Why Don't More Schools Integrate LA and SS?

A TLN member wrote:

As the district coordinating teacher for social studies, I have been struggling to keep social studies in our elementary schools and to keep struggling kids in social studies at the middle school. To my dismay, we have had principals tell teachers to drop science and social studies in order to get in additional math and reading time. Other teachers, who don't care for social studies, simply know it isn't an area of emphasis and choose to minimize its instructional time.

Now that science will be tested annually at our elementary level, social studies has officially taken the lowest spot on the totem pole. Our parents want to know about our new social studies curriculum's scope and sequence and are concerned about the lack of social studies being taught at the elementary level.

I know you all have heard these scenarios before, but for the first time, I've had parents take notice. K-5 students may receive one hour of social studies per week and many schools rotate through science and social studies, teaching one a semester or quarter.

Bill, a middle grades teacher, replied:

I'm actually jazzed that your parents are raising a stink about the lack of social studies in the curriculum! Social studies is probably one of the more important subjects for success in the future, considering that kids will need to be able to function in a global economy. That's hard to do when they know nothing about the globe! And parent pressure just may get SS back on the radar in your district.

I think what frustrates me in conversations about social studies and language arts, though, is that people---particularly educators----see them as totally disconnected subjects. They're not!

I teach a completely integrated Language Arts and Social Studies class to sixth graders, and the way that I word it is this: "Language Arts" is not a subject. Instead, it is a set of skills that one uses to learn other subjects. So when we're selecting texts to read, we select social studies texts and incorporate reading skills into our lessons. When we're looking for topics to write about, we select social studies topics.

One good example might be this wiki:
http://staycurrent.pbwiki.com

My team of LA/SS teachers uses daily current events---which connect to our geography heavy/history light social studies curriculum---to teach reading skills. Each day, we select a current event (CE) that is aligned to a SS theme we are studying. Then, while reading through the CE, we focus on reading skills like "identifying main idea," "determining the meaning of words in context," or "discovering an author's bias." This 30-minute mini lesson is at once a social studies and a language arts teaching opportunity.

We finish each lesson with a multiple choice reading question or two (posted in the wiki for parents to see so they can better understand the kinds of reading tasks that are expected of their students) that measures reading ability and gives us instant feedback on student strengths and weaknesses----which we turn around and use to plan the next day's CE lesson.

Another example is the five paragraph essay writing we do. In our state, middle schoolers are required to write problem-solution and evaluation pieces. The social studies curriculum is a natural fit for both essay types. Instead of writing about school uniforms, our favorite movies or the best way to beautify our campus, we write about addressing challenges caused by limited natural resources or about our favorite European region.

Again---we're using LA skills to learn SS content. It's a perfect fit.

I guess I never totally understand why this kind of seamless integration doesn't happen in schools. LA teachers are already reading and writing something----why shouldn't it be content directly connected to the SS or SCI curriculum.

Photo credit: Mirko Garufi, Creative Commons 

 

Comments

[Heather Wolpert-Gawron]

Amen. Not only is the curriculum integration of LA and SS an issue of effiecency, it is also an issue of student engagement. Reading historical fiction as a means to teach figurative language or reading historical fiction as a means to teach about an era (and, at times, to assess a student's knowledge of an era's anachronisms) is vital to the future of both subjects' success. Yes, it helps to get our job done. But it's also just plain fun to teach and fun to learn when both subjects are supporting one another. Teaching LA without SS is like teaching anatomy by only using a skeleton. "LA is a set of skills that one uses to teach other subjects." So well-said.

[Robert Pondiscio]

Here are links to a pair of articles from American Educator, one by E.D. Hirsch; the other by Dan Willingham on the connection between content and comprehension. It demonstrates the point Bill makes above. Teaching content isn't something to be done after kids learn to read. Teaching content IS teaching reading.

How Knowledge Helps

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/willingham.htm

The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for all Children

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/hirsch.htm