Development of a Social Studies Lesson Design for JSL students

Based on a Unit "Ideas in Neighborhood Stores" as Bicultural Integrative Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is the development of lesson design theory for JSL students, who are confronted with two problems when they study in social studies classes: a linguistic problem and a cultural one. Therefore, it has been suggested that teachers apply the theory of Second Language Acquisition (Pappamibiel et, al. 2005), or correlate the learning contents and students' cultural backgrounds (Weisman & Hansen 2007). However, the learning content also requires understanding of their mother culture.

This paper is outlined below. First, I propose Bicultural Integrative Learning, in which JSL students comprehend the social meanings in terms of both their mother culture and their second culture. Therefore I suggested this tentative theory focusing on a learning process partially based on the Common Underlying Proficiency Model (Cummins 1984), utilizing materials which have common social meanings between their mother culture and second culture, and various resources which help advance the comprehension of JSL students. Secondly, I implemented a lesson unit of "Ideas in Neighborhood Stores", and analyzed the discourse of one Chinese student through the lesson.

The result indicates that the tentative theory was effective with a JSL student, at least in this case.