Question

How do you engage students in social studies lessons? How do you apply real-world relevancy to the lesson? What examples do you have of incorporating the arts into social studies lessons? What strategies can be used to create learning experience that activate students prior knowledge?

Answer 1

Social studies should not be restricted to books, other wise students do not get to know the importance of social studies. I was student of Arts in my college days, there were lot of social study students. They all applied all their lessons to the real world, they actually related. For eg: I had psychology as major but many had history, sociology, political science as their major subjects. History students celebrated their favouraite historian's day and discussed about the person's qualities and the nature and its implementation in today's world or the situations where we come accross the typical mindset which historians had. All these things brought us more closer to the subject.

As we ce;ebrated days, we prepared charts, flexes etc. We used different colours, to state what we wanted to say. There was also a poster compeition which was help by each dept. So politial or sociology students prepared posters of various social movemenets, stated in colours about what they wanted to state.

Teachers can use strategies such as celebrating days, giving group activities or rather group studies, group discussions, debates etc. Social science is not the subject which can learnt alone in peace people require other people for that. When group discussions or debates are being held, people understand the effectiveness of social science more clearly.