Deciding what to teach as a social studies teacher can be overwhelming. With the abundance of content knowledge, particularly in history, increasing each year, social studies teacher have to face the reality that it is impossible to teach everything they feel is important. So how do we make the difficult decision of what to teach and for how long? I approach this daunting task by first looking over the curriculum objectives and state standards for the school I am teaching at. I then note, what absolutely has to be taught. I then look at my planning calendar and list out my lesson objectives for each day. Most of my lessons have approximately three objectives. The most important objectives for a unit I usually introduce first, so I can reinforce these objectives throughout the unit.
I also always keep in mind the skills I will be focusing on developing for each unit. In all of the units I teach I focus on writing, reading, critical thinking and discussion skills. In some lessons I put a stronger emphasis on developing technological literacy, research, and cooperative learning skills. All teachers have to recognize that in addition to teaching content you must help students develop the fundamental skills they will need throughout the rest of their lives.
After I decide what skills we are going to focus on developing in my unit lessons I then focus on developing essential questions and themes for the unit. What are the big ideas I want my students to learn? Based on the answer to this question I am then able to look over the content for the unit and decide what content best relates to my big ideas and what content is less important. I rank my unit objectives in order of importance then and when I am developing my assessments, I make sure they also reflect this.
It is very difficult to decide what content you simply do not have time to teach. I do believe however it is more important for students to study some topics in depth than study as much as possible in a superficial way. When teaching history it is important to introduce students to detailed analysis and evaluation because over-simplification of history tends to obscure its truth. I have found students become more motivated when they have the opportunity to realize that people, much like them, experienced and played a role in the course of past events. This helps make history more relevant and interesting.
What to teach is not a simple question. I am often torn about not discussing a particular perspective or the experiences of a particular group, but as a social studies teacher I know we cannot teach everything. Just as English teachers must choose what literature to have students read, history teachers must decided what content is most important. I believe that teaching from a variety of approaches and perspectives allows students to appreciate the complexity of history and prepares them to independently be able to learn about what may not have been covered in as much detail in class. Are there basic facts and ideas all social studies teachers should cover? Absolutely. The challenge is determining what is most important to teach, when we are passionate about what we teach and it is all important and interesting to us.
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