Philosophy for Children Excercises and a Social Studies Text

Abstract

Introduction:  Adapting excercises from philosophy for children programs as well as creating new ones for use with a social studies text marks a special goal of our efforts this year at the Regional Day School for the Deaf in Fort Worth, Texas.  In meeting this goal, we are attempting to make conceptual analysis and inductive reasoning intregral parts of the general curriculum.  A social studies text, The United States and Its Neighbors, prompted the adaptation and creation of thinking skills exercises.  This book, included in a series entitled The World and Its People, presents a chapter on "Exploration" in need of conceptual clarification and logical elaboration in the form of such exercises.  No thinking skills excercises appear in the "Chapter Review" section of the discussion where a listing of "Key Facts," a "Vocabulary Quiz," some "Review Questions," and a "Skills Development" project involving use of the library test the reader's comprehension of the text.  The specially designed exercises add to these various reading activities a thinking skills component.