Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Michael Faust
Dr. Brooks
7 February 2016
student is left behind in the abyss of the unknown, he or she is going to lose interest
not only in the subject, but also the learning process as a whole. The job of the
therefore, is to then shape a curriculum into one which students can be supported in
their endeavors to learn and succeed. With various language components and other
and understand what educators mean by literacy, academic language, and other
content area.
In this specific content area, social studies, one of the most prominent
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). When it revised its National
Standards in 2002, it said that Social studies content invariably involves the
(National Council for the Social Studies, 2002, p. 13). This is, and should be, the
standard for Social Studies literacy. Students need to be able to express themselves,
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their opinions, and how what they learn directly applies to their everyday lives.
Without it, the subject matter can become irrelevant, and the obstacles to students
attaining historical thinking skills, a critical part to the overall literacy in the social
studies curriculum. The NCSS included the idea in their Standards, saying Historical
thinking skills enable learners to evaluate evidence, develop comparative and causal
analyses, interpret the historical record, and construct sound historical arguments
(National Council for the Social Studies, 2002, p. 37). In fact, the NCSS was not the
courses, devoted an entire standard to the concept of historical thinking. It takes the
p. 11).
The most important part of the content literacy, therefore, revolves around the
concept of historical thinking skills, no matter how they are defined. They prove to
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of readings and texts can be utilized in literature, language acquisition, and even
historical thinking skills into the everyday life of the student; to be fully literate, one
must evaluate documents, maps, pictures, etc. to find meaning and draw
conclusions, thus giving him or her a platform to compare and contrast the material
to what has happened in history, what is happening now, and what could happen in
the future.
Another large part that must be included when analyzing content literacy is
Academic language. According to Bailey and Butler, there are two parts to its
longitude, and phrases such as The evidence points to . . .) and general, or common
core, academic language (e.g., persuasive terms, comparative phrases) that is useful
across curricular areas (in Short, Vogt, & Echevarria, 2011, p. 5). In regards
around the textual terms of history (terror, regime, conflict), economics (free-
system, rights and laws), and many other social-scientific fields. Therefore,
academic language in the social studies content can be thought of as the unfamiliar
generations before the student; since language was written differently and words
had different meanings, context needs to be provided to students when sought out
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to aid in their understanding. Thus, if a goal of the social studies curriculum at all
levels is to help students to become responsible citizens in the future, all educators
lives of the students, whether they know it or not, and it must be treated as such in
component
Vocabulary and - Old ways of speaking and writing - there are general academic
- Cause-and-effect scenarios in
history
Language function - Knowing how to apply the Learners should be able to engage
Discourse (Special - Showing competency through the Each discipline should be studied
Grammar and - Writing a paper from various The writing of a scientific lab
historical texts for deeper the Allied and Axis countries goals
writing about content literacy and academic language in social studies is that there
are many more skills than I previously assumed to be present in the field of social
studies. While I knew about various historical thinking skills, I never sat back to
truly analyze what they were, how I use them in my everyday life, and how I plan to
process that my thinking needs to shift away from assumptions of what is most
mistakes, patterns, and insight into current events, but I cannot continue to assume
this is the only thing that is necessary to teach history. In fact, there are many terms
that I, myself, need to further understand and comprehend so that I can become an
even more informed citizen. If I do this, then I set an example for my students,
allowing them to potentially have a role model who uses what he learns in the
which do and do not have answers, stemmed from my thoughts. The first was how
can lessons be differentiated if standards need to remain the same for all students?
federal, state, district, or other organizations standards? The final question that I
came up with was a little more abstract, but still important: how do we create
innovative and creative lesson plans that keep students engaged and on-track for
success, in testing, assessments, and life? While I believe these questions have been
partially answered, I know that I have a lot more to learn. I feel more confident that I
am in the right field than ever before, but there still are steps in taking the
information I have learned and transforming it into viable teaching strategies that I,
Resource List
National Council for the Social Studies. (2002). National Standards for Social Studies
O'Brien, D. G., Stewart, R. A., & Moje, E. B. (1995). Why Content Literacy Is Difficult to
February 1, 2016.
Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2011). The SIOP model for teaching history-social