Questioning
The ability to question is a vital strategy where students can look into areas that they do not know. Being able to question can help a student in a number of different ways, including: activating prior knowledge; forming opinions; predicting ideas. Questioning can happen in a number of ways when reading, by looking at the text and asking who, what, where, when, why, and how. Social Studies can become a repeating and dull subject when students are not challenged, rather just asked to regurgitate facts and dates they have been told by the teacher. Questioning allows them to look into a subject and get past the simple and repetitive information, and look deep into a subject or event.
Mapping
Mapping is an activity that can be used to help benefit a student both during and after reading. The idea of mapping is to visually display information during or after reading so that students can understand the individual parts, and connect them together in the large scale together. There are a number of different forms of mapping that can be applied so that a student can arrange information into groups that are easier to remember, these include:
-Venn Diagrams
The idea of Venn diagrams has been borrowed from the math field and applied across the curriculum because of its advantages. It is a simple graphic organizer that allows students to actively think about the similarities and differences between concepts. Students compare things throughout their lives, so to apply this to the field of social studies once explained is a very simple process. (Venn) Examples of where this can be used is the compare and contrasting of:
-Capitalism vs. Communism
-National vs. State vs. Local Governments
-WWI vs. WWII
-Progressive vs. Proportional Taxes
Mapping is an activity that can be used to help benefit a student both during and after reading. The idea of mapping is to visually display information during or after reading so that students can understand the individual parts, and connect them together in the large scale together. There are a number of different forms of mapping that can be applied so that a student can arrange information into groups that are easier to remember, these include:
-Venn Diagrams
The idea of Venn diagrams has been borrowed from the math field and applied across the curriculum because of its advantages. It is a simple graphic organizer that allows students to actively think about the similarities and differences between concepts. Students compare things throughout their lives, so to apply this to the field of social studies once explained is a very simple process. (Venn) Examples of where this can be used is the compare and contrasting of:
-Capitalism vs. Communism
-National vs. State vs. Local Governments
-WWI vs. WWII
-Progressive vs. Proportional Taxes
-Timelines
Timelines allow students to create a graphical representation of an event or series of events and how they correlate with each other. Within social studies it is a great tool to get students to conceptualize events and important figures in history. (Fillpot) Areas that a timeline can be used in social studies are:
-U.S. Flag throughout history
-Major Political Events in WWII
-Inventions that changed history
-Mind Mapping
A mind map is often centered around an image or idea that links off ideas and connections between the portions of learned material hierarchically. It is often used for personal note taking allowing sub-topics to be formed in a creative manor. (Davies)
-Concept Mapping
A concept map is normally a top down diagram that shows the relationships between concepts and ideas relating to one main idea. It is seen as more formal that the mind map
Cognitive researchers tell us that our minds can only deal with a limited number of items at once, especially in short-term memory. But if we put these smaller ideas into a larger mental unit it is easier to remember. Mapping allows students to put these string of events into one large group, which not only helps them remember this information, but also relate it to the bigger picture. An example of this can be seen with World War II, and the D-Day landings: It is very basic for a student to know the date and events that happened when Allied forces successfully landed on the beaches in Normandy. But if a student was to map out this event in terms of its correlation to the whole war, it connects it to something much bigger than itself. With this understanding and ability to relate it to the bigger picture, students are given the opportunity to synthesize many aspect of the idea rather than just complete a number of set tasks.
Resources
Daniels, Harvey, Steven Zemelmen, 2004. Subjects Matter: Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading. Portsmouth, NH. Heinmann.
Davies, Martin. "Concept mapping, mind mapping and argument mapping: what are the differences and do they matter?." Higher Education 62.3 (2011): 279-301. Print.
Fillpot, Elise. "Teaching History." Teaching with Timelines. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. <http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/teaching-guides/24347>.
Venn, John. "Venn Diagrams." ReadingQuest Strategies. N.p., 26 Aug. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. <http://www.readingquest.org/strat/venn.html>.