A New Direction for History and Social Science
The new set of literacy standards for HSS provide a focus on the development and application of academic language. If students are to become proper historians and social scientists, they need the necessary vocabularies to engage in substantive discussions about history.
Instruction in HSS is moving away from dates and people in favor of larger concepts, historical themes and patterns, and changes that occur over time. This new approach offers a variety of benefits: it releases the teacher from the role of sole arbiter of information; it makes the study of HSS more experiential for students, leading to more exciting and engaging lessons; and it provides the opportunity to teach the reading, writing, and speaking skills that will better enable students to learn the content. Students will focus on finding and using evidence when reading and writing.
Consider the literacies that students need to learn as they pursue the practices of historians and social scientists. (Think of maps, diaries, graphs, pictures, letters, data, sources both primary and secondary, etc).
- HSS teachers, how can evidence-based prompts or questions be better integrated into HSS instruction? How can text-dependent questions that require well-defended claims be better integrated into HSS instruction?
- Teachers of other subjects, describe at least one way in which your discipline intersects with History and Social Science.
