Elementary School, Social Studies Curriculum

Social studies curriculum for the gifted at the elementary level must contain the elements of good curriculum, exemplary curriculum in the subject area as delineated in the national standards reports for civics, history, economics, and geography, and differentiation features found effective with gifted learners.

Sound curriculum features for all curricula must be designed in such a way as to state goals, outcomes, activities, and strategies and materials to be employed to address outcomes and assessment approaches to assess learning outcomes. Based on how students learn in any given curriculum, the curriculum is revised to reflect a stronger emphasis in areas that students need more help. Thus, the design work of a social studies curriculum is essential by individual discipline first and then in a more interdisciplinary fashion.

Social studies curriculum for the gifted must also adhere to what is exemplary for each of the underlying disciplines. In teaching history, for example, it is crucial for students to explore important primary source documents such as the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, and the Magna Carta. Students also need to develop critical reasoning about history, understanding its logic, and be able to compare across events, cultures, and periods. Moreover, it is useful if students also understand the importance of change in studying history—what remains constant and what changes within cycles of history. Finally, students need to learn the importance of multiple perspectives in history, the voices in different cultures and periods that have been vocal about what is happening in their world. This means that students must understand history from the perspective of both the victors and the vanquished. Moreover, in a postmodern world, they must recognize that different interpretations of the same event must be discussed in order to understand it effectively.

This entry discusses several aspects and features that are often associated with and are important to consider when designing social studies curriculum for gifted elementary students, including differentiation, working strategies, assessment, multiculturalism, and interdisciplinarity.