As someone who grew up with teachers who either simply shoved textbooks in our face (not literally…whew can you imagine?) or made copies of pages from other textbooks in an effort to teach social studies, I really appreciated the lesson modeled in class. Mind you, I found myself losing focus because I feel like we may have been allotted too much time to answer questions, but even so, the lesson was extremely effective. I don’t think I ever had one teacher explain the importance of looking at things in historical context, then again, I’m 33 and it’s been awhile so my memory could be off.
This new perspective is invaluable and this teaching technique seems critical to help students fully understand concepts in social studies. I’ll admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of I say, you say, and so when it was first discussed, but after seeing how it can be used to examine different types of primary sources, it seems like a no brainer. One thing I might change would be to maybe say “so what…?” rather than “and so…” I fear some of us may have gotten caught up in the way it was worded thus keeping us from understanding the effectiveness of this model.
I do find myself stuck on the question I asked in class…how does an elementary school teacher find the time to teach this in-depth when faced with the tedious task of teaching to an SOL test in not only social studies, but multiple subjects?