Prompt 6: Social Studies Thinking

            I have not observed a lot of social studies activities/materials within my classroom at my placement. The most materials my classroom has relating to social studies is an American flag, and different story books. One thing I have seen in my classroom is a picture of a less fortunate girl from another country. The school has been raising money to help her receive an education. My class also has a lot of different decorations talking about being nice to each other and being a good citizen. This idea if good citizenship is an aspect of social studies. As I have said before, my classroom is extremely focused on the language arts. The two bullet points that my class focuses on from the Mindes article includes: classroom community development, and foundational understanding for civic engagement. My teacher focuses a lot on the idea of working together as a class and accepting everyone for who they are.

            I have an extremely diverse Pre-K classroom. The different ethnic groups include: Caucasian, Asian, and Indian. A lot of the children have very different beliefs and lifestyles. I have not seen any issues with the mixture of culture within the classroom. The only thing I have observed is that one of the boys who is Indian (rarely speaks in class), refuses to hand any materials to the girls or interact with them. This type of behavior stems from his cultural background. Other than that, all of the kids have no problem working with one another, The Mindes article talks about how it is important for children to appreciate the diversity of their friends and classmates.

            My program does not have any support for bilingual or ELL students. All of my students speak fluent English except for the one boy in my class. Since I have been there, I have only heard him talk about 4-5 times with 1-2 words at a time. The teacher/aid do not know how to help him with his language struggles and they will occasionally do things for him if he does not understand what they are saying. The Tabors article says, “Children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds may face social isolation and linguistic constraints in the classroom.” I think it is very important to immediately work with these children so they do not fall behind in class and miss out on a lot of experiences.  One support I have seen for second language acquisition would be classroom organization. The Tabors article talks about how having a set routine for activities, allows second-language-learning children to catch on and get into the flow of events.