As elementary teachers, it behooves us to take advantage of possibilities for integrating literacy instruction in social studies. This entails using content area literature to teach students to become more proficient readers and writers in a variety of relevant genres: both fiction and non-fiction. The New York State Learning Standards emphasize four aspects of literacy - reading, writing, listening and speaking for information and understanding, and for critical analysis and evaluation - are particularly relevant for linking with social studies and history. Educators can draw upon a variety of instructional strategies to teach students general literacy skills in the content areas.

Strategies to help students read history

• Read Aloud/Think Aloud: As the teacher reads a text aloud to students, she slows down her reading and chooses a few places to make transparent her reading processes. These processes could be questioning, making connections to other texts or prior knowledge, inferring, drawing conclusions, summarizing, etc. The choice of reading skill demonstrated should match the text and the students in the classroom. The teacher should give the students opportunity to practice the skill together before sending them off to read independently or in small groups.
• Shared Reading: Similar to Read Aloud, Shared Reading is an instructional strategy through which the teacher can model reading strategies and skills. One major difference is that all members of the class are looking at the same text together. This text should be on an overhead transparency, enlarged with a poster maker or on experience chart paper, or in a "big book." Shared reading is an ideal tool for teaching note taking on or about texts.

• Book Clubs: In many schools, students engage in genre studies during their literacy block. When they read historical fiction, biographies, or folk tales, the texts used can reflect content being studied in social studies. In the fall of 2007, a group of elementary teachers in New York City gathered to study how we might plan for careful integration of history with genre studies. In particular, we examined how book club structures could be used to deepen content knowledge and expand students understanding of history while also providing an opportunity to differentiate instruction for our students with diverse reading skills. As a result of this inquiry, we generated guidelines for selecting quality texts and ideas for mini-lessons and unit plans. Click on the links below for more information.

  Text selection criteria for selecting...

  • Historical Fiction
  • Biography
  • Native American Folktales

  Lesson and unit ideas for...

  • Historical Fiction book clubs
  • Biography book clubs
  • Native American book clubs
• Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction charts: This is Tony Stead's adaptation of KWL charts. In this reading strategy, students begin by brainstorming what they think they know on a topic. These ideas are written on individual post-it notes and placed in the first column of a table.. Learners then read a text. When they find a confirmation in the text, that post-it is transferred to the second column. After the first reading of the text, students review the chart. Students can also attend to any misconceptions they may have about the content. They can note these on post-its and add them to a third column. These misconceptions may be able to be revised by adding qualifiers ("sometimes" instead of "always") and add them to the new information column. They then re-read the text to discover if there is any new information they learned that they would like to add to the fourth column, new information. Any post-its left in the first column can be revisited. Can the idea be confirmed if a modifier is added (most of the time, often, rarely)? For more information on this model, see Tony Stead, Reality Checks (Stenhouse).
• Two-column journal entry: There are many variations on the two-column journal entry or note-taking form. Each column has different information that is related to the text. Together, they push students to think more deeply about the text they are reading through questioning, awareness of one's reading process, determining important information, etc. The two columns relate to each other in some way: Compare/contrast, key facts/my responses or reactions, interesting information/important information, fact/opinion/evidence. For more information on this approach, see Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, Strategies that Work (Stenhouse).
• Choral reading: Reading fluency is one of the core skills that mark proficient readers. Fluency is marked by intonation, pausing, and phrasing. Teachers can help students hone their fluency skills by providing opportunities for rehearsed readings of poetry, quotes, or songs having to do with the historical topic under study. Through careful selection of the choral reading material, and debriefing the experience and content afterwards, teachers can build deeper, more nuanced understanding of the human experience in a historical event or period.

Writing strategies in the history classroom

• History notebooks: Students keep records of what they are learning about and thinking about in their history notebooks. 2-column entries, thinking about primary sources, notes, questions, ideas, etc. that occur as a result of engaging in historical inquiry. Additionally, students could generate exploratory writing about how their thinking on the essential questions that frame the unit is changing over time. Teacher modeling in thoughtful journal entries through making writing decisions visible through a think aloud strategy establishes clear expectations and teaches explicit writing behaviors the teacher wants to foster in students.
• Writing in-role: During a study of a particular historical period, students can invent a character who lived the historical event being studied. An initial character sketch should include gender, socioeconomic status, housing, family, etc. In addition to free-writing how their character may have responded to what students are learning about in class, the teacher can also provide specific prompts that encourage students to consider events from different perspectives, to think about how their character may respond to a specific incident. This writing can be produced as a "journal," newspaper account, or letter to a historical person (either fictional or real.)

Speaking and listening strategies in the history classroom

The drama-based pedagogies we propose in other sections of this website provide excellent opportunities for students to engage in meaningful, academically rigorous discussions. As students decide together how to engage in the experience and then reflect on it through carefully planned questions they engage in powerful historical thinking. Students are asked to describe what they see or experience, to consider the locus of power in the situation, to justify their choices and reasoning to the group.