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4 Social Studies and the Young Learner

“I know that place! I went there!” cried Jamila, as her preservice teacher displayed a photo of the Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on the big screen.1 The next picture, the Khazmati Imam Complex in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, solicited similar cries. Each international landmark brought forth exclamations from the students of places they or their family members had been. This excitement took place on the second day of a three-day lesson plan on maps, culture, and family. Carlee, a preservice teacher, taught these concepts to a class of kindergarten stu- dents at a school based in the local Islamic community center in Uniontown, Ohio. In this short unit of study, the students, many of whom were English Language Learners (ELLs), not only learned important aspects of the social studies curriculum, but also about each other.

People often think that ideas about mapping and culture are too difficult and abstract for kindergarten students, let alone ELLs. However, Carlee discovered that when you connect the curriculum to students’ culture and family, they are capable of learning and sharing a lot of knowledge. Through literature for children, maps, and Google Earth2 technology, this lesson addressed the educational standards for the State of Ohio3 as well as three of the social studies curricular themes: CULTURE,

PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ENVIRONMENTS, and GLOBAL CONNECTIONS.4

Preparing for the Lesson—Connecting with Students and Families Carlee’s lessons spanned three days and took about 45 minutes each day, but the activities could be adapted to spread out across a longer time span with shorter class sessions. Knowing your students, their cultural backgrounds, and their funds of knowledge is a crucial part of teaching.5 Prior to teaching the lesson, Carlee did the background work of reaching out to her students’ families, asking about their geographical and cultural background. In a letter home to her students’ families, she asked about definitions of family, favorite family and cultural tradi-

tions, as well as countries of origin for different family members.6 During the lunch period, Carlee talked to individual students about the different foods they brought from home, using food as an entry point to learning about their cultural backgrounds.

Many of the students at the school were either immigrants or the children of immigrants, which provided a rich source of prior knowledge for learning about the world. Carlee was able to personalize the curriculum to her particular group of students so they could use the familiar to connect with the unfamiliar. This method of inquiry is driven by the necessary aim of learning about students and families in order to teach them. In classrooms without recent immigrant families present, a family history project could serve as a bridge from the local to the global through ancestors. Another option would be to use popular media. As noted later in the article, all the students in Carlee’s class were familiar with films like Disney’s feature cartoon, Mulan.

What is a Map? Carlee opened the first day with a brief discussion on what the students already knew about maps. After listing this informa- tion, much of which consisted of what they had gleaned from treasure maps used in popular television shows, she had the students work in groups with different types of maps. They were tasked with observing the maps, identifying what the maps were about, and describing any similarities and differences they saw from one map to the other. Then, she read Types of Maps by Mary Dodson Wade.7 Using that book and their own experi- ence of maps, the students discussed the observable features on the map (markings, colors, words, and numbers) as well as the many uses of maps (to mark where treasure can be found, to help a car or plane stay on path, and to record an event or movement across the surface, like a migrant bird flight path).

Students connected the roadmap to what they see on their parents’ phones. Looking at a climate map, they were able to

Social Studies and the Young Learner 29 (2) pp. 4–7

©2016 National Council for the Social Studies

“Hey, I’ve Been There!” Using the Familiar to Teach World Geography in Kindergarten Elizabeth Kenyon, Carlee Coffey, and Janice Kroeger

November/December 2016 5

connect colors with different temperatures. Carlee gave the students the laser pointer to show where it rained the most and the least on a precipitation map. They noticed that most of the maps in the classroom that day were of the same nation (the United States), even though each map looked different. Yaser, a student who frequently appeared unengaged, proudly explained to the rest of the class what a compass rose is. Carlee was able to include important content specific vocabulary, during this part of the lesson to support her ELL students.8

Starting with the Local Following the discussion of different types of maps, Carlee read aloud Me on the Map, which gave students more examples of different types of maps.9 Carlee then asked the students to think about some of their favorite places in the city where they cur- rently live. Students drew maps of these places, with things that were nearby. They were able to share their maps and explain why the different places depicted were important to them. This allowed students to put their growing knowledge to use.

Following these discussions, small groups of students made maps of their classroom. Carlee asked the students to think about what a new student in their classroom might need to know about from their map. Where should objects in the classroom

appear on their drawings, and why? Students also pondered what should and should not be a part of the map, and remembered map elements like a key that explains symbols and a compass rose. They then shared and discussed the similarities and dif- ferences between their maps. Comparing the maps allowed the children to review different components of the maps and key vocabulary terms they learned earlier in the lesson.

Connecting to Global Families The following day, the activities shifted to the global scale, but the material was also “local” for some of the children, as places and experiences far from the classroom were familiar to them. After reviewing the previous day’s learning, Carlee showed a PowerPoint presentation featuring a series of landmarks from the seven different countries reflecting the heritage of her students. She also included a landmark from Spain, the country of origin of her own family. Including cultural artifacts from students’ home countries was an important part of making the children feel welcome. This is particularly true for ELL students.10

After showing the students the landmarks, Carlee brought up Google Earth on the computer screen, and the students “traveled” from one landmark to another. They were able to get some sense of distance and the ideas of near and far, from

6 Social Studies and the Young Learner

this exercise. They were also excited to see familiar places from a new perspective. Carlee found their school on the map to “connect the global scale back to the local.”

Students then drew in their journals and wrote two sentences about what they had learned so far in the unit. During sharing time, several students presented their drawings, employing vocabulary words such as compass, treasure, map, map key, and mountains.

Delving into Culture On the third and final day, Carlee went into more depth on the rich topic of culture. Carlee asked the students to share information about the country from where they and their families originated, while being ready to support any student who struggled to answer the question. She demonstrated the talk by sharing about the Spanish culture of her own family. As she did this, students had the opportunity to describe things (food, traditions, landscape, games, etc.) from their home cultures that appear in some form in all cultures. During this time, a lot of cultural sharing took place through the Arabic language. In this instance, Carlee (who did not speak Arabic) learned as much, if not more, from her students as they learned from her.

Carlee invited pairs of students to come to the front of the

room. She had a series of questions prepared for them about the ways in which the two students were similar or differ- ent. This allowed students to share more about themselves and learn more about each other. Furthermore, they learned about the similarities and differences in their various cultural backgrounds in a way that was open and respectful as part of social studies theme CULTURE and our state standards. Carlee closed this day of the lesson by asking her students to add captioned drawings to their journals about what was important to them or what they learned about culture.

Expanding the Connections Extensions of this lesson could include activities using Me on the Map, depicting the school and then reaching out to the city, state, nation and globe, including the locations from where any students’ families came from overseas. After learning about stu- dents’ favorite foods (samples of which they brought in every day for lunch), Carlee could have read aloud Everybody Bakes Bread,11 which follows a girl walking through her neighborhood in a search to borrow a cooking utensil. She encounters families from a variety of cultures, each family making bread in a unique way. A teacher could also ask community members to share vari- ous traditions with the class, including how they make bread or other staple foods12.

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Teachers could also include more cultures not represented in the classroom’s population of students. The need for this was particularly apparent when all of her students recognized the Great Wall of China, because of the Disney movie Mulan.

Finally, a teacher could facilitate learning through expressive arts by engaging children with different mediums such as crayons, paints, markers, and pastels to create self-portraits with authentic skin colors. “Which crayon most closely matches the color of the back of your hand?” This could be another opportunity for discussing similarities and differences.

A Teacher’s Reflections (by C. C.) When we began our discussion on landmarks, the children surprised me in a way I had not expected. I would present a landmark from a city and wait for spontaneous student responses, and almost every time someone recognized a building, they would tell me the Arabic name for the landmark. I began learn- ing more about the students, and they taught me multiple words and phrases in Arabic so that I could feel more welcomed and included in daily practices. I firmly believe in the idea that you learn something new every day, and with these students, I truly did.

Whenever I asked a question and only one student volun- teered to answer, I would ask that student to explain the concept or idea to the whole class. Children responded really well to this challenge, and they would “transform from student to teacher” in their explanations—they aimed to use references or common interests to explain things in their own way. For example, one student explained, “A compass rose is something on a map that tells you north, south, east, and west. Like on Bubble Guppies, it tells them where to go on the one with the treasure map.”

I underestimated the wealth of knowledge these kindergar- teners had going into this lesson on maps, culture, and family. Every one of the students had a strong sense of family and who makes up a family. They all shared stories with me throughout our time together about things they planned to do with their families on the weekend, meals they would prepare together, and how excited they were that their “Babba” was coming home from the Middle East.

Conclusion Carlee found that by using her students’ experiences and family backgrounds, as well as their knowledge of the local geography of their school, she was able to foster understanding of maps and geographical concepts in her kindergarten students. In addition, the students were able to celebrate their own cul- tures and those of others in their classroom. Connecting with families to inform the curriculum created exciting engagement and important learning.

Notes 1. All student names are pseudonyms. 2. Google Earth, www.google.com/earth. 3. “Ohio’s New Learning Standards: Social Studies Standards” (p. 12), education.

ohio.gov. 4. National Council for the Social Studies, National Curriculum Standards for

Social Studies: A Framework for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2010).

5. Luis C. Moll, C. Amanti, D. Neff and N. Gonzalez, “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms,” Theory Into Practice 31, no. 2 (Spring, 1992): 132–141.

6. Janice Kroeger, and Martha Lash, “Asking, Listening, and Learning: Toward a more thorough Method of Inquiry in Home-School Relations,” Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (February, 2011): 268–277.

7. Mary Dodson Wade, Types of Maps (New York, NY: Children’s Press, 2003). 8. Barbara C. Cruz, Joyce W. Nutta, Jason O’Brien, Carine M. Feyton, and Jane M.

Govoni, Passport to Learning: Teaching Social Studies to ESL Students (Bulletin 101, Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2003).

9. Joan Sweeney, Me on the Map (New York: Crown, 1996), 32. 10. Cruz et al. 11. Norah Dooley, Everybody Bakes Bread (Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press,

1996). 12. Susan Pass, Jane White, Emma Owens, and Julia Weir, “Bringing Culture into

the Classroom: An Invitation to Families,” Social Studies and the Young Learner 19, no. 2 (November/December, 2006): 16–18.

Elizabeth Kenyon, Assistant Professor, School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies. Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

Carlee Coffey, student, Kent State University, Uniontown, Ohio

Janice Kroeger, Associate Professor, School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies. Kent State University, Kent, Ohio