Social Studies Is More Than Just History !

For this project, our classmates and I were given the task of researching different elements of Social Studies instruction. These topics were out of the normal realm of what one thinks of when they here Social Studies. We did not have to research things like geography or wars, but instead things like character education and Law Related education. My partner and I were given the task of researching Character Education and Moral Education. When I began the research process I had a basic understanding of what Character Education, but I definitely did not know enough to teach it. At first my partner and I believed that the main components of character education were things like generous, trustworthy, and loyalty. After doing some more research and talking with Dr.Smirnova, we came to the realization that the components of Character education are actually the 6 pillars of character. Charactercounts.org states that the six pillars are trustworthy, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.  Charactercount.org provided me with many great resources and ideas about the six pillars and how they relate to character education. The website also went into detail about each of the pillars and how they relate to character education. In order to teach Character Education, teachers must understand each of the pillars and how they form a good character.

Here's the link to the website it provides a lot of great ideas for character education !- There is so many great activities on this website for all ages.. I challenge all teachers to try and use these in your classroom, any way you can !

                                                                                                               

The website also provides some great tools to help your students remember the 6 pillars of character!

I  recommend all teaches using this to teach character education! 

 This is a slide from my WEESS Social Studies project. This was our definition of what character education is. Character education is what creates civic competence and that is what makes it so important !

Here is a slide from our original project. As mentioned above these are what we first thought the components of character education was, but soon learned this was wrong. This are really characteristics of a good character. The components of character education are actually the 6 pillars.

You can check out our whole project here !

What did this project teach me ?! 

This project helped to increase my pedagogical knowledge because I learned the best way to implement this to my students. I think the best method for teaching Character Education is through real life experiences and to play off what the students know. The best way to do this is by having the lessons be very student centered. For example, on charactercounts.org, the lessons have students creating examples of times that they were trustworthy or caring instead of the teacher doing it. I think this is extremely important because the teacher. I like this because the students are the ones creating the examples, not the students. This is very important because according to Tomkins (2011), students learn better when they can relate to something. This supports the idea of students creating their own examples because they can actually relate to them. This project taught me that the best method to use when teacher Character Education is play on the students’ personal experiences.

References 

Our Centers for Ethics:. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2015, from https://charactercounts.org/home/index.html

Standards. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2015, from http://www.socialstudies.org/standards

Tompkins, G. (2011). Language arts: Patterns of practice. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.