The Walkabout as a curriculum design was first suggested by Maurice Gibbons in Phi Delta Kappan articles in 1974 and 1984. It was an outgrowth of his response to the classic film by the same name. It concerns an Aboriginal youth on his Walkabout in the Outback who encounters an upper-middle class adolescent girl and her younger brother abandoned when their father commits suicide. Recently released as a video, this stunningly photographed film is poignant but obviously the scene of the suicide would not be suitable for younger viewers. It has a message about the onslaught of technology and culture clash from a 70's perspective.

The educational tasks Gibbons originally proposed as a rite of passage for adolescents also relate to the kinds of professional tasks teachers undertake in their work. The tasks are wholistic in the sense they involve professional and personal development along a number of dimensions: intellectual, spiritual, and artistic. Integrating tasks so they can be used as evidence for completing multiple standards in this course (or another such as science, reading, or language arts methods) is encouraged.

Gibbon, Maurice (1974). Walkabout: Searching for the Right Passage from Childhood and School. Phi Delta Kappan. (May): 596-602.

Gibbon, Maurice (1984). Walkabout: Ten Years Later Searching for a Renewed Vision of Education. Phi Delta Kappan. (May):591-600.

Practical Skills are important to teachers and there are several that you can master both individually and as part of your group.

(Cooperative Assignment

1. Teachers should be able to lead discussions. As a member of a four-person team, you will be expected to provide a "current event/social issue" topic and present it during class. The presentation should take no more than five minutes. It will consist of a one page written description of the current event or issue (this can be accompanied by copies of a newspaper or magazine article). It should be provided as an overview and accompanied by a posting to the class WebBoard (see the syllabus for the URL)   of all the point/counterpoint positions on this issue. The presentation will conclude with a question or decision that must be made about the issue that will also be listed on the WebBoard. Use the "Makah" controversy found in your Pip's book as a guide (you will be responsible for step 1 only). Later in the course, we will use the process described in the article and select an issue towards the end of the course for a complete discussion using the model. DUE TBD

   (Individual Assignments)

2. Teachers need to critically preview World Wide Web sites before using them in a class. Preview five World Wide Web social studies sites and select one for an in depth evaluation using the WWW Social Studies Site Rubric . Send your scores and narrative comments to your instructor via e-mail. The complete criteria for evaluating a WWW site are found in the supplementary resource guide for planning and assessing social studies instruction but in brief they include: theme (how appropriate are the ideas and content), organization (what is the quality of the layout and structure of pages), presentation (how easy is this page to read and view), language and conventions, presentation, technical quality (do external and internal links function), and, most importantly, educational product or assessment strategy (how is student learning and overall educational value determined). DUE: AUG 29
3. Teachers need to write autobiographically and by completing a Social Memoir and Conceptual-Teaching Reflection and Lesson Plan you will heighten personal awareness in relation to conceptual development and the social sciences while writing autobiographically. You will also gain experience in using reflection as a basis for curriculum development. Your lesson plan that is part of this task will be assessed using the following rubric. DUE: SEPT 19  (social memoir) and OCT 3 (reflection and lesson plan)
4. Teachers need to be able to receive constructive criticism about their curriculum development skills as well as provide meaningful feedback to others. Students will serve as members of review teams for the Curriculum Development submissions. This assignment will be completed during finals week. DUE: Finals Week begins DEC 10

Adventure involves employing coping skills in an unfamiliar environment. It means going somewhere that is new and different. In your case, you will be having a clinical experience in a school. As you spend time in this new environment, you should learn things as you observe the people and things that are available there. You should also get involved in teaching a social studies lesson and this three-part assignment is designed to help you accomplish this.

Students will work in groups of four peers. Each student will develop a lesson plan that gives an effective overview of ideas from one selected article from Social Studies and the Young Learner, Social Education, The Social Studies, or the PiP’s Course Book and teach the lesson to a class during clinical experiences. The following information is important to keep in mind. Your teacher may not explicitly teach social studies curriculum but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t. For example, in kindergarten you might conduct a magic circle or role-play a conflict resolution idea. There are lots of good ideas for teaching geography which is too often overlooked in the school curriculum. If your teacher is in a departmental staffing situation and is the “science” teacher, follow your students to the social studies class and make arrangements to teach a lesson there under that teacher’s tutelage. At the conclusion of the lesson you must conduct an assessment of what the student’s learned. In some cases they may have a product, such as a map or timeline. If you do a magic circle, for example, you might make notes about who contributed and in what ways (during sharing or during the “remembering” phase). Similarly, if you do a role-play, make a note of who contributes to finding a solution. Finally, in a separate section, assess yourself and what you would do differently the next time.

1. Clearly stated performance objective that is being demonstrated.
2.  A list of relevant ILS standards and benchmarks
3. A step-by-step description of the activity and all required materials.
4. An assessment rubric with clear criteria for designing and grading the product.
5. Source references for any ideas that are not your own.  

(INTASC# 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8; ACEI# 1, 2, 2e, 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 4, 5a; ICASE# 5e, 5h, 5m; RDI# IV1, IV4)

 The second section provides the assessment of students’ learning  and your interpretation of whatever data you collect. Finally, the third section includes your self-assessment. This task will be assessed with the following rubric. DUE: Nov 12

   Inquiry is the systematic study of a self-selected problem or issue. The process begins by identifying a topic related to social studies education. Once a topic is identified a proposal to study the topic is submitted. This proposal includes a rationale, specific action steps, list of possible resources (using an accepted citation, format) , potential barriers or problems, and identification of a curriculum development product (see Curriculum Development below) to demonstrate learning. Upon approval of the proposal, the inquiry begins. After reading about the topic, and using whatever other data sources are identified, the results are synthesized into a product of learning (choose option 1 or 2 from Curriculum Development). The key is selecting a manageable topic and beginning work early so the end product is something that reflects emerging abilities as a designer of social studies curriculum. Once the Inquiry Proposal is approved via a rubric, begin working on your Curriculum Development task.  This site will help do some thinking before developing your proposal. Once you are ready to write your proposal, you can download the form from here and then use FTP to put it the "public" folder. Be sure to name the file according to the instructions in the syllabus. About half-way through the semester you will have a conference to assess your progress on achieving your action steps. This conference will also be a time to consider how many Walkabout Tasks are realistically going to be accomplished by the end of the semester. DUE: SEPT 5

Curriculum Development provides three options to demonstrate your learning from the Inquiry by designing social studies curriculum. The product is called Curriculum Development because its purpose is to promote learning in students. The choice of "cognitive" does not imply, however, that social-emotional and physcial development are to be ignored. Thus, the product you develop will be social studies curriculum designed for elementary-middle school students which should address multiple intelligence theory and be consistent with constructivist learning principles. Whatever option is selected, a premium should be on the assessment component.A clearly written summary of your learning related to the topic is also an integral part of this assignment. That written summary takes different forms depending on the option you select. DUE: DEC 3

Construct your own WWW site for use by K-8 students. Using an HTML editor, create a WWW site with a minimum of 10 links (at least half must be external  at least three must be internal) that engages students in an on-line investigation using the WebQuest Model. Another source of information for constructing a WebQuest is this Powerpoint show developed by a colleague from Baylor University,  Professor Andy Milson.  Instructions for accessing HTML editors will be provided in class and workshops are offered by the College of Education. Additional information is available on-line (see "jabfavs" bookmarks). The quality of your WWW site will be based on the following criteria: theme (how appropriate are the ideas and content), organization (what is the quality of the layout and structure of pages), presentation (how easy is a  page to read and view), language and conventions, presentation, technical quality (do external and internal links function), and, most importantly, educational product or assessment strategy (how is student learning and overall educational value determined). You will build your page around your topic from the logical inquiry and it should include links to worthwhile educational sites as well as multiple internal links -- one of which must be to a page that is a summary of  the content of the topic. Where appropriate, you are expected to cite resources from your  inquiry proposal (or other sources you use) throughout your content summary. This summary should be written as either FAQs or a brief research paper between 850 - 1000 words in length. 

At the end of the semester, your page will be reviewed by myself and two of your peers using the a WebQuest rubric. If accepted, it would be posted on the College of Education server for the next semester. You can see examples of previous students work on-line but some were built without using the above-mentioned Internet models.

Develop a resource box focusing on an appropriate social studies topic from either history or geography. This resource box should be integrated and thematic, i.e., it should reflect other elements of the curriculum. The resources and plans should be packaged in a suitable container and consist of items such as the following: pictures cut from magazines or books; magazine and newspaper articles; study prints; ideas for related art and music activities; social studies textbooks (you can Xerox appropriate chapters); films, videocassettes, filmstrips, transparencies, records, and audio tapes; sources of related computer software ; maps, globes, charts, and tables (from old books, magazines, newspapers, etc.); artifacts (physical objects such as coins, articles of clothing, tools, eating or cooking utensils, coins, or musical instruments); commercial games, puzzles, and manipulative materials. It is expected that each student will collect or identify between fourteen and seventeen "entries". Variety is the spice of life and this holds true for an acceptable unit. Many of the activities done in class (see A Coal Mining Lesson for example) and some of the handouts from the Pip's book can be modified and used as entries. Thus, a student is not expected to purchase a lot of materials for the box. BE CREATIVE -- MAKE THINGS OR ADOPT THINGS SHARED IN CLASS FOR YOUR BOX. You can store them on a disk for future use. Eight entries are mandatory:

1. You must have an overview of the content of the topic you have selected. Where appropriate, you are expected to cite resources from your logical inquiry proposal (or other sources you use) throughout your content overview. This overview should be written as either FAQs or a brief research paper of between 850 - 1000 words in length. (Submit on Disk -- Keep a Backup)
2. Each student will be expected to develop an instructional plan based on the resources in the box. You must identify the developmental level of the students on the plan. The plan should begin with a unit goal--a broad educational goal for the students as they engage in the learning experiences to follow. This should be expressed in a single sentence. Following the goal should be five social studies performance objectives reflecting the five subject  areas outlined in the Illinois Learning standards:   a history objective, a geography objective, a political systems objective, a culture/social systems objective, and  an economics objective. The objectives should address knowledge, skills, and affective aims of social studies. Following the goal and objectives should be a complete list of all the items in the box as well as a annotation (two to four sentences) of a learning activity for each item (from which you could develop a detailed instructional plan). The final element in the overall plan for this resource box-based unit should be some strategies for formative and summative assessment. You may incorporate the rubric and any of the assessments found on the assessment link. This list and description of possible uses should be no more than five pages in length. (Submit on Disk -- Keep a Backup)
3. Select three (or more) items you would like to use for a learning experience and develop detailed instructional plans consisting of three lessons. An example of such a detailed plan (one lesson only) can be found in the scarcity lessons from the beginning of the Pip's Book. (Submit on Disk -- Keep a Backup)
4. An annotated bibliography of five trade books related to the theme of the box.
5. A computer-generated time line related to the theme of the box using Timeliner (available in the lab).
6. A map generated with Mapmaker's Tool Kit (available in the lab).
7. An entry reflecting cultural diversity..
8. Bookmarks of at least three WWW URLs that are related to the topic. (Submit on Disk -- Keep a Backup)

Your box should be a useful resource that you could use in your teaching. It's evaluation will be a based on a rubric that measures your projects instructional value.Here are two examples of previous students work

• Finland Resource Box
• Holocaust Resource Box

Creativity can be expressed in a number of ways in your teaching. In this assignment you will be asked to be creative  using technology tools. Students will develop a lesson that would allow students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of using a spreadsheet to interpret geographic or historical numeric data DUE: DEC OCT 10

1. Clearly stated performance objective that is being demonstrated.
2.  A list of relevant ILS standards and benchmarks
3. A step-by-step description of the activity and all required materials.
4.  A sample spreadsheet and accompanying graph.
5. An assessment rubric with clear criteria for designing and grading the product.
6. Source references for any ideas that are not your own.  
7. (INTASC# 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8; ACEI# 1, 2, 2e, 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 4, 5a; ICASE# 5e, 5h, 5m; RDI# IV1, IV4)

Creativity tasks could be counted as entries in the resource box or incorporated into WWW pages for Curriculum Development.

• Become a visitor to the Juvenile Detention Center
• Volunteer at the Children's Discover Museum
• Deliver meals on wheels
• Work with the elderly in some capacity
• Make a friend and serve as a host for an International Student
• Participate in Habitats for Humanity on a Saturday
• Tutor for the Bloomington Housing Authority.
• Humane Society
• Attend the Illinois Council for the Social Studies in Peoria on Sept 20-21

Plan to devote a minimum of five hours total for your participation and write a five hundred word reaction to your experience. In this reaction you will need to explain what you choose to do and why. You should discuss the experience. Finally, explain how what you did could be applied to your own classroom.  You must also present evidence that you completed the project. It is suggested that you ask a responsible individual to compose a thank you letter briefly indicating what you did. If you attend the ICSS conference, your participation will be recorded with your registation. DUE: DEC 5

Academic Integrity: Academic dishonesty , when discovered, will result in severe consequences with regard to your overall grade in this course.  Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated.   The Modern Language Association (MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers) defines plagiarism as follows:

repeating another's sentences as your own, adopting a particularly apt phrase as your own, paraphrasing someone else's argument as your own, presenting someone else's line of thinking in the development of a thesis as though it were your own

In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact "borrowed" from another.  Writers may use another person's words or thoughts, but must acknowledge them!  Any matters regarding academic integrity will be handled according to University Policy.

Other Key Course Documents:

• Calendar and Topical Outline    This provides a list of dates and topics. Please note the days we will meet in the DeGarmo Computer Lab on the third floor. Also you will find due dates for all the assignments and readings.
• Syllabus         This provides an overview of the course including objectives, policies for submitting work and grading, as well as other information that serves as an agreement among class members regarding expectations.
• Web Board   Please post  a question about an assignment or due date and place it under the appropriate conference. In the subject give some indication of the topic. Do not use e-mail to ask questions that should be on the WebBoard.

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