THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Edward R. Murrow High School
Allen Barge, Principal
DESIGNATED A SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Ryan Mills, Assistant Principal
Social Studies Department
Social Studies Mission and Vision
In alignment with the New York State Department of Education’s “Learning Standards for Social Studies,” the “English Language Arts Performance Standards,” and the “Common Core Standards,” the mission of the Social Studies Department of Edward R. Murrow High School is:
To structure and implement an instructional program so that all of our students can acquire the essential knowledge and requisite skills to develop positive attitudes towards learning and achieve their lifelong goals and aspirations as caring, concerned, informed, and productive college, career and life ready citizens of their communities.The following goals and guidelines will provide the framework for effective Social Studies instruction and enriched student learning:
1. Develop Creative and Critical Thinking Skills with Comparative Applications:
Social Studies classes should challenge students to critically discuss, assess, and evaluate national and global issues through a variety of teaching strategies and comparative viewpoints so that they can broaden their awareness and perspective of the commonality, complexity, and diversity of our nation and the world.
(A) The “past” should not be taught as a series of events, facts and people in isolation. Learning must have connection and relevance to our student’s lives. Accordingly, conditions, crises, and concerns of earlier eras should be analyzed, assessed, and applied to current situations providing students with a greater historical and global perspective and multicultural awareness of the present.
(B) Classroom instruction (aims, instructional objectives, source materials, group work, thought-provoking questions, homework assignments, projects, etc.) should be structured around and focused on the analysis and assessment of evaluative issues rather than the mere coverage of course/curriculum content. Content should be reduced in breadth in order to promote depth!
(C) All 9th and 10th grade students will be enrolled in the two-year Global History and Geography course. In this course students will learn world history and geography through a chronological/thematic framework and historical context. Classroom instruction should emphasize global “connections across place,” “comparisons over time,” and the “five themes of geography” (location, place, region, human-environment interaction, and movement) as students learn about different countries, cultures, and issues.
2. Develop Active Learners with a Global Perspective:
Social Studies instruction should insure that our students are “active learners” in the classroom. Teachers should foster this goal by providing students with inquiry, reading, discussion, problem solving, and writing activities in both individual and cooperative learning environments through employment of diverse teaching styles. As Mortimer Adler has written in The Paideia Proposal: “All genuine learning is active, not passive . . .It is a process of discovery in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.”
In planning their daily lessons, it is essential that teachers address and reflect on four questions:
(1) “What strategies are being used to engage all students in active learning?”
(2) “How are individual learning styles provided for within the context of the lesson?”
(3) “How am I assessing daily student learning?” and
(4) “Have I aligned curriculum, instruction, and assessment?”
Students should discover that they live in a vast interactive and interdependent global community that has become increasingly interdependent, sharing ideas, products, and technology as well as developing ever-expanding networks and zones of exchange with accelerating change as a constant.
3. Develop and Build Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, and Writing Skills:
More than 50% of Murrow students have learned a language other than English either before or along with learning English. It is imperative for all teachers not only to convey Social Studies knowledge but also to help students enhance their vocabulary, reading comprehension, word attack, and writing skills as well as mastering the subtleties of the English language as it is applied to current national and global concerns. All lessons should be aligned with the Common Core standards and should be structured into units that incorporate many literacy tasks.
(A) Classroom instruction, cooperative learning activities, and homework assignments should provide the students with opportunities to enhance their word knowledge and build literacy skills by making text to self, text to text, and text to world connections as well as through context and usage.
(B) Social Studies lessons should be enriched with accessible source materials---reading selections, cartoons, maps, charts, graphs, quotations, works of art and architecture, artifacts, quotations, etc.--- that provide students with an intimate flavor of the past and a foundation to actively participate in sustained classroom discussion. These primary source documents should be used develop an evolving assortment of common core standards throughout lessons, units and semesters.
(C) The New York City Department of Education’s Performance Standards for English Language Arts and the Common Core Standards have established benchmarks for students to become fluent speakers, more effective and extensive readers as well as better expressive, persuasive, and informative writers through the study of literature and the use of public and functional documents. Writing is a reflective tool that both increases and demonstrates learning. The Social Studies classroom should provide students with daily activities and assignments to develop their proficiency in writing, such as commentaries, dialogues, thematic essays, document based essays, diagrams, journals and learning logs, projects, portfolios, point of view writing, timelines, semantic mapping, etc. Writing should not be seen as an end product, but rather as a powerful process and tool to foster effective communication as well as critical thinking and learning.
4. Establish Standards-based, Inclusive Classrooms that incorporate the Principles of Learning and Interdisciplinary Instruction:
Students should be presented with opportunities to learn from an inclusive, interdisciplinary perspective. Facets of other disciplines should be introduced into Social Studies instruction through reading selections, source materials, learning activities, and trips. Course connections among subjects should be established so students can develop an understanding and appreciation that learning is an integrated and reciprocal process among the disciplines.
5. Develop Multiculturalism and Enhance Core Values:
Social Studies should be taught from a global, inclusive perspective to promote appreciation of the arts and awareness, tolerance, and appreciation of diverse cultures. By incorporating source materials, class discussions, projects, and learning activities in the contributions and impact of historical events on women and minorities, we provide a more “balanced” presentation of United States and world history for our students. This approach will broaden, enrich, and enhance their knowledge, self- esteem, interest in the subject, and understanding of various people’s cultures and heritage's.
Through this pedagogy and our personal examples we can strengthen the following “core values” in our students: respect for diversity; a concern and caring for the welfare of others; the integration of individual interests and social responsibilities; a peaceful resolution of conflicts; and honesty, truth, and integrity in our relations with others. Our job is “to provide the means for all students to succeed.” Success is built upon teamwork. Student achievement is a true partnership based on the students’ responsibility to diligently complete their assignments and the educators’ responsibility to support students with encouragement, direction and meaningful feedback.
All of our instruction and classroom management should be consistent with our school’s mission:
At Edward R. Murrow, we CARE about our students.
C / A / R / EChallenge
students / Achieve
academic excellence / Respect
differences / Engage all students in the learning process