Rachael Henthorn

BP 8
Dr. Nancy Patterson
November 2nd
What do you need to know to teach Social Studies?
Since my last blog post nothing has really changed. The students are wrapping up their
unit on Nigerias government. They had a test over the material this past Monday I think (due to
a late start Tuesday I have not been able to discuss the results of the test so far). The questions I
choose to ask myself are, How important is it to know your content standards? and How do
essential questions work in the classroom?. I chose to ask these questions because I believe that
both of them are extremely nesacary to becoming a successful teacher and Im interested to see
how my current classroom uses both of these tools.

How important are knowing your content standards?

As I have previously stated the one classroom I am in is a comparative government class.
I personally have never taken a class like this either in High School or so far in college. So when
sitting in the classroom I know pretty much all that the students do on the subject of Nigerias
government. So just from this alone I feel like knowing your content standards is going to be
100% nesacary. If you do not even know your own lesson plan how will you be able to answer
pop up questions? Students have these frequently in my class and the teacher being able to
answer them not only helps them but it also teaches the class something new as well. I have also
seen how one question can lead to a classroom discussion where students start to use higher
order thinking (HOTS) to teacher each other and gather new information, and this all came from

the teacher knowing the content standards. While we did not do a blog post on this subject we
did do a lot of activities on getting to know our content standards. Doing the Ohio Learning
Standards (OLS) scavenger hunt really made me understand the importance of being able to
know your subject. We as teachers have a lot of knowledge to pass onto our students but we also
have a responsibility to make sure they are leaving schools prepared enough for whatever path
they choose wether it be college or something else.

How do essential questions act in the classroom?

In my current classroom my teachers does not use the exact model of asking essential
questions. He instead always tries to remind the students of the big topics they learned last class.
The students do not seem motivated to learn about Nigeria even when the teacher tries to relate
in back to their daily lives. And I often wonder if this is because he has not been asking any
essential questions. I personally think that having an essential question for a unit or even a
lecture can really help a class learn more together. For example right now the class is reading a
book about a fictional person in a fictional country that is modeled after Nigeria. The teacher just
has the students read the book and take quizzes on what they read. There is no class discussion
and no interaction with the material outside of the quizzes. I think an essential question would
make this book extremely more impactful. The book Bring learning alive! Methods to transform
middle and high school social studies (Bower, B., Lobdell, J., and Owens, S., 2010) chapter on
essential questions discusses how essential questions can trigger HOTS. The text says The very
wording of the essential question should provoke students to reflect and want to start
responding (Bring learning alive! Methods to transform middle and high school social studies
(pg. 227). This shows me that an essential question is exactly is what needed to start a discussion

among my students. If you ask the right question it will make students want to talk about it, for
example if I wanted to start a discussion about the book I would ask my students why a character
did what he did and how would they respond in that same situation? The textbook also talks
about how important it is to break down your essential questions into teachable sections
(Methods to transform middle and high school social studies, pg. 227). I think using this strategy
is very helpful to being able to effectually teach. Being able to relate many different lessons back
to one subject will allow the students to be able to relate it back to the content standard you are
trying to teach.

References
Bower, B., Lobdell, J., and Owens, S. (2010). Essential questions. Bring
learning alive! Methods to transform middle and high school social
studies. Palo Alto, CA: Teachers Curriculum Institute, pp. 226-228.