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social studies is about understanding things, and not very much about learning skills.

social studies should be part of the curriculum for the purpose of helping students understand human interactions that occurred in the past, are occurring now, and that are likely to occur in the future. The reason for these understandings is they may help students develop and nurture values that will make it more likely that they will be able to determine for any situation what the right thing is and do it, especially when doing the right thing is hard to do. It is about decency, respect, courage and honor. This is not a difficult idea to understand, but it can take a lifetime to appreciate. 

In fact every time I have helped a teacher flip their classroom in the high school it has never involved videos. Instead it involves students actively finding information, making sense of it, and then coming to class ready to discuss with the teacher what they have learned, what questions they have and, what it is they still don’t know/understand.

It has been amazing the pushback we have received both from students and from parents on this flipped idea. Students telling us they would rather listen to a lecture and powerpoint from the teacher then have to struggle through the mass of content out there to find the answer themselves. Parents calling into question the idea that the teacher isn’t “teaching my child” and the frustration their child is having to “find the right answer.” Both of these comments scare me....a lot!

As an employee of my school I am very concerned about the notion of what good learning (not teaching) looks like in a world that is filled with information that is chaotic, messy, and ever growing.

I even require that my students to begin their lesson plans with the phrase “I want my students to understand…” 

Reasons are important!

I ask each student to complete these two sentences: 1. "I know about or understand"_______________________ 2. "I know how to"_________________________________ The students are told that these understanding and skills can be about anything, and not necessarily social studies, which is what I teach. Usually, students are comfortable expressing what they understand and know how to do when the context for doing so is not threatening. When they have finished writing the completions to the sentences, there is period when I ask each student to tell the class what it is they understand and know how to do. During the process, I question them about how they came to understand whatever they wrote and how they learned the skill they indicated. It is an interesting exercise.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Posted by Larry Ferlazzo on February 15, 2009 ON YOUR OWN Watch these movies and take the quizzes: Civil Rights Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X Learn about Rosa Parks. Learn about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Listen To Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and find the mistakes. Watch this video of King Here’s another video about King.

Who Do You Think Are The Greatest Americans? Posted by Larry Ferlazzo on March 30, 2009 A television channel did a poll to find out who people thought were the Greatest Americans, and then ranked them from the most important to the one hundredth most important. Think about all the Americans we have studied so far.  Pick who you think are the top five Americans and rank them one-through-five.  Find a picture of them, write about what you think was their major accomplishment, and explain why you ranked them where you did.