Reading and Writing in Social Studies
Looking Ahead
 What role does information and
communication skills have in the social
studies curriculum?
 What information skills are most essential
to social studies?
 What tools are available for teachers and
students for teaching/learning these skills?
 What pitfalls/problems exist for teachers
and students when utilizing those tools?
Can You?
 Name the four basic purposes for reading and
writing assignments in social studies?
 Identify the specific reading abilities students
need in social studies?
 Explain how to use textbooks with students who
cannot read?
 Think of ways to use fiction books in social
studies?
 Help students use the Internet for research?
Do You?
 Know what students dislike most about using references?
 Know how to break students out of the "copy from the
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Internet"?
Know how to make social studies book reports interesting?
Know how to help students learn to organize their writing?
Know several ways to teach new concepts and new
vocabulary?
Know some ways to actually shorten what students have to
read?
Know why it is important for students to understand the
organization of reading material?
Focus Activity
 What was your favorite book(s) as a teenager?
Why?
 Do you remember reading or having it read to you
by a parent or teacher?
 Share experiences with classmates.
 Discuss the details of the book(s) and how you
might use them in your classroom?
Every Teacher is a Reading Teacher
 Why should every middle/secondary
teacher be considered a reading teacher?
Reading and Writing Assignments
in Social Studies
 What traits should an effective assignment
have?
 Provoke the curiosity of students
 Teacher facilitated (i.e. challenging but not
impossible)
 Able to be accomplished in a fair amount of time
for the appropriate age and ability of students
 Clearly organized and understandable
Reading Skills Needed in Social
Studies
 Recognize the organization of reading
materials
 Bring meaning to reading
 Read for a purpose
 Read critically
Helping Students Read Social
Studies Materials
1. Pre-teach difficult vocabulary prior to
reading.
2. Reduce the length of independent reading
tasks.
3. Provide specific, clear purposes for
reading.
4. Help students get a sense of the "story"
that the reading material is telling,
developing their predictive skills.
Strategies for Developing
Vocabulary
 Teacher Explanation of Meaning
 Frayer Model
 Classifying Experiences
 Extended Teacher Definitions
 Teacher-Provided Experiences
 Student-Centered Experiences
Less Can Be More: Quality Reading
in Social Studies
 What are some ways a teacher can reduce
the quantity but maintain the quality of the
social studies reading?
 Use student-written summaries instead of the text
 Use teacher-written summaries instead of the text
 Use textbook cut-ups
 Try textbook highlighting
 Experiment with question write-ins
 Cooperate with class divide-ups
Reading Textbooks
 What do teachers need to do in order to use
textbooks effectively?
 Give specific purposeful assignments
 Stimulate interest in doing the reading
 Make sure that students have the skills needed to do
the assignment
 Provide supervision, monitoring, and help where
needed
 Follow up on reading assignments
Helping Students Develop a Sense of
the “Story” by Aiding Predictions
 It provides purposes for reading in the form of
expectations.
 It heightens anticipation and interest.
 It helps determine in what way materials relate
to particular interests, questions,
 hypotheses, and so on.
 It provides advance organizers for thinking
about what is read.
 It aids in predicting.
Purposeful Reading
 Provide guided questions before reading
that identify specific types of information
and understandings the student is to gain.
 Provide study questions that ask the student
to identify the ways an author thinks and to
go beyond the author’s thoughts.
 Alert students prior to reading to follow-up
tasks that will employ particular knowledge
and concepts.
Reading Question and Task
Statements
 What strategies can help students better
understand the questions they are being
asked?
 Teach students to be sensitive to the nature of
question words and to the nature of the answers
these words demand (i.e. who, what, where,
etc…)
 Alerting students to organizational features of
textbooks related to questions
Reading Social Studies Themed
Trade Books
 What are trade books?
 Trade books are a variety of reading topics and
formats, including biographies, fiction, and
poetry; written for various levels.
 Why might you utilize biographies? Fiction?
Poetry?
 Visit www.NCSS.org for the Notable Trade
Books for Young Readers annual list for the
last few years.
Connecting Reading and Writing in
Social Studies
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Economic Reports
Archeology Reports
Story Museum Reports
Comic Reports
Shoe Box Story Parade
Book Trials
Historical Creation Reports
Story Geography
Sociometries of Books
Publicity and Review Reports
Organizing to Write
 What are the two major kinds of difficulties
students experience with writing assignments in
social studies?
 clarity of the assignment
 how well prepared students are for an assignment
 What are the base or prerequisite skills needed for
many if not all writing jobs?
 Note Taking
 Writing Answers to Questions
 Outlining
 Do NOT assume students know how to do this
Developing Research and
Reporting Skills
 What are the benefits of having
students complete reports?
 What type of reporting is best for
middle/secondary students?
 What is a real danger in having
students complete reports?
Writing Creatively
 In-Role Writing?
 Modeling Cultures?
 Problem-Solving Stories?
 Diary?
 Collaborative Writing?
Looking Back
 Social studies is knowledge based most readily
communicated through print.
 Reading and writing grows through practice and they
are linked to thinking.
 There are several strategies that teachers can use to
help students
 Pre-teaching vocabulary
 Reducing the actual length of reading assignments
 Providing sufficient and clear purposes for reading
 Developing predictive skills
Extension
 You have been procrastinating in completing your trade
book adoptions project. Feeling a little stressed about
the timeline you consider alternatives. In the end you
decide you only have two options.
 Option One: Develop your own list of twenty books
you could use in your classroom to help teach social
studies.
 Option Two: Partner with your other grade level
teachers and develop one list of twenty books that all
the teachers in your grade will utilize to help teach
social studies.
Extension
 Select an option.
 Develop a trade book adoption list. The list should
include at least twenty books recently published
trade books.
 The list should also include all bibliographic
information:
 summary of the books,
 discussion of how you could use the book in social
studies
 possible state and national standards addressed
Extension
 What are the advantages/disadvantages of having
your other grade level teachers input and adopting
one set of trade books?
 What are the advantages/disadvantages of
selecting your own list of twenty books for
adoption?
 What qualities, topics, etc… would you seek in the
new books?
Self-Test
1.
2.
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4.
5.
What are the four basic purposes for which reading
and writing assignments are used in independent
seat work?
What are the qualities that you need to look for in a
nonfiction book?
What are some different kinds of fictional material
that can be used in social studies?
What are the purposes of learning research and
reporting skills?
How are guidelines useful in making textbook
questions more meaningful?
Self-Test
6. Why do teachers have students write reports and
present them orally?
7. Describe several ways of teaching concepts and
vocabulary to students.
8. What is SQ3R?
9. What is meant by the term purposeful reading
and why is the concept important?
Resources
 The Great Books Foundation-
http://www.greatbooks.org/
 NCSS Notable Trade Books
http://www.socialstudies.org/resources/not
able
 Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J.L. & Mraz, M.E. (2010).
Content area reading: Literacy and learning
across the curriculum. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon.