The 5 Elements of Social Studies!

Social Studies is unique because it teaches lessons of historical pasts through five elements: meaningful, integrative, value based, challenging, and active. All of these elements of a well-taught Social Studies lesson. 

• Meaningful means the Social Studies must have a reason to be taught. The lesson has to connect and relate back to the student, often connecting on previous connections too help remember the lesson. 
• Integrative means combining lessons to achieve an overarching goal or lesson. This too connects previously learned lessons and information with future lessons to help the student. 
• Value based is students will be required to think critically and make decisions based on their values. Each student has individual values and these will help structure the lesson in a classroom. 
• Challenging is making sure each lesson pushes the students to learn more than they already do-if the student is not challenged either nothing gets learned or very little. 
• Lastly, active is very important, direct lectures will not motivate and engage the student; lessons that are active will be most powerful and engaging for the student to remember.

All five of these elements combine to create one engaging lesson or unit that the students will be able to remember, use in the future, and will help them in the future! 

While this picture does not state the five elements of Social Studies, it does express teaching skills based off of those five elements.