I teach at a public charter high school that offers students a rigorous college preparatory environment with a STEM focus. Students who choose to attend such a school are often more at ease with the orientation of mathematics and science courses that emphasize inquiry-based learning and real-world applications than they are in social studies classes. Helping students understand that learning about history is much more than memorizing facts and recalling names and places is one of the challenges that I face daily in my classroom.
I address this issue by framing my instruction around a concept-based approach to instruction. In a nutshell, I identify the core concepts in each unit and use factual knowledge to help students understand how those concepts relate to one another in a meaningful way. The C3 Framework supports these efforts in a number of practical ways. First, it underscores the need for quality social studies instruction throughout a student’s educational experience. Each dimension arcs across grade levels and shows what students at different ages and developmental levels should be capable of while emphasizing that social studies needs to be taught in each classroom, for each student, at every level.
Another way that the C3 Framework helps me is that it blends the conceptual approach that I use to organize my instructional units with real world skills that students need to both understand and experience content in a meaningful way. Dimensions 1, 3, and 4 articulate the skills that students should develop and offer a logical progression for how students would practice and hone their skills over time. Dimension 2 identifies overarching themes for each discipline that I can use as a springboard for conceptual lenses and specific concepts for students to explore. It also helps me communicate how real world practitioners use each discipline to ask questions, identify patterns, and establish relationships.
