BLOCK B
SOCIAL STUDIES ARTICLE 2
To start, the first question presented was: "How do you help students who are struggling in your class?"
He answered that the approach he takes is first understanding what sort of learner they are first. He explained he does not have a clear strategy he reuses for every struggling student.
For example:
- Visual learner (He would show them pictures)
- Prefers words (Uses key terms to help them)
The next question was: "How do you know whether a student is memorizing, or actually understanding the material?"
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He mentions depending on how they are able to:
- Explain their work
- Teach the material themselves i
- Answer key questions
is the most reliable way to determine if a student understands the material.
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For the third question: "How can you help your students stay motivated?"
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Before class starts, he elaborates that he tries to recognize the student's interests, even before class or when introducing them to a new unit so he can steer the activities to have more options and topics to choose from. He also tries to use pop culture languages and references to music when teaching so they can have a basis for understanding.
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Next, "What are students currently learning about in your class?"
This interview with Mr. Pablico aims to clear up most issues, misconceptions, and troubles students may have with the subject. This article is also focused on explaining why Social Studies is important and why students should take it.
He explains that since he is teaching two classes simultaneously, they are learning about:
- World War I
- Geography
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"What do students usually have problems with in your class?"
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- Literacy (In some cases)
- Paraphrasing
- Using critical thinking
He explains trying to have sessions where students are able to exercise critical thinking.
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"What skills does a student learn in your class?"
The main skills to note are:
- Researching information
- Communicating information (such as formatting it into a broken down structure)
- Presenting
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"What is one misconception that students have about socials?"
A lot of students tend to try and remember dates (such as the day, and year), but usually they are irrelevant and students should strive to study more about the events, why they happened, and what caused it.
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"What skills do they learn that they can use in the outside world?"
- Verifying sources / fact-checking people
- Research (as mentioned before)
- Communicating information in a professional way
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In conclusion, students are recommended to focus on their critical thinking skills and understanding material on events thus the most important skill to have in social studies is research and communicating information.