Social Studies Summer Series Part 3: How to Teach Culture and Society Skills

Kirsten 0:07

Hello, welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher Podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me in part three of the social study summary series today is all about culture and society. So this is really related to anything like traditions, celebrations, our literature, science, technology, and how it all relates to society, in our globe, or in our country and community. So I'm going to be sharing with you some tips, all about how you can effectively teach this type of domain or any content or topics related to this domain. And I will share with you some examples.

Kirsten 1:34

Alright, so let's go ahead and get started. I do want to say that I think it is so important as teachers to play a big role in helping students appreciate and learn about diverse celebrations and customs and traditions, and also just people in general who have contributed to society, whether it's through art or science, music, technology, and how it all relates together. For upper elementary teachers teaching these topics can be fun and interesting with the right approach of inclusivity. So let's go ahead and dive into those steps. To help you teach culture and related topics to your third, fourth or fifth grade students.

Kirsten 2:21

The very first thing we're going to have as a tip, of course has to be to make sure you're thinking about your own beliefs and experiences. It's so important to be open minded and willing to learn and share about cultures that are different than yours might be. As teachers, we need to, you know, consider the needs of our students and the beliefs of our students, they are going to range vastly depending on where you teach. So it's important to know yourself and to make sure you understand and know your students.

Kirsten 3:06

The second tip I have is to create a welcoming classroom, make sure your classroom is a safe space where everyone feels respected and included. And also encourage students to share their own cultural backgrounds and traditions. Voluntarily. You do not want to force them to be like, I want you to tell us about what you do you know what your religion is, and your background is and all of that. If some students don't feel comfortable doing that, it's important to give them that space to maybe either warm up to it or just that ability to say I don't really want to share that part of myself could range vastly some people will be very eager to share. Some people may not be as eager to share. And so it's important to make sure that is done throughout the school year, not just when you're teaching about culture and society related topics.

Kirsten 4:03

The third tip I have for you is to use stories and personal experiences. Start lessons with stories and personal experiences. You could read books about different cultures. There's a variety a plethora of culturally diverse books on a variety of topics, and also just related to holidays and traditions and famous scientists famous artists, and you can also bring in guest speakers to share their stories. One of my favorite novels to read as a read aloud just as a chapter book read aloud is Esperanza, rising by Pam Munoz Ryan to help learn more about Mexican American culture. It's a fictional story, but it is really interesting to kind of learn about her life and just how the plot unfolds out A variety of events happen. So it's a really great way to kind of share about a culture that might be different than theirs.

Kirsten 5:09

The fourth tip I have for you is to utilize hands on activities for culture and society topics plan hands on activities to help students engage with different cultures, they can do art projects inspired by famous artists from different countries. You could also organize a cultural Food Fair where students are bringing dishes from their own cultural backgrounds or a cultural background that they're interested in.

Kirsten 5:36

Tip number five is to explore with technology, you can utilize devices to explore cultures around the world, take virtual field trips to famous landmarks with Google Earth. Or you can use educational apps like Nearpod. To learn about different traditions. For example, you could you know, go onto Google Maps on your device and go visit the Louvre Museum in Paris. Or even go onto their website and see if they have any pages or information about how sometimes some museums or websites will have virtual tours of what they have in their brick and mortar Museum. thinking maybe about exploring online encyclopedia articles, like Britannica kids, they could explore different traditions of people around the world such as the Maasai people in Kenya.

Kirsten 6:35

Tip number six is to get involved, encourage students to get involved in their local communities. They could volunteer at local cultural events and participate in cultural exchange programs. Maybe students could volunteer at a food pantry that serves diverse communities or participate in some type of language exchange program with students from other countries such as pen pals. Also keep in mind certain local events that are celebrated. So for example, at the time of this recording, Fiesta, San Antonio is going on. And there's a ton of events happening over the course of the next week or so. And this would be a really good topic, even if you're not in San Antonio, maybe you're in Texas, just to kind of give background of why we are going through Fiesta, and some of the fun local events. That also reminds me on top of that, one way that we got involved in our high school, through Student Council in our community is to actually participate in the Battle of the flowers prayed. That was a really fun and unique experience. We had this dance to Benny Benassi, I believe, and it was a hoot. I think we were dressed up as like it was Aliens versus astronauts or something like that. I'm not even sure what the whole theme was. All I know is that we were in the parade and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Kirsten 8:08

Alright, tip number seven is to assess understanding. So what you want to make sure you're doing throughout any topic related to culture in society is to make sure students are understanding what they're learning through a variety of products like projects, maybe some presentations, have them create a cultural scrapbook or presentation about some type of celebration they researched. And of course, you can always, you know, utilize a rubric or have some type of summative grade for that. What I do offer in my TPT store and in my membership are the comparing celebrations project. And I give all the information and the prompt and the rubric and all that good stuff, as well as guided questions on how they're researching a few celebrations around the world. It could be around the world or in a you know a certain country or area of the world. And they're comparing it to their own celebrations and traditions. And this is just a good way to do some comparing and contrasting. But I will make sure to link this information so you can get your hands on that comparing celebrations project if you happen to be in the smarten Simple Social Studies membership. This project is already available in the hub and you're able to go in in this culture and society domain and find that specific topic comparing celebrations and you'll find that resource in there. Additionally, I do have similar unit projects in some of my curriculum for guided curriculum. I know that just recently I created a comparing customs, symbols and celebrations And unit project for specifically Texas history, and also for US history. So there's a variety of variations that I've created that are available. Additionally, I do want to put in that I've been talking this past few weeks about my bundle of daily passages perfect if you have just a short amount of time, and you really want to be purposeful with teaching social studies as consistently as possible. Daily passages are great, it only takes about five to 10 minutes a day. And the culture and society daily passages are a part of this bundle. But you can also purchase it separately. If that's something you would prefer. Maybe you might already have a curriculum, but maybe the curriculum is lacking in this certain domain. So you can always utilize these passages. It is nine topics with a wide range of topics and not so that's a total of nine weeks multiple options to choose from, you can use all nine or just pick a few that you like 36 passages, nine quizzes for each topic, all that good stuff, so I will make sure to link that as well. It is at a reasonable price, really great price. And this is also available in my membership as well. So I will make sure to link both of those resources that I mentioned in the show notes.

Thanks for tuning in to this topic. I'm excited to share in part four, about how you can effectively teach government and civics topics. I'll talk to you later.