Educational Articles

The following newspaper articles were written by Cheryl Feuer Gedzelman,
Director of Tutoring For Success, Inc. Check back often to read newly published articles.

Mastering Social Studies
(January 2006 issue of Washington Parent)
By Cheryl Feuer Gedzelman, MA

When I was in seventh grade, I had a social studies teacher who wanted to emphasize how great he thought social studies was.  “If you don’t like social studies,” he announced, shortly after introducing himself, “you might as well put a gun to your head.”  His implication was that social studies is about us and our world, but I inwardly panicked.  I hated social studies!  However, as obnoxious as my new teacher was, I finally began to enjoy social studies that year.  The topic was U.S. Government, which was relevant information about my own country.  The obnoxious teacher did have the talent of making the material interesting.  Here are some strategies your children can follow to make their material more interesting and improve their proficiency.

Relevance

You can help your children achieve success in social studies by finding a way to bring the material to life.  If you lived through some parts of history, such as the Civil Rights Movement, discuss your memories.  If not, discuss what life might have been for the Mayans or whatever civilization your child is studying.  You can even encourage your children to check out supplemental books from the library that might include historical fiction or photographs.  You can also visit a local historical site that is related to the topic. 

No matter how distant the material seems, you must make it relevant to create a connection in the brain.  You need to think of your prior knowledge, and try to connect.  Try to visualize.  For example, I am reading about early civilizations in America.  I can picture Native Americans raising crops.  I can picture myself planting squash.  I can picture the squash growing, and I remember eating it day after day when our plant produced so much.  While reading, the mind should be constantly trying to create meaning and make associations.

Reading Skills

Social studies books are laid out very nicely to help you locate the information you need to remember.  One reading method that is widely used is called SQ3R, which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.  This is how it works:

Survey: Read all titles, subtitles, and highlighted words.  Look at the pictures and captions. Try to get a preview of what the chapter is about.  For example, I am reading a chapter called “The Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968”.  The section starts with a story about Rosa Parks,  a great way to get children to visualize and connect the story to prior knowledge, since most children know about Rosa Parks.  This textbook has wonderful original photographs of Rosa Parks on a bus, a man drinking from a “colored” water fountain, a carpool pick-up station during the bus boycott, and students at a newly integrated high school.  The headings are in blue and each section is further divided with red subheadings.  Within each section, the names of important people and vocabulary words are bold.  From surveying all this information, a student can gain a good preview of the passage.

Question: Based on your survey, ask yourself questions about what you would like to learn. In addition to making up your own questions, review the questions from your text.  This book has questions throughout.  In green, you can find “Reading Check: What was the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education?”  At the end of the chapter, there are more questions.

Read the material, trying to make connections along the way.  For example, while reading about Brown v. Board of Education, you can think about your prior knowledge of “separate but equal” schools and visualize the inside of a segregated school.

Recite:  Say in your own words what you have read after each section.

Review:  Summarize the entire chapter.  Review main ideas.

Memorizing:

This is what got me bogged down in elementary school – isolated information in a multiple choice test.  You do need to memorize information about important people, dates, and pivotal events.  Many texts provide a time line of important dates.  Important topics and people are generally highlighted. What is the best way to remember?  Try planting the information into your brain in multiple ways. According to best selling author and psychiatrist Mel Levine, you cannot simply review material the way it was presented.  You need to change it.  Say it in your own words and write it down.  To make connections in your brain, create a chart, a list, a table, graph, or picture.  Visualize it.  This way your right and left sides of the brain each have a part. (For example, while reading about a sit-in, you can picture several African Americans sitting at a lunch counter while white people are shouting at them.) You can also use mnemonic strategies to help you memorize.

Mnemonic Strategies

Acronyms: To remember the great lakes, think HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).

Word Links:  Use the meaning of one word to associate with another. For example, Rosa Parks reminds me of a park, and parks allowed whites only just like bus seats were for whites only.

Songs:  Make up new lyrics to go with a familiar tune to learn and retain new information.

Acrostics:  Make up a sentence using the first letter of each word.  Many of us learned the musical staff with “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”

Review:

Have you ever crammed for a test, and then discovered that you couldn’t remember a single thing a week later? If you study for a test only the day before, the material will never get beyond your short-term memory.  If you want it in long term memory (after this test there will be a state standardized test, and you might as well know history in the long term to be an educated person), you need to do more.  Therefore, after you read a chapter, using the strategies discussed above, you should continue to actively review it on a regular basis. You also need to remember what the teacher tells you in class.  After each day of social studies, review your class notes.  Highlight the important points and summarize the notes in your own words at the bottom or in the left margin.  If your notes are messy, you can re-write them.  If there is something you don’t understand, highlight it and ask the teacher the next day.

Tips for Studying for a Test

Many teachers pass out review sheets that will tell you what will be on the test.  In many cases, you need to go back to the text to elaborate on the topics in the review sheet.  If you do not have a review sheet, create one.  Use the headings and subheadings from the chapter to guide you.  Have a study partner or parent test you on the review sheet to make sure you really know it.  Don’t forget to use your class notes.

Social studies is interesting because it is about our lives and our ancestors’ lives.  With these strategies, I hope it comes alive for your children.  With some hard work at first, they will gain study skills that will serve them well in years to come.

Sources: American Republic Since 1877, McGraw Hill/Glencoe, 2005

               A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine, Simon & Schuster, 2002