And the research says . . .

Key, L. (2010). Stimulating Instruction in Social Studies. The Social Studies, 101(3), 117-120.

Because literacy is such an integral part of social studies and can sometimes have technical vocabulary that makes student comprehension difficult, Key et. al discuss in their article "Stimulating Instruction in Social Studies" three strategies that social studies teachers can implement pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading to enhance student engagement and comprehension in content texts. All three strategies include a graphic organizer: 1)magnet summaries help students understand key vocabulary terms and how they relate to the main ideas; 2) history memory bubbles held students understand cause/effect and problem/solution relationships in history; 3) data charts help students organize information while reading.

It is true that social studies is filled with very complex vocabulary that is sometime abstract and hard to understand or that varies in context, like the word revolution. These strategies are great to help promote comprehension and student interest in social studies content literacy. Beyond the textbook, which gives breadth but not the underlying story, perspective, opinions that interest students, the article also talks about helping students to understand how best to read and think about all things written including maps, primary source documents, books, newspapers, photos, and so on. The article also provided really good examples of "think-alouds" or modelling and scaffolding that can be done to help students practice these strategies.

Hall, L.A. (2011). How Popular Culture Texts Inform and Shape Students' Discussions of Social Studies Texts. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(4), 296-305.

This pop culture article discusses how students use pop culture to inform and shape their understanding of social studies texts. It discusses three ways in which students do this. After being taught reading/comprehension strategies of metacognition, making and checking predictions, activating prior knowledge, and asking, revising, and answering questions, students 1) applied these comprehension strategies to pop culture to interpret social studies texts, 2) would use pop culture as valid and reliable pieces of information to support arguments about the text, and 3) would use pop culture to silence and shut down arguemtns of the text and alternative ideas posed by classmates. The article then discusses the importance of pop culture in student learning and the teachers’ role in teaching students about using critical media literacy.

The examples given shocked me as to how much students, and I myself, use pop culture to interpret social studies texts. I was also chocked that pop culture was taken as always valid over academic texts. As a teacher, I am going to use popular culture in my classroom and encourage my students to do so, but we are going to applu critical literacy so we understand the biases, purposes, and views left out of the pop culture. Often the article talked about the silencing of women’s roles through popular culture. This used in conjunction with academic texts and using “regular, thoughtful, and systematic planning” can help me push students to think about what they are reading and how pop culture and academic texts connect in ways to improved them as readers and learners of social studies content. They can have access to texts that challenge and empower them.

Crowe, A.R. (2010). “What’s Math Got To Do With it?”: Numeracy and Social Studies Education. The Social Studies. 101(3), 105-110.

This math article takes about numeracy (also known as quantitative literacy) and its importance in social studies classrooms in creating active citizens. The article talks about four different ways that social studies teachers can teach their students to become numerically literate: 1) understanding raw numeric data in context (ie 2 billion vs. 76 million), 2) understanding percentages in context (ie. Population growths), 3) understanding the meaning of average (mean and median), and 4) interpreting and questioning graphs and charts. By teaching social studies students these statistical skills in regards to social studies, teachers will equip students with the skills they need to understand economic data, scientific/medical information, polling data, and beyond needed to be informed and well spoken members of society.

This article just reminded me that there are sooo many different ways to be literate. It was true that I never learned math in high school beyond college algebra and the school push to get students taking math classes in calculus and trig will not help them with the statistical knowledge needed to interpret historical political, or economic data. As a history teacher and hopefully an informed citizen, I have numeracy and that I can teach my students to be numerically literate. It would be great to work collaboratively, across content with a math teacher to accomplish this goal as well. My goal as a history teacher is to create an informed citizenry. If I don’t help them with numeracy (previously thought as only a math literacy as reading is with English classes) they will not be those informed citizens. It also helped me realize that to teach them this, I need to develop my numeric literacy.

History can be boring, but . . .

The typical texts in history are textbooks, at least when I was going to school. As I entered college, this changed a little in instead of just text books, we read secondary sources on historical events written by historians. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my discipline but history (and historians) can be SOOOO boring. However, every once in a while a teacher will leave the textbook behind and teach students history with historical novels, pictures, journals, political cartoons, maps, and so on. These classes were always much more enjoyable because we got to be explorers, historians. We discovered for ourselves what was happening rather than reading what someone else wrote about it. The historical novels were also a novel idea (pardon the pun). We could read about a true event in history through the eyes and story of someone who may never have lived. They we exciting, sometimes sad, but always made you reflect on the event. One such book was The Book Thief. It was creative the way it was narrated by Death and told the story of normal Germans during the rise of Hitler and World War II, the fear they had, the almost hopelessness of the situation when there was no work or food. It was a way to better connect with history than to read in a textbook that in the late 1930s Hitler rose to power in Germany, many Germans were starving and scared, Jews were being put in concentration camps, the end. For my Teaching Social Studies Methods class last semester, we were introduced to the idea of graphic novels as an alternative to textbooks. They, too, are more emotional and easier to connect to than textbooks. My experience with them were such that I am going to use historical novels and graphic novels in my classroom.

I have never really had a hard time with textbooks, but I have with primary source documents, which is now the focus in a lot of history classrooms. While I enjoy learning from them, we never really used them in school and therefore I never because proficient at reading and understanding what it was trying to tell me beyond the very literal. I would use those around me to figure out what was being said and sometimes did have to take it at face value—I would try too hard to be symbolic and would sometimes miss the point. My teacher, Ms. Boberg, would always guide/scaffold what we were supposed to be looking for in our sources. She would do an example for us, have us do an example with her, work with a partner on an example, and then as homework we would do one ourselves and then come back to class and discuss it. I had four of five different examples of how to read historical documents and while it was still difficult for me, I really enjoy doing it.

When it comes to history and writing, the possibilities are endless. However, most assessments come in the form of multiple choice, fill in the blank, true-false, and short answer. Other times it is a persuasive essay. I feel that there should be no limit to how we assess our students in history. Have them create artifacts to prove they learned something. Get them writing persuasive essays on cereal boxes. Let them choose how best to show you they learned within the parameters you set. Most times, we think history is a subject to be taught in events and dates to be memorized. It is not true; there are so many other facets, faces, voices, and perspectives that are never seen that can be viewed through student writing.

In my classroom, we will use writing as a new way to explore history, as a way that my students can join history themselves. While we will still use paper and pencil tests as formative assessments, my summative assessment will include activities, students creating things to prove to me that they understood what was going on in a specific time period. We will get out of the textbook and only use it as a resource not as our “bible” so to speak. Student will have a choice in what they read whether it be historical fiction, graphic novels, or primary source documents. They will have a choice in what they write whether it be in journals, essays, in projects. And finally, they will have a voice in how successful their learning can be; it won’t just be me telling them how to learn but they will discover how to make learning their own. 

I'm a reader. What are you?

I would consider myself a good reader when it comes to texts I chose to read. When I am assigned to read something, I can read it fast and get it done, but that does not always mean that I got out of it what I was supposed to or comprehended and made connections in what I was reading. However, if the text is engaging or exciting, even if it was assigned, I will be a better reader. I have always loved reading fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction. I have never been a fan of mystery novels, mushy romances, or sports books. I like to be taken somewhere else when I read and usually the books I can relate to hit too close to home and I just feel like I am reading my own life, which is kinda boring.

I have always enjoyed reading outside of school. Almost every week, I would head to the library and pick up one or two books to read. There is just something exilerating about being able to pick what you read, and when you don’t like it, to be able to put it down and not read it. This is not something you can do in school—if you don’t like the text, too bad, you have no choice. This was different, though, for me in my English Classes. Of the books assigned, I don’t think there is a single one that I did not enjoy reading. I also really liked reading historical texts in my history classes. I loved being able to read speeches, journals, famous documents, and reading maps, graphics, pictures, and so on. Basically, anytime I didn’t have to read a textbook, I was happy. I went through a phase when I was twelve years old that I decided I was not going to read. That lasted about a week. I have always been a reader and always will. In fact, right now, even though I have a billion other things to read, I still make time to read The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan. It is my relax time.

I never really had anyone discourage me from reading unless I was getting too excessive. Sometimes I would have to be reminded to go outside and play or to do chores or to go to bed and stop reading. My parents were always very influential in telling me to read. The group of friends I hung out with were usually readers themselves and therefore we swapped books and told each other to read. However, there were some peers that would tell me that reading was dumb and if I wanted to be cool I should stop reading. I would tell them I read so my brain doesn’t turn to mush likes theirs would.

I understand that my experience in reading is going to be very different from my students’ experiences. Where I love to read, they may not; what I like to read, they may not (although I am pretty sure we will all hate reading textbooks.) My brother has never liked reading; it was always difficult for him to read because he had a stutter. That stutter is gone, but he still doesn’t like to read, especially out loud. However, every once in a while, he will find a book he likes and will become almost as obsessed with reading as I am, until the book is finished. I feel that this may be the experience of many students—there is something keeping them from reading until they find something that interests them. As a teacher, I can provide my students with many varied texts on a certain topic or subject that they can chose to read, and not necessarily historical-nonfiction. When we are learning about World War II, I can give them options of The Boy Who Dared or The Book Thief or The Diary of Anne Frank and so many others to read. This way, they find something they like. And I can be flexible with what they read—we do not always have to be in a textbook. Students can read maps, they can read pictures, they can read graphs. There is no limit to what they can read in my class. Hopefully, as I provide them with many varied opportunities to read, they will come to enjoy reading books about history. And in some way, reading anything is reading a history.

 I will also let my students know that they do not have to be a fast reader or get what they are reading the first time to be a good reader. Those who perceive themselves (or have been labeled) as slow readers will have that changed in my class. They will not be labeled but helped and given a fresh start. Students who have been labeled good readers, I will also help them. They may read fast but not understand what they read.  I will label them according to their comprehension and evaluation of a text and help those that struggle, give them tools and help them become better readers and hopefully this will build their confidence as readers, at least in my classroom. My classroom will be a safe environment for reading, a place where we can all learn to become better in our skills and not feel judged for how or what we read.

Just something I thought you'd enjoy . . .

Literate Beings

Over the course of my schooling, I have come to learn that to be literate it more than having the ability to read and write. While those two components are important parts of literacy, that is not all. The way one speaks, the way one interacts with others, the way one uses what he or she reads and writes to make a change is literacy. I have also learned that you never are complete in your literacy—it is always changing. The literacy I have today is not the literacy I will have tomorrow (although it will be similar) and it is not the literacy I had yesterday. Literacy is evolving to include all sorts of texts be it a book, a textbook, academic literature, a blog, a text, a phone call, a video, a podcast, a computer game, so on and so on!

To read or not to read: there was never any question. Ever since I can remember, I was a reader. Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, Tomie dePaola, E.B. White, C.S. Lewis and many others were my childhood friends. My grandmother was an elementary school librarian and as her first grandchild, I was read to—a lot. And I loved it. As soon as I got to Grandma’s house, I would go to the corner, pick out a book, and have her read to me. I could not get enough. Soon, I had her sounding out words for me and I began to read along. I could not wait to get to kindergarten and start reading. However, I had to make a pit stop into Preschool first. Here, while other kids played house and make pictures with shaving cream, I would sit and “read” books to the stuffed animals around me. FINALLY! I made it to Kindergarten. I started with “Pat Sat” and “Dan Ran” and quickly got the hang of reading. “What a brilliant little reader we have!” my grandmother would often say as I read to her. The same was said by my Kindergarten teacher who moved me rapidly up the reading chart until I was done and had reached Level Z. Soon, monosyllabic word books were not enough for me. I began to read The Boxcar Children, Encyclopedia Brown, and The Chronicles of Narnia. When the words became too difficult, and sounding out just did not work, I relied on my mom to help me get through it.

I was so intrigued by these stories that I wanted to write my own. I began to write of world travels, of princess and dragons, of brave animals that could speak and move as humans do. “What a great writer you are!” my teachers would often say. I would be asked to read my stories aloud to the class because I could make any boring assignment sound good. I was attracted to reading and writing because they were entertaining; I could leave behind whatever it was I was doing in my boring, everyday life and go somewhere new. But then fourth grade hit and there was very little time for silent reading and free writing. I was forced by my teachers to do math and science. Blck! However, I continued to read on my own.

In seventh grade, we had to take Accelerated Reading quizzes (AR) to determine that we were still reading in our grade level. As a seventh grader, I wanted to do better and read more than any of my peers. I was soon reading at a tenth grade reading level and getting more AR points all the time. The more AR points you had, the better your reading grade. English and Language Arts became my favorite subjects; I was good at reading and writing and it showed in my grades.

However, being pegged as a “good student” is not always a good thing. My teachers expected me to excel in everything, and while I did, it was difficult especially in classes that I did not “speak the language”. I rarely got the help I needed when I struggled in Math and Science (and sometimes English and History) because I was a smart kid and I would figure it. Well I did, but that does not mean I learned anything worthwhile except how to jump through hoops to get the grade.

I remember always being asked to peer-edit students papers in class. The students I helped would get lots of feedback, beyond “I liked this,” and would benefit from my feedback. But when I got my papers back it was full of “Really good” and “No suggestions” even from teachers. I got so sick of not getting feedback that I would purposely put mistakes in my papers so they would be forced to say something, but that did not really help either because they would just fix my grammar and leave the content alone. This “problem” in my literacy lead to more problems—if they did not care how my paper looked, then I would just put down some “word vomit” and get away with it. This contributed to my not being able truly analyze a text; I did not fully grasp the importance of it until I was in Ms. Hunter’s eleventh grade English class. It finally made sense to me that I would write something and then answer “So what? . . .” (This by the way has become my favorite way of analyzing things.)

I had to push myself to understand hard subjects and become literate in them. My biggest contributing factors here are good grades and my family pressure to get good grades. I was pegged in Kindergarten as a good student and this label continued with me throughout my education. Being the oldest of five children, it was up to me to set the standard and set it I did. I got my first “poor grade” in junior high and it just about broke my heart! But it just made me work harder to keep those grades fabulous.

One of my most favorite memories about the influence my parents had on my reading is the year that I challenged my dad to a reading contest when I was ten years old. He had been listening to books on tape on his way to work. He had already finished The Red Badge of Courage, The Old Man and the Sea, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and I wanted to read a book with him (that was on my level of course.) We picked Lewis Sacher’s Holes to read and we both got a copy. I was bound and determined to read and finish the book before my dad did. And finish it first I did! We finished it in one week (we could only read it at the same time when he got home from work.) “What page are you on Dad?” I would ask. “Ninety-five. And you?” “One hundred and seven!” It was great that I could read a book with my dad and I loved the time that I got to spend with him. I also remember reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my mom when I was seven years old. Every child should be given the experience to read with someone, whether it is their parents or a family member or a friend.

It wasn’t until my AP Political Science class my Senior year in High school that I learned that I was becoming literate in reading, writing, and speaking for more than just my own entertainment. I was a white, middle-class, suburban female going to school in a well-funded public high school. I was already ahead of the curve and on my way to college. However, we had to read and write and debate about the Constitution in this class. I had to look beyond my sheltered world and realize that others weren’t as advantaged as I was. People experienced social injustices all over the world, in my own state, and what was being done? Well, I was not sure. I was given the opportunity to read and think and write about social problems and come up with solutions. I was able to talk to people and try to convince them of things that needed to be done. I was becoming literate so I could do something. I think this is part of the reason I wanted to become a history teacher. To be literate is to be empowered. How can I expect to make a change if I cannot read about it, write about it, talk about it? I realize that it is my job as an educator, regardless of what subject I am teaching, to assist students in becoming literate beings, to empower them, and to teach them that they can make a change through their reading and writing and communicating with others.

I feel that the praise I received in school helped me continue to become a literate person. I am not the best writer and sometimes when I speak, my words get all jumbled and my thoughts come out sounding weird. But the praise and motivation I received was enough for me to want to do better. Granted, this was because I wanted the good grade and for some students this extrinsic motivator will be enough. But it is usually the students like me that are motivated by this. What about the students who do not have the drive for “school” and grades? What will be their motivation? I have never loved textbook reading and tests that come after textbook reading and I think that is because it was the way I was taught in school. I would much rather read a historical fiction novel on the holocaust and then talk about how it related to what we would read in a textbook. I would much rather learn about Civil Rights Movement through personal accounts and novels like Mississippi Trial, 1955 than read a textbook and take a facts test. This will influence the way I teach my students. My “good” students may not be good students in my class because it is different learning than they are used to. However, I feel that all students will benefit when they apply their literacy to making a change, feeling historical empathy, critically thinking, and applying history to them. I want my students’ opinions and views to count in my class and not to become small narratives to my larger narrative. There are so many different ways lives are lived and through reading and writing and communicating and having a choice in what they learn, I feel students become empowered through their literacy and will want to read and write and become productive members of society which, as a history teacher or any teacher for that matter, is the ultimate goal we have for our students. I hope to be an example to my students who do not necessarily have the example that I did at home. I hope to create a better future for them by making their learning theirs, not just something they do to get through the public education system.