Social Studies Concepts and Generalizations

Chapter 4 of the text was a little difficult to digest. It discussed concepts and generalizations. There was also information about the teacher's role in teaching and developing these topics.

"Concepts are a basic component of powerful social studies content" (Sunal, p.131). Social studies goes beyond memorizing facts, and when teaching concepts, educators need to provide the factual information and ask questions to focus the students attention on specific information. The factual information can be acquired and understood through the use of the five senses, which have been a reoccurring theme throughout the text book. By creating activities to allow students to work on the concept, they will eventually be able to use the concept taught and develop their own ideas.  The concept must be defines and taught usually beginning with a concept web, map, or analysis. Concepts are more in depth. They have several levels of meaning and take on a variety of identities such as: sensory, concrete and formal. Concepts go beyond observations and into group observations into categories based on attributes. Concepts are useless if they cannot be applied when needed. 

Generalizations are useful and necessary in social studies learning and understanding.They show relationships between concepts, therefore making concepts and generalizations go hand-in-hand. Generalization is developed in elementary and middle school. Forming generalizations is a natural process, but not always the proper process. Inquiry learning "helps students construct meaning and learn generalizations" (Sunal, p.116). Generalizations are NOT facts! They are used to organize facts and concepts by describing relationships between them. Generalizations are useful for creating meaningful predictions and are understood through active involvement. Generalizations are useful in multiple situations, outside the social studies context. Students can use generalizations in daily life and will constantly reconstruct prior made generalizations through experience. 



https://www.google.com/search?q=concepts+and+generalizations&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ep4TU_WxOsLK0gHMuYHICQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1280&bih=899#facrc=_&imgdii=BEGRISuycP_PLM%3A%3Bh9pKlWYYHD62aM%3BBEGRISuycP_PLM%3A&imgrc=BEGRISuycP_PLM%253A%3Blja3fME4Wke7NM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fimg.docstoccdn.com%252Fthumb%252Forig%252F40586039.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.docstoc.com%252Fdocs%252F40586039%252FConcepts-and-Generalizations-Teaching-for-Understanding-in---Slide-1%3B1500%3B1125

Here is an example of a graphic organizer that could be used when forming generalizations along with the link from google. 

I highly suggest reading chapter four in order to better understand concepts and generalizations. They are important parts of successful social studies learning and understanding.

xox, 
Christie