Chapter 1 of James J. Zarillo's book, Teaching Elementary Social Studies, he talks about the different processes that should be incorporated into the social studies curriculum. These processes include: Inquiry Processes, Thinking Processes, Language Arts Processes, Visual and Performing Arts Processes, Technology Processes, and Participation Processes. You might notice some similarities between these processes and some of the intelligences included in Gardner's theory on multiple intelligences. I imagine this is not an accident.
Inquiry Processes are those in which the children become tiny scientists looking for answers. They ask questions, gather and analyze data, and then come back and share.
Thinking Processes are those by which children learn to apply, analyze, and most importantly, synthesize the information they receive.
Language Arts Processes is simply the reading, writing, and speaking the students do.
Visual and Performing Arts Processes deals with students gaining an appreciation for the arts as well as the ability to express ideas through the arts.
Technology Processes is the student's use of the computer.
Participation Processes are those by which the students are able to express their opinion or work in a group and share toward similar ends.
Each of these processes can be essential to teaching the whole child, but also to teaching the whole curriculum. By incorporating all of these processes into the curriculum, the students not only learn the material, but are given the opportunity to explore the material and analyze it to their own end. It can help students answer for themselves the all important question of "Why do we need to learn this?" Expanding our repertoire and using a variety of teaching strategies that appeal to the different learning processes of the students (who may be better at one or more of the processes than the others and therefore gain more from those particular processes) will help teachers expose the most potential from all of their students. It varies the lessons rather than keeping them mundane and these specific processes, especially related to social studies, really allow for students to do some self learning and self reflection and take away from the material the things they enjoyed the most. As teachers we need to differentiate our instruction to cater to the diversity of the classroom.
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These are all good points, but how did you arrive to them? How are you learning? How do you know? In future posts, focus on reflecting how you are learning this material, and what you are learning from your practicum. This will be important to understand when we cover assessment.
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