HIST502/SOSC401 Syllabus
Montclair State University
Department of History
SOSC 401/HIST 502 Social Studies Teaching Methods
Monday 5:30 to 8:00
University Hall 1010
Contact Information
Professor Jeff Strickland
Email: stricklandj@mail.montclair.edu
Office: 425 Dickson Hall
Office Hours: Monday 4 to 5 PM, Tuesday 2 to 5 PM, & by appointment
Professor Fred Cotterell
Email: cotterellf@mail.montclair.edu
Office: 281 Dickson Hall
Office Hours: Monday 2 to 3 PM, Thursday 5:30 to 6:30 PM, & by appointment
Course Description
This course familiarizes prospective social studies teachers, grades K-12, with pedagogical approaches and innovative teaching techniques needed to convey to a diverse population current state and professional standards-based curriculum in the social studies. Innovative uses of technology, development of instructional units, individualizing for students with special needs, and strategies for managing problem behavior will be emphasized throughout the course.
Course Objectives
· You will examine and reflect on the relationships between curriculum, instruction, and assessment in Social Studies classrooms with a particular view to multicultural context, content, and process.
· You will examine and analyze curricular and pedagogical practices for educational significance, integration of history, geography, political science, and economics, sociology, and psychology, respect for students’ cultures, and contribution to equity and social justice.
· You will design a thematic unit.
· You will acquire practical presentation experience.
· You will enhance your knowledge of social studies content
.
Blackboard Web Site
You are responsible for obtaining course updates and submitting assignments via the Blackboard website http://montclair.blackboard.com/. In addition, you will submit all assignments to Blackboard dropbox. Blackboard confirms when files have been uploaded and sent. Please do not send emails to us requesting confirmation.
Email Accounts
You should activate their university email accounts no later than the first week of class. Failure to do so will result in the inability to log into Blackboard, receive course documents, updates and other messages from us.
Required Readings
James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me
Articles available on Blackboard.
Reading Assignments
You are expected to follow the course outline contained at the end of this syllabus.
Attendance
You are expected attend each class meetings since it is necessary preparation for the final planning unit and each class meeting entails some form of assessment (or preparation for it). It is important that you begin thinking of yourself as a professional, since you will begin teaching soon. If you miss more than one class, you will deduct 15% for each absence thereafter from your final grade average. If you miss more than three classes you will need to retake the methods course (a D is the best grade you could earn).
General Rules
If you arrive after 5:30 PM, you will be marked absent.
If you leave class for longer than it takes to use the restroom, you will be marked absent.
If you attempt to use your cell phone during class, you will be asked to leave the room and marked absent.
If you plagiarize, you will fail the course and we will refer you to the Dean of Students for adjudication.
If you plagiarize, you will be removed from the social studies program.
Reading Quizzes (15%)
You will write a short essay response to a question about the assigned readings during the first five minutes of each class. You cannot make up a quiz without a documented excuse for missing the class.
Primary Documents Lesson Plan (7.5 %)
You will design a lesson based on historical documents located on the Internet and present your findings to the class. Detailed primary documents assignment guidelines will be given in advance of its due date. In preparing your lesson plan, you should provide clear expectations and explicit instructions for your students. You will submit a brief lesson plan on the due date. You are expected to implement the jigsaw method. You should include no less than four documents (one document per group member). In the spirit of the Jigsaw method, each group member will have a specific responsibility in preparing this assignment (presenter is not a specific responsibility).
Historical Geography Lesson Plan (7.5 %)
You will design a history/geography lesson that focuses on historical maps. You should consider the topic, method, and means of evaluation.
Mock Trial Lesson Plan (5 %)
You and your group members will construct a mock trial transcript. You will present the mock trial to the class. Choose a famous trial from Douglass Linder’s “Famous Trials” website at the University of Missouri-Kansas City or some other website. Use the primary sources to develop a trial transcript. You should have at least four main characters and each character should speak at least three times. These are minimums and you can develop a much more elaborate trial if you prefer. Refer to the mock trial guide in the course documents section of Blackboard or the American Bar Association website listed above. Each group will present their mock trial to the class. We will hold three mock trials during class.
Précis on Lies My Teacher Told Me (5 %)
On the week when the class meets to discuss the Loewen, each student will turn in a two-page précis. This can be done in prose, outline system, or with headers. The two-page précis is designed to help you read the book critically for argument, historiographical issues, and provide a "road map" for our discussion. You should address briefly:
(1) The Author's background and other works (search the web, web databases such as "American History and Life," "Historical Abstracts", "World Cat," and the MSU Catalog)
(2) The Historical problem(s) the Author tackles. Pose these problems in the form of a question.
(3) Author's thesis (or theses)
(4) Sources
(5) Genre of History (Social, Cultural, Institutional, Diplomatic, Economic, Intellectual, Political, etc)
(6) Significant findings
(7) Historiographical contribution(s)
(8) Author's Ideological/Methodological Orientation (i.e. Marxist, structuralist, post-structuralist, foucaultian, etc).
(9) The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Book.
Professional Resources (7.5%)
You will complete three two-page summary/reflections of professional publications/resources for the teaching of Social Studies. They will provide you with an understanding of the ideas, rationale, approaches, and strategies in Social Studies curriculum and teaching. You will complete two review/reactions from professional publications and one from the Social Studies in Action PBS series. Reflections and reactions will include the relevancy of the ideas/strategies. You will read/view, summarize and reflect on two full-length articles from two different professional journals of the following three: The Social Studies, Social Education (National Council for Social Studies publication), and History Teacher. The third summary/reflection resource is an online video series from the Annenberg/WGBH series Social Studies in Action at http://www.learner.org/resources/series166.html?pop=yes&vodid=724819&pid=1788#
Instruction Material Analysis (5%)
You will examine and analyze instructional materials created for Social Studies educators. A list of materials, location, and specifics guidelines for this assignment will appear on Blackboard.
Film Lesson (5%)
The public often hears stories about students watching “movies” in their Social Studies/History class. Too often the perspective is that nothing meaningful is happening and that the entire situation is just “filler,” and Social Studies teachers have it easy. Your task is to develop guiding questions that you could use with an associated media clip. Assignment guidelines will appear on Blackboard.
Jigsaw Lesson (7.5%)
You will design a lesson plan based upon the jigsaw method www.jigsaw.org. Detailed assignment guidelines will be distributed in advance.
Final Teaching Unit (20 %)
This assessment represents one of the primary goals of the course. You can include revised work from previous assignments. Detailed unit guidelines will be given in advance of the scheduled due date. In short, you will submit a week-long unit as your final project. You must type your unit with no larger than size 12 font and with one-inch margins all around. In addition, you should provide a title page and bibliography/reference page. The unit must be submitted on the date noted, assignments turned in after then will be considered tardy and penalized a grade and subsequently an additional grade each day late thereafter, e.g. an A to a B, etc. etc.
Unit Plan Proposal
You will submit a two-page Unit Plan Proposal due Feb. 21 at 10PM. If you fail to submit the proposal on this date, you will deduct 10% from your final teaching unit.
Unit Plan Rough Draft
You will submit a rough draft of your unit plan on April 4 at 10PM. If you fail to submit a rough draft, you will deduct 10% from your final teaching unit.
In Class Participation and Discussion (10 %)
You are expected to participate thoughtfully in the discussions. You will earn as much as four 4 points per class. In addition you are expected to attend office hours four times per semester (once per month).
Binder (5%)
Your binder will consist of teaching strategies, handouts, print material, and other resources that you can use in your teaching. You should include materials from your field experience. Assignment guidelines will appear on Blackboard.
Revisions
You may revise any assignment except the final unit. Revisions must be submitted within one week of receipt of the initial grade. You will receive the grade earned on the revised assignment. It is important that you seek advisement on each assignment, rather than submit substandard work. In a case where a student repeatedly submits substandard work, they will receive an average of the grades earned on the initial assignment and the revised assignment. In short, the revision policy is a privilege not a right.
Students with Disabilities
The Services for Students with Disabilities office is located in the Academic Success Center in Morehead Hall (Suite 305). You can make an appointment by calling 973-655-5431. You can visit their website at http://www.montclair.edu/wellness/.
Tolerance to Create a Climate for Civility and
Academic Honesty—Plagiarism—Cheating (Section 9, MSU Code of Conduct)
Plagiarism is defined as using another person's words as if they were your own, and the unacknowledged incorporation of those words in one's own work for academic credit. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, submitting as one's own a project, paper, report, test, program, design, or speech copied from, partially copied, or partially paraphrased work of another (whether the source is printed, under copyright in manuscript form or electronic media) without proper citation. Source citations must be given for works quoted or paraphrased. The above rules apply to any academic dishonesty, whether the work is graded or ungraded, group or individual, written or oral. The following guidelines for written work will assist students in avoiding plagiarism:
(a) General indebtedness for background information and data must be acknowledged by inclusion of a bibliography of all works consulted;
(b) Specific indebtedness for a particular idea, or for a quotation of four or more consecutive words from another text, must be acknowledged by footnote or endnote reference to the actual source. Quotations of four words or more from a text must also be indicated by the use of quotation marks;
(c) A project work shall be considered plagiarism if it duplicates in whole or in part, without citation, the work of another person to an extent than is greater that is commonly accepted. The degree to which imitation without citation is permissible varies from discipline to discipline. Students must consult their instructors before copying another person's work.
Minimum sanction: Probation; Maximum sanction: Expulsion
Grading System
| 95-100 | A |
| 90-94 | A- |
| 87-89 | B+ |
| 84-86 | B |
| 80-83 | B- |
| 77-79 | C+ |
| 74-76 | C |
| 70-73 | C- |
| 67-69 | D+ |
| 64-66 | D |
| 60-63 | D- |
| 1-59 | F |
Course Outline
| Date | Week | Topic | Assignment | Readings | Professor |
| Jan. 26 | 1 | Introduction Lesson Planning Social Studies Standards | Select a topic for a primary documents lesson and submit it to the digital dropbox by January 31 at 10PM. Professional Resource Reflection #1 due Jan. 31 Précis on Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me due Feb. 14 at 10PM | Folder 1 for Feb.2 Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me for Feb. 23 | Strickland Cotterell |
| Feb. 2 | 2 | Unit Planning Historical Thinking | Reading Quiz 1: first five minutes of class. You will respond to a general/thematic question about the readings in Folder 1. Professional Resource Reflection #2 due to the digital dropbox by February 7 at 10PM Two-page Unit Plan Proposal due Feb. 28 at 10PM | Folder 2 for Feb. 9 | Cotterell |
| Feb. 9 | 3 | Teaching with Technology | Reading Quiz 2: first five minutes of class Begin working on primary documents/PowerPoint lesson in computer lab | Folder 3 for Feb. 16 | Strickland |
| Feb. 16 | 4 | Teaching with Primary Documents | Reading Quiz 3: first five minutes of class Primary Documents Lesson Plan due Feb. 21 at 10PM Meeting in computer lab | Folder 4 for Feb. 23 | Strickland |
| Feb. 23 | 5 | Beyond the Textbook Loewen Discussion | Reading Quiz 4: on Loewen Discuss Loewen | Folder 5 for Feb. 16 | Strickland |
| Mar. 2 | 6 | Teaching with films & photographs | Reading Quiz 5: first five minutes of class Develop film/photography lesson plan due Mar. 7 at 10PM | Folder 6 for Mar. 9 | Cotterell |
| Mar. 9 | 7 | Collaborative Learning | Design Jigsaw Lesson due March 21 at 10 PM | Folder 7 for Mar. 23 | Cotterell |
| Mar. 16 | | Spring Break | | | |
| Mar. 23 | 8 | Teaching Geography | Reading Quiz 6: first five minutes of class Historical Geography/World History Lesson due March 28 at 10PM | Folder 8 for Mar. 30 | Strickland |
| Mar. 30 | 9 | Teaching World History | Teaching Unit Rough Draft due April 4 at 10PM | Folder 9 for Apr. 6 | Strickland |
| Apr. 6 | 10 | Writing and Assessment | Reading Quiz 7: first five minutes of class Professional Resource Reflection #3 due April 11 at 10PM | Folder 10 for Apr. 13 | Cotterell |
| Apr. 13 | 11 | Teaching Economics Analyzing Textbooks | Instructional Materials Analysis due April 18 at 10 PM | Folder 11 for Apr. 20 | Cotterell |
| Apr. 20 | 12 | Teaching Politics & Govt. | Reading Quiz 8: first five minutes of class Mock Trial Lesson Plan due May 3 at 10PM | Folder 12 for Apr. 27 | Strickland |
| Apr. 27 | 13 | Oral History & other projects | Reading Quiz 9: first five minutes of class | Folder 13 for May 4 | Strickland |
| May 4 | 14 | Discussion & Debates | Reading Quiz 10: first five minutes of class Teaching Unit due May 9 at 10PM. | Folder 14 for May 11 | Cotterell |
| May 11 | 15 | Student Teaching | Professional Notebook due May 11 in class | | Strickland Cotterell |
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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