Powerful Social Studies

1. Active

1.1. engaging students by asking questions

1.2. pushes students thinking

1.3. has a community in her classroom that encourages others to ask questions and answer them

1.4. encourages students to think about what they are learning

1.5. hands on centres, kids learn by interactive activities

2. Integrative

2.1. linking prior knowledge (Madalynka book) to new concepts, is everyone in our community the same way?

2.2. cross curricular centres, such as math, language arts and science

3. Meaningful

3.1. celebrating holidays

3.2. learning about different communities

3.3. the teacher teaches things that in the classroom that are applicable outside the classroom (sun/earth activity)

4. Challenging

4.1. extend thinking

4.2. multiple intelligences are accounted for

4.3. students are to find similarities among the different holidays

4.4. students showed respect by listening to each others answers

4.5. teacher asks questions and expects deeper thinking

5. Values Based

5.1. the teacher believes it is important to teach students how to think

5.2. teacher is teaching respect towards others' holidays

5.3. teacher has a love for literature herself, uses a lot of books as resources

5.4. the big teaching is that all the people in the students' community are different but the same (Celebration of Light)