Teaching With Powerful Ideas

Dana AustinMichelle Knox

Jodi Mathe

We will understand how to incorporate powerful

ideas into our multicultural curriculum.

Learning Objective

The big, powerful ideas that people tend to remember and that facilitate understanding and transfer of knowledge are called concepts and generalizations.

Powerful ideas help students organize and synthesize large amounts of information

Example: Most people can’t give all the battle names and dates from the American Revolution, but can you remember why the war was started and how it progressed?

The Conceptual Approach

Facts: low-level, specific empirical statements

Concepts: words or phrases that enable people to categorize or classify a large class of observations and reduce the complexity of their world

Generalizations: tested or verified statements that contain two or more concepts and state how they are related – These are the BIG IDEAS!

Vocabulary

Key concepts and generalizations are taught and developed at an increasing degree of complexity and depth throughout the grades

Spiral Development

Goal of Multicultural Conceptual CurriculumHelp Students:

Develop an understanding of how knowledge is constructed

Create awareness that knowledge is influenced by biases, experiences, and perceptions of historians, textbook writers, and other researchers.

Once goal is achieved, students will be able to:

Construct their own versions of the past, present, and future.

Make thoughtful decisions Reflect on their moral choices Have courageous conversations Ask intelligent questions

How can we help students attain these skills?

Values Education Provides students an outlet to act on their

moral decisions.

Why? Powerful concepts like discrimination and

prejudice are shaped by ones values and/or morals.

Model of Social Inquiry

Banks Value Inquiry Model – Teacher Strategy

Give students opportunities to develop “democratic values” by stimulating value discussion and decision making (p.72)1. Define and recognize value problems2. Describe value-relevant behavior3. Name values exemplified by behavior4. Determine conflicting values in behavior5. Hypothesize about possible

consequences of behavior

6. Name alternative values7. Hypothesize about those possible

consequences8. Choose value preference9. State reasons, sources, consequences:

justify, hypothesize, predict

Banks Value Inquiry Model – Teacher Strategy continued

So What? - Conclusions Make value choices you can defend in a democratic society

How we construct knowledge is just as important as the knowledge itself.

As stated by a world-known, social studies instructor, Mr. R., “Don’t always believe what you hear.”