Reflections on teaching social studies to ESL students

But ESL social studies, sometimes tend to take second place to the sciences, biology and other subjects. This is because social offers fewer opportunities for practical work, as well as find a world that seeks its own country and places that would like to visit. Social Studies offers more topics which are of abstract nature and if lessons are contained based then this means students have to participate in discussions, writing, grammar, syntax and other activities that creates and develops your critical thinking. Students in Thailand South colonialism may have no prior knowledge of why there is a very British influence in some African and other countries. But if you put your mind to there them is some things you can do to improve the lesson to make it more interesting. To help them study may be better sometimes to ask them to read first on the topic in their own language. This idea of scheme makes it much easier for them to understand English when it's his turn to teach it. To gain an understanding of the subject they get the general idea, and when they are teaching, they may develop a sense of anticipation that you can leverage to asking them to answer your questions from what they have read and this generates enthusiasm and gives an opportunity to commend them to make an effort to speak to the teacher.

Recently I was teaching a class of grade 9 on the scramble for Africa and why it has been so poor and underdeveloped. In particular he was making references to the exploitation of their natural resources. I printed a map of Africa and sweet nails around the edge of the map and gave each caramel a name. One was diamonds, one was gold, one was of natural resources, one was slavery, one was of wood and a few more just for the effect. Students were grouped with each group representing a European country. With the map on a table in the center of the room and the word "GO" had to encode the table and taking a lot of natural resources as they wanted, the dispute was of course very effective. After that it was an ideal opportunity to teach them the dispute of the word and exploitation at the same time.

Course map was torn to shreds and sweets dispersed to "all parts of Europe" which was entirely waiting and fact strong enough, the point at which many European countries have exploited the African resources for too long and today Africa is still dealing with the legacy of exploitation.

Sometimes, ESL teachers modify texts complexes to match the level of the student of English, which is also an important part of the teaching of social studies for ESL students. Provide proper reference is included to do it is important that the teacher maintains the interesting facts and concepts contained in the history to keep students interested. At the same time the teacher could leave out the important words and put in blank spaces that students have to work which is an appropriate word to space, this is an excellent opportunity for key words of scaffolding. On the other side of this is that creates more work lesson planning for the teacher and takes time of rewriting texts even when you copy Web site as it may be for completely rewritten in some cases. But when you once you don't have to make again and after all worth the effort.

Teaching of certain critical as cause and effect thinking skills can also be enhanced through the use of conceptual maps. Teaching recently the development of Western culture, the students loved design, mind drawing and coloring maps that had links to each which showed the effects of certain inventions during the Industrial Revolution. Proving that you as an object it was invented, created some "after effects", some good & some and the effects of certain things had more far-reaching consequences for people and the environment. Mind maps are a great way to teach much information about a lesson.

Reading texts can also be useful if we teach them to underline or use a bookmark correctly. Many students stress too, so it is vital that students are taught to think rather than anything stress and have a specific reason to do so. Students stand out different words and whole sentences for different reasons, it may be information you already know, but sometimes it is better to teach students to underline the most important phrase or the words in paragraph usually is new words or phrases because deciding what is the most important thing requires a higher level of processing. It is also good looking for help to words in the highlighted text. Students could work together and compare highlights and talk about why they been highlighted each word or phrase. You could speak to the class or a discussion group. This also helps to develop auto question and learn from others.

Robert McBain

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