The other day, I was on my way to the restroom when I overheard one of my students walking back to class from the media center. He said to a friend, "We have social studies next...YESSSSS!"
My day was made in a matter of seconds. We began a social studies unit on economics last week. Is it silly that I'm having as much fun as my students? It's the last subject I teach of the day, and I can't wait for it!
I teach in a unique classroom situation. I teach in a multi-age newcomer program. My teaching partner and I have 36 students, 1/3 of them are newcomers, brand new to our country. The other 2/3 of our students are neighborhood kids, some of them are ELL as well. This economics unit is the first social studies unit that our newcomers are fully involved in, so I have to really ramp up the vocabulary development so that it is "digestible" for everyone involved.
I began the unit by reading The Oxcart Man by Donald Hall. If you aren't familiar with this book and you teach social studies, you need to be! The farmer takes all of the goods he has made over the entire year to market. Once he is at the market, he sells EVERYTHING, even the his ox and cart. He purchases goods that he could not make with the money he earns, and then returns home to his family. He and his family start the process all over again, making goods to sell. I used this books as my mentor text!
I used the story and the illustrations (by Barbara Cooney...they are gorgeous!) to discuss the vocabulary goods, services, producers, consumers, opportunity cost, market, economics and scarcity. I introduced an economic graphic organizer set of posters that I had made, and gave students mini-copies of these. Their task, in small groups, was to figure out the order of these posters. They were charged with explaining their thinking orally to another group at the end of the activity. Finally, as a whole group, we put the larger posters in the correct order and discussed them.
The Oxcart Man and organizer activity took us about 3 days to complete. At the end of the three days, I did a comprehension check. I decided to use the 3-2-1 Strategy from Making Thinking Visible. This strategy was perfect for this. I gave my students a graphic organizer I developed around this strategy. They needed to write three words that came to mind about economics, two questions they had, and a metaphor or simile about economics. For my newcomer students, this was the first time using this strategy. The simile was difficult for some of them. With these particular students, I wrote the sentence stem "economics is like ____________." Two of them wrote "not enough," as scarcity was the concept that really stuck with them. Other similes or metaphors from our student population included, "economics is like having a long Christmas list, but only getting some of it." The simile/metaphor part of this strategy is my favorite thing about it, as I find it to be the most revealing about students' comprehension.
The next three days, we continued to work with economics vocabulary. Students sorted photo cards I had made into categories. The first sort, they sorted into goods and services categories. Second, they sorted them into producers and consumers. Finally, I returned to The Oxcart Man to teach about natural, human, and capital resources. Students then sorted the photographs again into those categories. I also used youtube to access a video of the Swedish chef, from the Muppets, making pumpkin pie. Students roared at his antics, but they also were able to describe the economic resources he used in the video.
At the end of this exploration, I gave students another comprehension check. This time, I decided to use the See-Think-Wonder strategy from Making Thinking Visible. I used another strategy sheet that I developed to used for this. Students were given a word bank of social studies vocabulary words. They chose one photograph from the collection of photos I had given them to sort and focused in on it. They were charged with using the social studies words to describe their observations, thoughts, and questions about their photo.
This strategy and organizer was easier for my newcomer students to use. I think it was easier because it didn't require metaphorical thinking. The word bank was a big help for them, too.
This week, our economics unit continues. I've assigned a fairy tale each one of my small groups. They have read the fairy tale together and will be working toward finding economic concepts in their tale. I'm so excited about the next part of this project, I can hardly wait. We'll be creating scenes from the fairy tales that illustrate economic concepts, using costumes, photography, and Power Point. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, please, please consider checking out my Making Thinking Visible resources below. They have deepened my students' thinking and learning!
Until next time, Teach on, my friends!
Tracy @ Wild Child Designs
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