Literacy in the Social Sciences

Throughout my k-12 education career I never realized how classes teach overlapping topics. This became brutally obvious after this semester when I was able to analyze how reading and student literacy is a working progress in every class. Whether it is helping students summarize texts to helping them learn without using texts, student literacy will be included in every classroom.  Without aiding the students in reading and literacy the students will not be able to efficiently analyze and comprehend the content in social studies.

When a teacher is creating a lesson they must take this into account, because without understanding the students prior reading experiences and abilities the students may seem unprepared for the content.  If students seem to be lagging behind other students it may be beneficial for the teacher to include visual cues that may help the student understand certain situations that may be complicated in text.  I did this in my 10 lesson during the Jig-Saw lesson, where I included a visual to help explain how the alliance system help cause World War I.  A good blog where I found lesson plan ideas for teachers is at New York Times, it gives a variety of topics and events to choose from.  In making the lesson plan teachers must include literacy growth from the begining of the unit until the end and the assessments.

Improving Student's Literacy

For student's literacy skills to improve they must first understand how to successfully read a text.  When students get a reading that is assigned they usually are not fully interested in it, so the they read it without analyzing the content. (We have all done this in the past). However, if a student wants/needs to retain the content they should approach the text in a different format, such as the Multipass strategy.  The Multipass textbook strategy consists of skimming for the text three times before the reader dives into the article.  The first pass is surveying, which consists of looking at titles, headings, and illustrations.  The next step is the size up phase, in this you look for statistics, bold or italicized words.  The last step is the sort out phase, which is when you read the text and look for any questions that still remain.  There are many other textbook strategies but they all have the same thing in common, they involve the reader in the content before they read and they also give the students a road map of what the text is about.  The multipass reading strategy improves comprehension because of the repetition through the text.  The Multipass strategy would be perfect for a history textbook because of the dates, numbers and vocabulary that student may be unfamiliar with.  Also most history textbook are chronological, so multipass will give them the opportunity to see in advance whats going to happen so when they read they can focus on what is important.

If students are having a hard time developing a claim because they are lacking reasoning you could do a slip or trip activity.  Create a picture where a person is laying on the ground and in the picture leave clues to why they could have slipped or tripped.  Along with the picture develop a dialogue to give further evidence to the students.  Once the students have come up with the claim have them explain to you why they believe that claim.  Then have them fill out a CERC (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, Conclusion) graphic organizer.  This is a fun way to have students learn how to develop reasoning behind a claim.  This could be used in the study of Jamestown. Use the picture of the skull of "Jane" from Jamestown and ask the students what they think happened.  In the end they will find out that the marks on her skull is evidence of cannibalism in early Jamestown.

Another thing that teachers need to remember is that not all students are going to be able to write effectively.  This is when teachers will have to teach students about the 6 traits of writing (Content, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions). When you break writing into the 6 traits it helps keep the students from becoming overwhelmed by writing, so if you pick 1 or 2 things to focus on the student can narrow their effort.  Focusing on the six traits will make your students sound more proficient and professional.  The traits also help the teacher give a more accurate assessment of the students writing by focusing on their specific strengths and weaknesses.

Setting Up Successful Students

For students to be successful in the classroom the teacher must first address where the students reading ability is prior to the lesson and how they should scaffold the students learning.  There are four types of anticipatory activities that a teacher could start a lesson with to help students activate their background knowledge.  They are: Demonstrations, Discrepant Events, Visual Displays, and Thought-Provoking Questions.  These are to get the students attention while giving them a memorable experience they can remember back too.  Anticipatory activities should be short and concise because they is a limited amount of time to teach the lesson. 

When students need to read a section for an assignment, it could be better for the teacher to do Read-alouds because this could foster positive changes in students attitudes towards readings.  If a teacher is going to be reading a primary source that will be referenced again later, shared readings would be a good reading strategy because it allows students to follow along. 

Since students can become easily discouraged with reading large and/or complicated texts, it is essential for teachers to help them in anyway possible. One way in which a teacher could help would be by creating a vocabulary list for the students.  This list does not have to be a traditional list, it would include a space for the students definition in their own words and a spot for them to draw a quick reference picture.  Instructors should also help the students with text organization.  This could be done by pointing out cause and effect relationships, or just highlighting main event sequences. 

Literacy in a Social Science Classroom

Education has become covering topics in various classes.  For example, teaching English and grammar is taught in all classes, such as social studies.  In a Social Studies class a teacher will have have to determine what level a student is reading on and provide the student with content that fits their comprehension levels.  This goes for all classes including science and math as well.  A good way to find materials for a student is by using their Lexile scores and setting up text sets for a class.  When finding material for a lesson or unit utilizing Lexile scores is essential and good site for finding Lexile scores is readability-score.com.

Blogs

History Educator Blog

This blog is a good way for history teachers to get new ideas of how to engage the class.  It shows multiple ways of teaching a class, whether it be though interactive maps or through online forums, such as Pinterest and twitter.  It also is a place where teachers can ask other teachers if their presentations are covered completely.  This makes it a good place to compare and contrast others teacher’s material and figure out what would work best for their classroom.  There is also a topic talking about how to combat cheating on technology, which with more and more technology in the classroom, while be a growing problem in the future.  

Technology in the Classroom

Technology in the classroom is becoming more essential due to the world becoming more interconnected with modes of communication, research and presenting ideas.  But with technology there are costs that some schools cannot afford as easily as others and this puts schools with smaller budgets at a disadvantage.  Studies have shown that technology in the classroom can be more beneficial than a normal lecture setting.  According to Ryan Lytle, in his article Study: Emerging Technology Has Positive Impact in Classroom, teachers have seen radical improvement in AP test scores as well as their classroom grades.  In some cases there was a ten percent rise in students that scored 5 on their AP tests.  Technology makes it easier for the teachers to express their material, and it makes it easier and for the students to understand, while engaging them in a way where it is harder to get bored.  Especially in high school technology is important because it helps students better understand what kinds of programs they will be using once they graduate high school.

Teaching Philosophy

Teachers have to be active members of a person’s life; this means that they have to dedicate themselves to the bettering of their students.  Teachers must always be willing to help a student no matter how hard or complex of a challenge is put forth.  They must also be willing to change their teachings to accommodate students that are struggling at understandings the topics.  Being a teacher is more than just giving children information, it is teaching students how to become independent thinkers, while teaching them to solve complex ideas without help.  The hardest and most difficult thing that a teacher must do is make the student want to learn on their own and help them become young intellectuals.