Teaching Social Studies: A Methods Book for Methods Teachers, features tasks designed to take preservice teachers deep into schools in general and into social studies education in particular. Organized around Joseph Schwab's commonplaces of education and recognizing the role of inquiry as a preferred pedagogy in social studies, the book offers a series of short chapters that highlight learners and learning, subject matter, teachers and teaching, and school context. The 42 chapters describe tasks that the authors assign to their methods students as either in?class or as outside?of?class assignments. The components of each chapter are: > Summary of the task > Description of the exercise (i.e., what students are to do, the necessary resources, the timeframe for completion, grading criteria) > Description of how students respond to the activity > Description of how the task fits into the overall course > List of readings and references > Appendix that supplements the task description

"Randi Stone transports readers into the lively classrooms of award-winning teachers in this collection of outstanding methods for teaching social studies to diverse elementary, middle, and high school learners. Like its companion volumes for teaching writing, mathematics, and science, Best Practices for Teaching Social Studies presents firsthand accounts from educators offering fresh ideas and inquiry-based techniques to build student confidence, increase academic achievement, and develop critical thinking skills. Highlights include master teachers' tips on how to: organize and produce oral history projects, use technology to explore diversity, teach the art of geography and the geography of art, put the "social" back into social studies, and more. Beginning and experienced teachers alike will discover an abundance of creative teaching practices to strengthen the social studies curriculum."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

Designed for use in elementary and secondary social studies education courses, this book supports the teaching of social studies methods in a range of educational settings. By highlighting long-standing content and principles of social studies education in a concise and direct way, this volume offers the building blocks of a comprehensive course, for use as springboards to the effective presentation of professors' desired course emphases. With sections on foundations, subject areas, and best practices, this text explains the intersection between the "modelling" role of social studies teachers as democratic citizens, social studies fields of study, and strategies implemented in the classroom to encourage students' critical thinking and values formation.

No plan to increase achievement and enact reform in the social studies classroom will succeed without recognizing the central importance of the teacher as the gatekeeperof instruction. In this book, Thornton details why teachers must develop strong skills in curriculum planning and teaching methods in order for effective instruction to occur. Thornton helps teachers to develop a vision of their practice that will build strong social studies programs and inspire students to learn. This book features replicable examples of the kinds of reflective practice that will enable teachers to animate classroom instruction and create a dynamic social studies curriculum and an analysis of how teachers adapt and shape state and district level curricula and classroom materials to fit the specific needs of their students, and a model of how to develop an instructional program with suggestions for lesson planning.

Contents: Teaching of the Subject, Concept and Scope, The Socialisation, Part of National Curriculum, Aims and Objectives, Significance of the Motives, Teaching Methods, Project Methods, Problem Method, Role of Technology, Micro-teaching, Learning by Programme, Teaching Aids, Significance of Dalton Plan, Curriculum, Course Selection, Textbooks and Material, The Examination, Lesson Planning, Art of Questioning, Dealing with Topics.