Social studies is all about the critical understanding of relevant social issues. Social studies units about these issues should be underpinned by a "conceptual understanding" or a "big idea" about society. Students used newspaper clippings to come up with the overall theme of "Apocalypse Theories" which meant that they were engaged from the beginning which was great. But it took weeks of me reading and researching and a social sciences faculty meeting to develop a conceptual understanding that would have better tied everyone's exhibits together. As a faculty the social sciences teachers came up with "How societies use apocalyptic thinking helps us to understand their cultural values". Had I been thinking along these lines earlier we could have looked at a real social issue, such as the way some fundamentalist Christians require certain conditions in Israel to take place before the Apocalypse and Second coming and the potential consequences for Palestinians of this kind of support. In depth exploration of this sort of solid, real-world issue could have served as the vehicle for the conceptual understanding above.
Students have learnt a lot about inquiry but next time I will work on developing a more focused social issue at the heart of the unit, instead of fairly traditional social studies lessons on, for example, the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. This way, even if students aren't successful with coming up with a great exhibition display, at least I can still be sure they have developed their conceptual understanding of an important social issue. Next year it will be good to exhibit students' learning on a website instead of an open evening for parents. They could advertise a launch date, and have a goal of the number of hits to the site.
