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RUNNING HEAD: SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS

Social Studies Standards

Shane G. Knapp

Grand Canyon University

EED 570 Curriculum, Assessment, and Methods: Social Studies

February 23, 2011

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Social Studies Standards

When it came time for me to start researching for this assignment a question kept coming

up in my mind. Why do I need to research between the national social studies standards and the

Oregon social studies standards? I must admit that I have never looked at the national standards

in all ten years that I have been teaching, nor have I ever been instructed to for that matter. I

have always been instructed to follow the Oregon standards since that is what our students will

be held accountable for on their state assessments. What I found to be rather difficult was

finding a website that would allow me to view the national social studies standards without

having to become a member. You would think this would be public information, especially for

an educator. I may have over looked the website when I was researching, but I would think that I

could do a basic web search for these standards since I am one of my schools site technology

facilitators. When it came time to research the Oregon standards that was rather easy because all

I had to do was pull them up from my favorites menu in my browser. I probably access the

Oregon standards website at least a few times a month, if not more, to help guide my lessons in

social studies along with the other subjects areas that I teach. I came to the realization that half

of this assignment was going to be a new learning experience because I have never referenced or

used the national standards website before. I looked forward to gaining some new insight to how

the Oregon and national standards aligned in social studies.

To start off with, the national standards and the Oregon standards had many similarities

between each other. For example, both were set up by themes, but there were only five themes

for K-4 in the Oregon standards, whereas, there were 10 themes within the national standards

and I could not open the early pre-K through 4th grade section of the site. The common themes

that both Oregon and the national standards shared were: Civics and Government, Economics,

Geography, U.S. History, and a Social Science Analysis. Some other similarities between the
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two documents were that they each gave a break down of what should be taught in the sub-

headings and that they were both organized in a similar fashion: headings, sub-headings, and a

standard number for reference. Another similarity they both shared was that within their sub-

headings they both stated what was to be identified/learned within each standard. I liked this

because these can guide you, as an educator, to a more precise topic within the heading.

Personally, I liked the Oregon standards website much better, but I think that is do to the nature

that I am much more familiar with it and navigate it regularly. The only way I was able to view

the national standards was through Education World and it was set up very basic and I know that

the NCSS website would have been in more depth. I will have to work more on this and ask my

principal for some assistance to try and find another way to access this site for future reference

in this class and personally.

Differences did exist between the two documents, but they were rather settle differences.

One difference that I found was that the Oregon standards had less sub-headings that the national

standards. I believe this difference is do to the fact that Oregon only selected certain sub-

headings that they felt were the more important standards to concentrate on, rather than all of the

standards like the national standards website had posted. Theme wise the national standards had

ten themes while the Oregon standards dealt with only five themes for grades K-4th. This

difference could be looked at in two ways, one way, their were only five themes for Oregon’s K-

4th grade, while the second way to look at it was that Oregon does have all ten themes, but they

are spread through K-12th grade. I believe Oregon chose the themes they felt needed to be taught

at the early elementary level, while the others would be taught at the upper grades. Another

difference that was rather obvious was that the national standards were more in-depth, in that

they explained and gave examples of each, where the Oregon standards only identified what

should be learned within each standard. Organizationally, there was a difference in that both had
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different sub-headings that both organizations thought should be taught. They were similar

topics, but different slightly in their wording. Another difference while on this topic was that the

national standards did not number their sub-heading, while the Oregon standards did number

their sub-headings. An example of this would be the national standards used a number system

for each standard and bullets for each sub-heading after the standard, while Oregon used no

numbering system for the standard, but a numbering system for their sub-headings. The last

difference that I found between the two documents was that the national standards were set for

pre-K through fourth grade and the Oregon standards were written for benchmark two (fourth

and fifth grade). This would be one of the main reasons why I like the Oregon standards over the

national standards because the Oregon standards are more focused to my specific grade level

where the national standards, one would have to figure out what to teach at each grade level. I

like how Oregon specifies what needs to be taught in the fourth and fifth grade levels, instead of

five grade levels, like the national standards do. Using the Oregon standards teachers would only

have to meet in two grade level teams to discuss who will teach what, while with the national

standards you would need a large group of five grade levels to try and sort out each grade levels

context. With the type of time constraints we, as teachers, currently deal with on a daily basis the

more user friendly the standards are to us the less time we waste on trying to understand what

we are supposed to teach.

Based on the reading of the this weeks text and the standards that I reviewed I have come

up with this definition of social studies. Social studies is taught in kindergarten through grade 12

in schools across the nation. As a field of study, social studies is probably on of the more

difficult subjects to define because it is not a single discipline such as history or geography,

precisely because it is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary subject and because it is

sometimes taught in one class, perhaps called "social studies”, and sometimes in separate
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discipline-based classes within a department of social studies, like in college. There are two
main

characteristics of social studies that I gathered from both the text and the standards. The first

characteristic I gathered is that social studies is designed to promote civic competence and the

second characteristic is that social studies is integrative, incorporating many fields of study.

References

NCSS. (2011). http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/execsummary

NCSS. (2011). What is Social Studies.

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www.learner.org/workshops/socialstudies/.../8.WhatIsSocialStudies.pdf

Oregon Department of Education. (2011). http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=53

Sunal, C. S., & Haas, M. E. (2008). Social Studies for the Elementary and Middle

Grades: A constructivist approach (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. ISBN-

13: 9780205518876
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