Why Teach Social Studies in the Elementary Classroom?

1. What the Research Says...

This module introduces elementary educators with research illustrating the importance of teaching social studies in the elementary classroom in terms of reading scores.  Th study, completed in 2019 is entitled, Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.  The study finds that social studies instruction in elementary school improves student's reading scores!  Here are the 2 key points from the study:

1. Increased instructional time in social studies—but not in ELA—is associated with improved reading ability.
2. The students who benefit the most from additional social studies time are girls and those from lower-income and/or non-English-speaking homes.

To read the study, visit the Fordham Foundation website at: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/resources/social-studies-instruction-and-reading-comprehension

2. Disciplinary Literacy

 Disciplinary Literacy is the intersection of content knowledge, experiences, and skills demonstrated through the ability to read, write, communicate, and think critically using approaches unique to a specific discipline.

Ok, what does that mean for the social studies?  Well, think about this:  what does it mean to be able to read and write like a historian, or a geographer, economist, or political scientist?

First, watch this short video: 

Hopefully, the video gave you a glimpse at the importance of disciplinary literacy in helping students to be successful readers in the elementary classroom.  The next chapter looks at how a fictional story can be read through both a language arts lens and a social studies lens.

Reading informational texts in different disciplinary domains is very complex.  There are unique disciplinary skills that experts use to read texts.  There are several readings that will help you understand these differences.  As you read these materials, consider how informational texts will need to be read differently in each of the social studies disciplines.  There are ways of knowing specific to each discipline that manifest in how we read and understand informational texts.  Reading is guided by specific disciplinary questions that follow lines of inquiry.      

1. How do you envision disciplinary literacy in social studies helping your students with reading comprehension?
2. What are some strategies that you might employ to intentionally bring social studies into your classroom?

Source: Reading Disciplinary Texts from the National Council for the Social Studies 

3. The Little House

1. Open The Little House handout
• Look at just the first page.  What ideas and concepts will you be looking for as your view The Little House read aloud?  
  
2. Watch The Little House read aloud on Youtube and complete the first page of the handout. 
    
3. Think about how you could use this activity in your classroom during reading time.  
4. Next, move to page 2 on the handout.  This is a series of events that occur in the story.
• Depending on the grade level of the students, you could have them cut out the strips before viewing the story so that they could place them in order while viewing.  OR, you could have students place numbers next to the event to demonstrate chronology.
5. Watch The Little House read aloud a 2nd time and think about using a "social studies lens" when viewing
    
• Complete the chronology on the second page of the handout.
6. What did you notice differently in the story when watching in a 2nd time, using a "social studies lens?"
   
7. How might understanding the concepts of change over time and rural/urban support student comprehension when reading other texts?

4. Primary Source Sets

OVERVIEW:

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are the voices of the past. They are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience.  Documents, letters, posters, film, artifacts, photographs, maps, etc. can be primary sources that tell the story of people, places, an events of the past.

Why Use Primary Sources in the Classroom?

Examining primary sources gives students a powerful sense of history and the complexity of the past. Helping students analyze primary sources can also guide them toward higher-order thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills (from the Library of Congress).

THINK:

• How does using primary sources in the elementary classroom help student reading comprehension?

One of the methods for developing disciplinary literacy is through the use of primary sources.  Primary sources should be used at both the elementary and secondary levels.  Analyzing primary sources provides students with opportunities to build background knowledge and engage with the stories of the past.

Primary source sets for elementary students have been developed and are available here: 

1. Colorado Elementary Primary Source Sets
2. The Library of Congress
3. History Colorado
4. Colorado Encyclopedia

Take a few minutes to peruse these resources.  

• Can you find any primary source sets for the topic you are currently teaching?
• How might you incorporate a primary source set into a unit you are already teaching?
• What strategies might you employ to engage students with the primary sources?

5. Informational Text: Building Background Knowledge

What is informational text?

How do you currently engage students with informational text in your current practice?

NEXT:

View the video presented by the authors Tina L. Heafner and Dixie D. Massey. Experience the benefits of using a visual inventory and chunking/short texts to engage all students in the exploration of compelling questions. (Web seminar duration: 1:08). 

NOW: 

Read the following piece:

Teaching Informational Text to ELLs
This article by Dr. Diane Staehr Fenner discusses ways to support English Language Learners in reading informational texts.

Does this article change your definition of informational text? 

THEN:

Look at the following website:

History Detectives Special Investigations 
This website provides multiple "historical investigations"  that guide students to evaluate conflicting evidence through the historical skills of sourcing, contextualizing, corroboration, and close reading.

After exploring this website, what other ways are you engaging students with informational text?

Watch the following video and fill in the following chart:

Common Core in ELA/ Literacy: Shift 1: PK-5: Balancing Informational Text and Literature
In this 10 minute video, John B. King Jr., David Coleman, and Kate Gerson unpack Shift 1 and discuss the role of informational text in the elementary classroom.

• What is balancing informational text?
• What does it look like in a social studies classroom?
• What will this mean I have to change about my practice?
• What challenges will I face as I work towards giving students more opportunities to build knowledge in the disciplines of social studies?
  
  

Reflect:

Answer the following questions to reflect on this session:

1. How is the use of informational text relevant to your teaching?
   
   
2. How can the work you did in this module inform your teaching?
   
   
3. How might you incorporate informational text into your practice in different ways?
   
   
4. What do you need to incorporate informational text into your practice?
   

Resources:

Stanford: Reading Like a Historian
Materials and lesson plans

6. Informational Text: Exploration of Multiple Sources

ANSWER:

How do you currently use primary sources to engage students to use higher order thinking skills?

READ: 

Teachers must plan intentionally to offer students support they will need to frequently engage with complex texts. Knowing next steps in content learning which emerge from reading informational texts is important in guiding students on paths of inquiry.  These next steps also include reinforcing disciplinary oriented ways of thinking about texts. 

Disciplinary thinking gives us a framework of questions to ask texts. Questioning is a "universal" strategy that goes across disciplines but the questions that are asked to the text are specific to the content.

As you view and read the selections below, consider and discuss the following questions:

• What information do these sources confirm from our previous readings?
• What information do these sources add to our knowledge about beliefs in vampires?
• What questions drove your inquiry?  What answers did you find?

View the following videos to examine how these teachers use multiple sources to explore historical thinking: