Social Studies for the Elementary and Middle Grades: A Constructivist Approach

/* 2438L-2, Sunal, Cynthia Szymanski, Social Studies for the Elementary and Middle Grades: A Constructivist Approach.*/ Designed to help teachers facilitate students' development into problem solvers and decision makers who take an active role as citizens of the world. The authors provide interviews with exemplary teachers throughout the text help to put a face on the teaching of social studies and offer concrete examples of constructivist instruction. This book demonstrates how to use developmentally appropriate strategies to help students construct important social studies ideas and skills. "Time for Reflection: What do you think?" activities allow the reader to integrate their personal experiences and perspectives with text materials. Drawing upon their combined teaching experience of more than 25 years, the authors illustrate flexible strategies for teaching social studies to today's diverse learners. They provide readers with a structure of the knowledge to be learned, how to help students reconstruct present ideas, and how to translate theory and recent research into lesson plans and units. Readers also receive practical applications of constructivist theory by the numerous classroom scenarios and lesson plans that appear throughout the book. Explanations and examples throughout the text help the reader arrive at more appropriate and accurate conceptions and reflection and the application of these ideas to their teaching. The book supports the reader with many opportunities for reflection on classroom events, analysis of classroom scenarios, consideration of interviews with exemplary social studies teachers, and analysis of classroom-tested lesson plans that focus on all content areas. Designed for elementary and middle school social studies faculty(K-8).