This makes me think of a girl who was much older than me in my school who thought that Alaska and Hawaii were right next to each other because of the way that many maps portray the United States. While attempting to show the country, they often confuse students with the correct geography of the whole country. This can lead to students confusing cultures. Ex: if Hawaii and Alaska really were next to each other, Alaska could not be cold and most likely would not have Eskimos like we see today.

Now that I think about it, I only remember really using maps in a concentrated way with every place we studied in elementary school. I vaguely remember looking at the shape of countries in geography in middle school. I never thought about how geography is emphasized in elementary grades.

I think a lot of focus on culture is in the eyes of the individual who is shaped by that culture. I think it is important to stress seeing culture through others’ eyes. Some expect others to understand their culture without understanding others, but it is a two way street that we can walk down with our students.

We talked about the differences of places when we went through the six essential elements of geography. In doing this, we talked about how different people see places differently. Reading this paragraph made me think of this in the fact of why people moved to or away from an area. How did this affect their perspective of the place? This is a great discussion to incorporate into geography lessons.

This sums up what we have been learning in the class so far this semester. Meaningful social studies experiences leave students with positive memories about social studies as well as learned information. Monotonous social studies lessons do not.

While we should include literature and even other disciplines in teaching social studies, we need to make sure we are focused on the social studies goal for each lesson.

If literature is used to enhance children’s ideas, then using it along side the social studies has the potential to enhance higher order thinking.

Can every lesson tie into another discipline or is the connection specific to the lesson?

This means that we do not have to be so extra, just use the world around your students. Curriculum integration sometimes feels like a lot of work, but it does not necessarily have to be. We just need to connect learning to the real world.

The point of school is not to get a grade- it is to succeed at life, and curricular integration allows us to prepare our students to succeed. The lessons that I remember best were ones that tied into the real world.