SYLLABUS FOR ELEMENTARY SOCIAL STUDIES COHORT

WINTER QTR, ‘05

WEEKS 1-5 - 1-4 p.m.
Seminar 1 3153
CoTeacher: Gery Gerst

Goals: to enhance each member’s comfort & proficiency with a variety of teaching strategies and to develop a portfolio of resources.

Objectives: Each member will:

  1. read selected articles weekly on theory and practice of social studies education for young learners and submit weekly a synopsis of the article that includes title & source, major points of interest to the reader as well as questions that occur.
  2. create weekly, with a partner, a complete lesson plan to apply the article read, with the lesson being according to a template and in accordance with the constructivist checklist;
  3. investigate web resources related to this specialty and write a critique of them;
  4. demonstrate weekly the lesson created;
  5. critique the lessons presented;
  6. revise her/his lesson according to the consensus of comments and submit the revised version with complementary materials the following week.
Assessment:
  1. Rubric to be determined by the cohort on Elementary Social Studies.
  2. Assessment based on criteria of reading and review, on-time lesson plan creation per criteria, lesson demonstration, critique of peers’ lessons, timely lesson plan revision and submission.
  3. Final product to be submitted is an album collection of items in the objectives.
Each student will be an integral part of the course success by helping to set the assessment standards, researching and critiquing resources, creating original lesson strategies and materials, helping revise draft lessons, and helping to generate a "street ready" portfolio for the entire cohort. Regular attendance, participation and submission of materials is vital.

Resource requirements:

  1. Access to reliable e-mail with the ability to send and accept attached documents.
  2. Printing capability