Techniquesin Teaching Social Studies

RAIZA O. LOPEZ The primary grades are the place to begin teaching the social studies skills. This is a period when children are more cooperative, uninhibited, and more receptive to the idea of participation. This plan would seem also to provide opportunity to gain some experiential background to compensate for lack of experiences.

In appealing to culturally disadvantaged pupils, emphasizing the problems, controversies, and struggles that individuals and nations have undergone would touch on a daily experience in their lives. The use of biography and careful structuring of units would be helpful in this emphasis. Current events can be given this slant; using current event as flashback technique, from the present of the past, bring out the similarity of events or at least the connection between the happenings of present and past. Culturally disadvantaged children are also more interested if they have realistic goals, and if they are aware what their goals are. Certainly techniques which enrich and enable children to be more successful in mastering this area are helpful.

Activities bring subject matter to life by building a background of experience, encouraging participation, and enabling children to earn responsibility. Field trips provide opportunities to escape the limitations of their neighborhood and to lift their horizons by experiencing in a museum, an art gallery, or a factory what has been the subject of their lesson. Because these pupils are not highly verbal, graphic material is frequently better understood. Charts, pictures, cartoons ,graphs and maps can be prepared by pupils; if these materials are placed on display, the self-image of the participants is indeed improved. Enthusiasm and competition are generated by this recognition. Contest are another technique for generating enthusiasm. Dramatization has high appeal. Elementary children enjoy acting out what they learn in classroom and in assembly programs in the form of dramatic play, puppets, and dramatization, depending upon their age. The socio-drama is a type of acting out, but the purpose is to gain perspective and solutions of people’s problems by looking at them through the eyes of someone else.

This method can be applied to personal or to historical problems; this activity enlarges the understanding of people. The interview technique, modeled on the television, is a motivating and informative activity.

--oOo-The author is Teacher III at Concepcion Elementary School, Bacolor North District