that depicts events from 1949, the end of the period which was covered in the previous unit plan. Among these events was the formation of the Communist Bloc nations, the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and continues through 1989. The primary message of this video is that though we didn’t start the proverbial fire, we inherited it and now have to devise methods to fight it. The lyrics of the song also illustrate the decline of world morality, the rise of popular culture, and the effects of these changes on our society. In addition, the lyrics also expose students to people, places, events, and objects to which they might not otherwise. The hope being (somewhat ironically) that the instructor kindles a fire of desire to learn more about these topics.
Based upon the reaction of my classmates, I feel that my presentation was successful and needed just a few minor changes. I would have liked to have had more time to present the lesson in its full capacity as one of those changes. The other would have been to have used the Smartboard, in its full capacity, as an extension of my computer. All in all, I thought it was a good presentation.
Works Cited
Billy Joel. We Didn't Start the Fire. N.d. Infographic. YouTube.com
Britton, Jill. "Jill Britton's Website." Icosahedron Globe. Camosun
College, n.d. Web. 25 Nov 2011.
<http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/globe/globe.htm>.
White, M. (1997). Map of league of nations. In Retrieved from
Killtron. (Producer). (2006). World war one footage. [Web Video].
United Nations website. (n.d.). Retrieved from
The course is fine the way it is.
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