Application for the Teaching Innovation Grant
Helping Early Childhood/Childhood Education Majors to Teach Social Studies Themes through Children's Literature
Date: Feb. 28, 2006
Lin Lin
Assistant Professor
Childhood and Early Childhood Education
Van Hoesen Hall, Room B-224
Phone: 753-4234
A letter of support will be provided by Dr. Cynthia Benton , Chair of the Early Childhood/Childhood Education Department ( bentonc@cortland.edu , phone: 753-2707)
Helping Early Childhood/Childhood Education Majors to Teach Social Studies Themes through Multicultural Children's Literature
Lin Lin
What is the problem to be addressed and why is it significant?
It is a well-known fact that currently many elementary level teachers are being told to focus on reading and mathematics instruction. Others are being told to use their social studies periods to prepare students for standardized testing using highly structured strategies and materials that help students learn unrelated bits of information. The early childhood/childhood teacher candidates in our teacher education program should be made aware of this situation and have opportunities to learn how to integrate social studies concepts across the curriculum, especially how to integrate social studies into literacy and language arts through multicultural Children's literature.
Childhood and early childhood majors in our program are predominantly white, middle class students. It is very likely, however, that they will be teaching in classrooms that are becoming more diverse in the cities. Our students need to be prepared for that. It's an important part of their experience if they are provided opportunities to know about other culture because this is the way to connect with their students, reach for the students' experiences and knowledge so that our students can help their future students construct knowledge about the world. In our early childhood/childhood education programs, method courses in social studies (EDU375) and literacy are offered separately. Both method courses in social studies and literacy make efforts to integrate children's literature into social studies instruction, but neither courses have much time to provide students opportunities to practice integrating social studies concepts into literacy. Faculty teaching these different method courses could have worked with more collaboration among themselves so that teacher candidates could be provided with information and knowledge in language arts and literacy lessons that can scaffold understanding of concepts taught explicitly in social studies lessons. The candidates can also get insights into students' thinking in language arts and reading lessons that can inform their planning of social studies lessons.
The goal of social studies in the early grades (K-4) and intermediate grades (5-6) is to help students understand their world and how they participate in it. As they select focusing ideas for their language arts program, teachers can refer to social studies standards, concepts, and content. This is not a call for wholesale integration of social studies, and for example language arts, for this can be fraught with problems. I propose each teacher candidate learn to plan integrative units in English language arts emphasizing daily practice and attention to the skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in the elementary grades using children's literature to teach social studies concepts and themes such as multiculturalism and diversity. The New York State Learning Standards for the Social Studies is replete with examples of overlaps with State Learning Standards for the English Language Arts. We need to provide students with models of how social studies concepts could be integrated into language arts and literacy. In their future career working under the pressure of standardized tests in mathematics and reading, our students need to have available a list of children's books and a set of teaching strategies that they could use to teach social studies concepts using literacy passages or texts and language arts lessons.
What is the current instructional method and how will this proposal change it?
Currently social studies teachers and literacy teachers teach “our own” courses with little collaboration. Social studies teachers require students to integrate literacy into social studies, but do not spend much time showing students how to integrate. Students learn teaching strategies in literacy method courses, but reported having a hard time teaching social studies using children's literature.
The proposed way of teaching social studies and literacy methods using this integrative unit approach is expected to provide students an opportunity to get familiar with a set of children's books (biographies from other cultures for example), to understand the underlining social studies themes in these books, and how they could use these books to teach social studies concepts and themes. This will allow the preservice teachers to have a tool in their classrooms to promote conversation among children about their home costumes, bring parents to tell stories of their ancestors and immigration stories, etc. Students will “experience” integrating teaching rather than just “hear about it” or “being asked to integrate”.
What effects are expected from this change?
The New York State Learning Standards for Social Studies and English Language Arts specified standards calling for diversity, multiculturalism, and global education. We believe Children's literature is a great channel through which we could build links between these standards and students' learning outcomes. The expected student outcome is more meaningful and effective way of learning diversity using biographies about people in cultures they are not familiar with. Students will be able to identify such children's literature that they could use to teach social studies concepts and themes. Students will also be able to use at least three teaching strategies to integrate social studies concepts into literacy lessons. Besides asking them to integrate social studies across the curriculum, the proposed plan provides students a concrete model so that they get to practice integrating social studies into literacy. Students are expected to develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be an interdisciplinary teacher as they actually experience how areas of knowledge complement each other, and how literacy and social studies can be integrated as a better learning experience for students. They will also learn to develop a clearer understanding of the advantages of this approach in their future career.
How will the change be implemented?
I will write this proposed change into my course syllabus. Using the New York Learning Standards for Social Studies and for English Language Arts, I will identify key concepts in social studies that will form the basis of these integrative units of social studies and language arts. I will then discuss with students and colleagues how social studies concepts and themes could be used as basis for developing a unit plan in language arts and literacy. Teaching strategies including the Six Reading Responses, Two-Word Strategies, and Visual Thinking Strategies will be shared with students. Lists of children's books will be provided for students. Students also are free to choose their own favorite children's literature. Students, upon completion of this integrative unit, will be provided the opportunity to present to the whole class. Their presentations will be recorded to share with the whole class and serve as basis for reflections. Recorded presentations will also be shared with future students and other teachers.
How can the effects of implementing this change be evaluated?
In my Block I courses, I will ask students to complete an assignment in which they integrate social studies concepts and themes into literacy and language arts. The assignments will engage each student in the preparation of an integrated lesson of social studies and literacy and in the creation of their own books and their own immigrant stories with pictures. I will develop a rubric or set of related rubrics to assess the quality of this assignment. The rubrics will be based on the existing rubric used for NCATE evaluation purposes. Reflections on this assignment will also be solicited in a format of an essay.
Describe any previous experience in course innovation
I had participated in several teaching innovative programs when I taught in Beijing Foreign Studies University . My team worked together to design the curriculum and instructional strategies on a weekly basis. An example is cited here to illustrate my experience in course innovation. Working with colleagues teaching English Composition, Oral Communications, and Translation courses to English majors, I designed a unit in which each pair of students found a foreign student on campus and asked if he or she would like to participate in the two-day activity. Students, working in pairs, interviewed the foreign student by recording their conversation, and researched in the library or on the Internet about the country the foreign student was from. They were expected to investigate on the geographic, economic, and cultural features of that country. For the oral communication course, each pair would talk to the foreign student and record their conversation on a tape. For the composition course, each student wrote what they learned about that particular student and his or her home country. For translation course, each student acts as the interpreter for the other student in the pair introducing to the class about their findings. A seminar was held for students to share their findings. This unit allows student to practice language skills and vocabulary and deepen their understanding about a part of the world with which they were unfamiliar, while making friends and connections among geographic and cultural features with economic development. In the process of interviewing, recording, writing, and presenting, students discussed differences and similarities between Chinese culture and the culture of the foreign student. Some students' misconceptions and stereotypes about “other” cultures arose. The instructors used the opportunity to address the issues of diversity and multicultural acceptance issues. This activity could be extended to this teaching innovation program.
During the fall semester 2005 and spring semester 2006, I participated in Block I Method Courses team teaching. I required each elementary social studies methods student to prepare a lesson plan based on a social studies concept or theme using Children's literature. The students were provided three alternative ways of developing such a lesson, but they are free to develop their own topic for the lesson. While I have not used this assignment collaborating with all other teachers in Block I, I used it with Dr. Hee-Young Kim, who asked students to integrate technology into social studies, and we both saw the opportunity to do so with other professors on my block. I also hosted origami art sessions at the Children's Museum. Early Childhood and Childhood majors were invited to help children learn to make paper cranes while listening to stories of children were victims of the atomic bombs in WWII.
Sharing our work
A set of integrative units of social studies and literacy courses will be shared with the rest of the faculty members of my department for the use in their classrooms. These units can be also used by teacher candidates in their own field experiences and in their future classrooms. I believe that these units can be also shared with elementary and middle school area teachers. In particular, units having themes in diversity and multicultural literacy should be of interest to practicing teachers as current models do not exist. I will collaborate with Dr. Sheila Cohen on a presentation for a future Scholar's Day at SUNY Cortland.
If I am awarded a grant, I plan to use this stipend to:
These materials will stay in my department or Teaching Material Center in the Cortland Memorial Library for use as teaching resources.