At the beginning of last school year, the 6th grade social studies curriculum changed. Sixth graders went from learning about Ancient Civilizations to learning about Geography and Global Issues. I interviewed 6th grade social studies teachers Mrs. Driscoll and Mr. Ogden to see how they felt about the change. Mr. Ogden has taught sixth grade social studies for 10 years whereas Mrs. Driscoll had taught sixth math before last year.
In terms of the assignments, the class still does relatively the same number of worksheets, but the concepts of the worksheets have changed. “They’ve all changed based off of the concepts, we still do worksheets, we still do projects, we still do activities, we still do groupwork,” Mrs. Driscoll said when I asked her if the worksheets or activities have changed. However, Mr. Ogden pointed out that even though they still do worksheets and projects, the class is entirely different.
Geography seems to be an important element of this class. When most people think of geography they think of pointing out places on a map. But the focus is more so on cultural ideas, politics, and economics. When asking Mrs. Driscoll about geography in the new curriculum she stated “They learn a lot of geography because that is the title of our book. They don’t just learn geography being, I know where this is, but geography meaning cultural things and political things and economic things.”
Overall, from the two interviews I felt as though the curriculum has changed in some ways and is still similar in some ways. Mr. Ogden said, “The amount of interest from students in the subject matter has really gone down, and they aren’t as interested in this as they were in ancient world history. They do like projects which does give them some interest working in groups.” Mrs. Driscoll also added that she felt as though the new curriculum seemed like a modernized version of the old curriculum. Mr. Ogden also pointed out that with the old curriculum, Ancient Civilizations, they would do more projects which may also be a reason interest rates have gone down because the class is less interactive for students.
