Eloquence

Introduction

My school, like schools all over the country, serves a diverse population of students. Skyline Middle School consists of students from Pike Creek and Wilmington in northern Delaware, where I teach four sections of sixth-grade social studies. The students come from diverse backgrounds and cultural groups, including African American, Asian American, Caucasian, Hispanic, and low income. This diversity poses challenges in planning and implementing lessons to meet the needs of each child. It is, therefore, imperative that my lessons are student-centered and employ a variety of teaching strategies, especially since we will be moving to 90-minute block classes this year.

In my school district, as well as far too many others, social studies education is not at the forefront. With standardized testing focused on math and English, the social studies and science curriculums have become secondary in importance. In my conversations with elementary teachers, I learned that most of the instructional time in the elementary classroom is devoted to math and English instruction. This makes sense as the incentives for teaching these subjects are high because school and teacher ratings are based upon the standardized test scores of students in these areas. At my school in particular, the supports for social studies and science have been redirected to the math and English departments. As a result, the social studies and science departments face higher class sizes, broader range of student abilities, and fewer resources inside and outside of the classroom. For these reasons, my aim is to create a unit that illustrates the importance of social studies in the implementation of Common Core English Language Arts Standards.

In Delaware social studies classes, we are required to follow the Delaware Recommended Curriculum. Curricular units have been created for most of the Delaware content standards to ensure the rigor of the classroom discussions, activities, and assessments in achieving the standards. The unit I propose would improve upon a district-mandated unit of study focusing on human-environment interaction. Currently, the required lessons related to man's interaction with the environment in relation to developing sources of energy is comprised of rote-memorization and simplistic, bland activities. I plan to energize this portion of the unit to foster a more positive outlook for the future of Wilmington, DE. The unit will be conducted in the form of a debate that requires the students to research and present findings about alternative energy sources appropriate for Wilmington, DE.

This unit was designed with social literacy as a basis; the students will actively develop literacy skills as they solve a real world problem. In Teaching to Exceed the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, Beach, Thein, and Webb express, "Perceiving literary practices as social moves us from a focus on individual acquisition of literacy to literacy as a community resource serving the collective goals of a group engaged in an activity." The students need to participate curricular "events" that allow the development of literacy and collaborative skills. Creating a curricular event instead of a typical research project will increase student engagement and accountability as the students feel responsible for their role and strive to perform to the standards of their peers. The curricular event of this unit will be a formal classroom debate. ⁴