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Social Studies
The
goals of the social studies curriculum (e.g., history, geography,
civics, anthropology) are for students to explore key issues, develop
core concepts, and acquire knowledge. The curriculum includes and
depends on a number of different types of materials, e.g., textbooks,
nonfiction texts, biographies, autobiographies, journals, maps,
newspapers, photographs, and primary documents. Higher order thinking
skills, such as "compare," "explain," "analyze,"
"predict," "construct," and "interpret," are all heavily dependent on a variety of literacy skills and processes.
For example, in social studies, students must be able to understand
specialized vocabulary, identify key pieces of information within
texts, determine what is fact and what is opinion, relate information
across texts, connect new information to prior knowledge, and synthesize
the information to make meaning.
Teachers
recognize that literacy problems can impede student progress and
create barriers to understanding social studies content. To help
social studies teachers meaningfully integrate literacy strategies
into their content area teaching, we have organized information
about research-based instructional strategies, lesson plans, activities,
resources, and teaching materials under the following two categories:
Literacy
Skills for the Social Studies Classroom
The
following sites feature information and strategies for helping students
develop the reading and writing skills needed for success in the
social studies classroom.
Sites
That Matter
Content Area Literacy
This useful site lists fourteen strategies for teaching students to improve their reading of history-social science material. Each tells when in the lesson the strategy is appropriate and offers instructions for applying it in the classroom.
score.rims.k12.ca.us/score_lessons/content_area_literacy/
Literacy Matters—Reading and Writing in the Content Areas
This Literacy Matters overview page of the reading and writing in the content areas offers help with reading: questioning, reading expository text, vocabulary, how to read a textbook and reading and interpreting diverse materials. The writing section deals with writing to learn and writing to demonstrate knowledge.
www.literacymatters.org/content/readandwrite/intro.htm
Literacy Matters—Reading & Writing—How to Read a Textbook
This content reading section contains specific tips on how to read a textbook.
www.literacymatters.org/content/text/intro.htm
Literacy Matters—Using Biographies to Teach Literacy Skills
This Literacy Matters section provides the American History Idol (AHI) Curriculum Units, assessment materials and resources to help upper elementary school teachers introduce expository texts through the use of biographies. The American History Idol (AHI) Curriculum Units were designed for students in Grade 4 and Grade 5 to support the development of the following skills: gathering, organizing, and presenting information.
www.literacymatters.org/content/biographies/intro.htm
ReadingQuest:
Making Sense in Social Studies
This web site is designed for social studies teachers who want to
engage their students more effectively with the content in their
classes. The site clearly presents the underlying principles of
content literacy and offers numerous strategies for the social studies
classroom.
curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/readquest/
THE
PRACTICE: Supporting the social studies classroom through literacy
development
Knowledge Loom's "Adolescent Literacy in the Content Areas"
includes a section about supporting literacy development in the
social studies classroom. A variety of strategies and resources
are featured on the site.
knowledgeloom.org/practice_basedoc.jsp?t=1&bpid
=1213&aspect=1&location=2&parentid=1197&
bpinterid=1197&spotlightid=1174&testflag=yes
National Council of Social Studies
This site includes excellent resources, lesson plans and notable social studies trade books.
www.socialstudies.org/
Strategies
in Action: Being a Strategic Teacher of Social Studies
This piece is a section of the Online Learning Centre, which was
created by the government of New Zealand. It identifies and describes
strategies for each phase of the inquiry process.
www.tki.org.nz/r/socialscience/curriculum/
SSOL/resources/strategies/index_e.php
Reading
Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom
This is a page on the Holt, Rinehart and Winston web site that offers
practice activities to help struggling readers with comprehension.
go.hrw.com/ndNSAPI.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?ST2Strategies
Reading
Strategies for the Social Studies Class
This resource was developed by Gretchen Coe and Anne Fitzpatrick
from Mercer Middle School in Seattle. It is posted on the world-affairs.org
web site.
www.world-affairs.org/globalclassroom/
curriculum/ReadingToLearn2.pdf
Kathy Schrock—General History and Social Studies
This is an excellent collection of resources and lesson plans for social studies.
school.discovery.com/schrockguide/history/histg.html
A
Metacognitive Double-Entry Journal
The Strategic Literacy Initiative, a professional development and
research program of WestEd, provides a description featured in the
social studies section of WestEd's "strategic literacy"
pages.
www.wested.org/stratlit/ideas/whatnhow.shtml
Improving Writing Skills through Social Studies. ERIC Digest
No. 40
This ERIC digest discusses (1) recent research on the linkage between
writing and learning, (2) successful approaches to teaching writing,
and (3) suggestions for including an effective writing component
in the social studies curriculum.
www.ericdigests.org/pre-926/writing.htm
Social
Studies and the Disabled Reader. ERIC Digest
This ERIC digest provides teachers with information and resources
for differentiating social studies instruction for students with
reading difficulties. These three questions are discussed: (1) Who
is the disabled reader? (2) What are the special needs of disabled
readers? (3) What strategies can be used to teach social studies
to disabled readers?
www.ericdigests.org/pre-9217/studies.htm
Critical
Thinking in the Social Studies. ERIC Digest No. 30
This ERIC digest discusses the (1) meaning of critical thinking,
(2) primacy of critical thinking as a social studies goal, (3) inclusion
of critical thinking in the social studies curriculum, and (4) means
of teaching critical thinking to social studies students.
www.ericdigests.org/pre-924/critical.htm
Using
Literature To Teach Geography in High Schools. ERIC Digest
Traditionally, the high school curriculum has been rigidly compartmentalized.
Yet, linkages between disciplines in the curriculum increasingly
are being made, such as the connections of English to U.S. History
courses in many high schools. Students of every ability level could
benefit from exploring the interrelationship between these two disciplines.
www.ericdigests.org/1996-4/high.htm
Reading
and Interpreting Primary Sources
The
following sites offer activities, strategies, and tools to help
students read and interpret primary sources.
Sites
That Matter
Library of Congress American Memory
This extensive site offers freevphotographs, maps and other historical documents for students to use to do primary research.
memory.loc.gov/ammem/
How
To Use Primary Sources
The New Jersey Historical Society has created this fun series of
lessons using a variety of documents in their collection to demonstrate
how different types of primary sources can be analyzed and used.
www.jerseyhistory.org/howtofind.html
Teaching
With Documents
This web site was a winner of the Philadelphia Inquirer's "10
Best Educational Sites" in 2001. The site gathers an extensive
collection of student worksheets and guidelines, many created by
National Archives and Records Administration."
www.edteck.com/dbq/
Document
Analysis Worksheets
The Digital Classroom of the National Archives offers document analysis
worksheets that were designed and developed for students by the
education staff of the National Archives.
www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/
analysis_worksheets/worksheets.html
Teaching
With Documents: Lesson Plans
This section of the National Archives' Digital Classroom contains
reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the
National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated
with the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics
and Government, and cross-curricular connections.
www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/teaching_
with_documents.html
Using
Primary Sources in the Classroom
This section of the Library of Congress' "American Memory"
site introduces students to primary sources—what they are,
their great variety, and how they can be analyzed. It includes activities
that help students understand the historical record and learn techniques
for analyzing primary sources.
memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/primary.html
K-12
Lessons: Using Primary Sources
This activity from the UCAL library site introduces young students
to using primary sources.
sunsite.berkeley.edu/calheritage/k12/primary_lesson.htm
History
Matters
This web site features a section for helping students and teachers
make effective use of primary sources. "Making Sense of Documents"
provides strategies for analyzing a wide variety of primary materials,
such as maps, photographs, letters, songs, and more. For each type
of material there are interactive exercises and a guide to traditional
and online sources.
historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/makesense/
The
Web--Teaching Zack to Think
This site, created by Alan November, gives strategies to help students
interpret and analyze the validity of web pages.
www.anovember.com/articles/zack.html
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