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.