Literacy in Social Studies
Social Studies IS literacy.… Since Literacy is one of the driving forces of our discipline, it reflects how our content area meshes so well ELA with this initiative. When our last standards were introduced we began to really stress the importance of literacy in our content … we worked with the 5 Standards of Social Studies- LITERACY! Under our new “College and Career Readiness Standards” we need to continue to emphasize Literacy in our classes, as our discipline is “counted on” to support Literacy across the curriculum. We use primary & secondary documents as our foundation, and our lessons can impact learning throughout the year. Continue to emphasize reading and writing in our content area to allow our subject to be relevant and realistic to learners. Have students involved in writing in our content to support our standards, as we “write to learn.” As we have long known, no matter the subject, everyone is a reading teacher! In our schools social studies teachers are encouraged to mesh what we do with the English Language Arts teachers as their new standards contain documents rooted in history. This will be great opportunity for us to work across the curriculum to maximize literacy with all of our students! Here are some materials to use as a resource in advancing literacy in your classes.
Social Studies-Teaching Reading Comprehension through Social Studies Readings
History:Social Studies | Grade 6-8
History:Social Studies-Grade 9-10
History:Social Studies | Grade 11-12
https://wvsocialstudies.com/csos/
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DBQ- Document Based Questions
One driving force for us in social studies is to genuinely incorporate Document Based Questions (DBQ’s) into our lesson flow. With the new evaluation system now in place when we use DBQs it will punctuate and drive learning as well as being a great tool for us to provide evidence of the great things you are doing with your learners.
Resources can be found at https://wvsocialstudies.com/dbq/