Social Studies Focus:
Unfortunately, social studies does not actually take place in my classroom. They leave my classroom every other week to go to Mrs. Wolfe's room (Lauren Kellar's CT) to do social studies. My CT teaches science, so I only see that being taught as an actual lesson. However, that does not mean my students are not hitting social studies at all. It is integrated into many other subjects they do throughout the day. For example, on September 11th they spent the whole afternoon talking about what happened, watching videos, and doing activities. Last week during language arts, they were all reading a story out of their reading textbook about the Jewish culture. So, they are still getting small social studies lessons integrated into other subjects throughout the day.
Since I never see an actual social studies lesson being taught, I do not get to see how they are taught the information and how they respond to it. When it is integrated though depending on the subject they will discuss it. Unfortunately when they read the story from their reading textbook, they did a worksheet, turned it in, and did not have a discussion on what they read. My CT could have used that as a really good learning time on social studies and the Jewish culture.
I listen to some of my students talk throughout the day and there are some students in my class that are really intelligent and know a lot about history events, etc. It is unfortunate that my teacher does not take the extra time to go over some events or history with them throughout the day, more often. I think these students should be exposed to more social studies topics throughout the day and there are so many ways my CT could incorporate them into her lessons.
What I see in this classroom is similar to what I have seen in my other clinical experiences. As we all know, they are pushing math and literacy over all the other subjects so science and social studies are getting pushed aside. Many of the CT's I have been with take this seriously and usually push science and social studies aside completely. There are so many ways teachers can integrate them into their math and literacy lessons and then this way they are not taking it out of the curriculum. I personally want to integrate them into my lessons when I am a teacher if I am not able to spend 20-30 minutes on it during the week. I hope I see more in my student teaching setting and if not, I hope I can integrate them into my lessons, so the students are not getting any type of science or social studies.
Social studies and science were a part of my every day life when I was in elementary school and we all turned out just fine and with the same knowledge as students today. I don't understand why they have to push math and literacy so much.
