Ava L. McCall

Teaching Powerful Social Studies Ideas Through Literature Circles

The author describes the use of literature circles in a social studies methods course for elementary preservice teachers and analyzes their effectiveness in teaching powerful social studies ideas. Literature circles encourage students to take more of a leadership role in the classroom, expect their active involvement, and challenge them to think more deeply about social studies content within texts. Students can compare different perspectives on the same historical event, such as the encounter between Columbus and the Taino, and reasons for including and omitting important ideas. Students can also note similarities and differences among cultures and current and historical events through literature circle discussions. However, teachers must carefully select texts which focus on powerful social studies ideas, emphasize the goal of thoughtful discussions when introducing literature circles, and be ready to raise significant issues ignored in the literature circle discussions during follow-up class discussions.

Promoting Critical Thinking and Inquiry through Maps in Elementary Classrooms

This article encourages elementary teachers to offer opportunities for their students to critically analyze maps as part of powerful geography instruction in order to help them become well-informed and civic-minded citizens. The article reviews challenges to powerful geography instruction, including traditional geography textbooks and pedagogy and the additional efforts needed to encourage students to examine maps critically and identify distortions and biases. Teachers may introduce critical map reading by having students create and analyze their own maps of familiar places and create a safe classroom environment for questioning maps. The article suggests teachers encourage critical thinking with maps by using a variety of projections, such as conformal, equal area, and “upside down” maps which portray different perspectives, distortions, and biases, ask students to compare land areas on different maps, and determine the value of different maps. Finally, the article describes the effectiveness of several strategies the author uses with preservice elementary teachers in a social studies methods course to help them consider the cartographers influence on maps, the distortions and biases in maps, and the strengths and weaknesses of various maps they might use in elementary classrooms.

Preparing Preservice Teachers to Meet the Needs of Hmong Refugee Students

The United States is home to more than two million refugees since 1975, with over half arriving as children. Refugees are semi-voluntary immigrants fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking a country willing to resettle them (McBrien, 2005). They may have experienced war, separation from or loss of family, and loss of home and basic needs. One example is the Hmong who fled their home country of Laos beginning in the 1970s due to their alliance with the United States in the Vietnam War. They continued to enter the United States through 2004 when the last Hmong refugee camp in Thailand closed; currently over 200,000 Hmong live in the United States. How can we prepare preservice teachers to meet the needs of Hmong refugee students they may face in their future classrooms? Sleeter and Grant’s (2009) multicultural social justice approach offers a theoretical framework to guide teacher educators in their preparation of preservice teachers to welcome and provide appropriate learning opportunities for their Hmong refugee students. They recommend that teachers include different cultures in the curriculum, such as Hmong refugee culture as well as Hmong students’ experiences and perspectives,

That's Not Fair! Fourth Graders' Responses to Multicultural State History.

lementary students are capable and E enthusiastic learners when they are given opportunities to grapple with important ideas and issues. It took an experience of teaching state history with a classroom teacher during the fall semester of 1997 to convince me (a college professor) that social studies at the elementary level should be challenging. Students are ready for it and sometimes surprise you with their insights and learning. The classroom teacher and I developed a multicultural Wisconsin history curriculum, taught it together in the teacher’s fourth-grade classroom, and studied what the students learned through collaborative action research. Several questions guided our study: What do children learn from a social studies curriculum that integrates national (National Council for the Social Studies 1994) and local school district standards with multicultural, social reconstructionist (Sleeter and Grant 1999) concepts and themes? What do fourth graders learn from a unit on state government that focuses on different

More Than a Pretty Cloth: Teaching Hmong History and Culture Through Textile Art.

Abstract This article describes one teacher educators efforts to learn about Hmong culture and history through a study of textile arts and women who created it and use the textile arts to teach preservice teachers in a social studies methods course about this culture. The students responded positively to learning about Hmong culture and history through paj ntaub, reflecting the possibilities of this medium as a teaching tool. Textile arts, decoratively stitched fabrics often created by women, provide a valuable, but often overlooked resource for inquiring into and learning about a culture. Hmong paj ntaub is a complex form of textile art which decorated clothing and identified the wearers Hmong subgroup when the Hmong lived in Laos. The textile art on baby carriers and burial clothing reflected Hmong religious beliefs. When the Hmong fled to Thailand as refugees, their economic survival became dependent on the creation of marketable textile arts which led to changes in designs, colors, products, and the...