Teaching for Historical Literacy

Over the years as a primary elementary teacher, I have felt the very same way Goudvis and Harvey observed elementary educators teaching social studies. Reading, math, and writing composition classes have been the primary focus. Allowing time to teach social studies has been placed on the back burner. As time has gone by, my colleagues and I have collaborated and shared responsibilities as we teach our students. Our load has become a bit lighter and our focus broadened. Specific scheduled time has been set aside and we began to integrate our reading/guided reading, writing composition and social studies to the educational setting. We purposefully provided time for children to read and research informational social studies assignments. At times, we use the KWL graphic organizer to allow children to tell what they know, what do they want to know and what have we learned. One of our graphic organizers is the THREE, TWO , ONE. The children record three new bits of information learned, two bits of information that surprised them and one thing they still are wondering. Reading to self, reading and retelling to a partner,  brainstorming, using graphic organizers and stories, drawing, singing and acting out are a number of ways we have been using right brain/left brain based learning. Using these tools has taken away the memorization stigma of" know all the facts." Rather, it has caused the children to imagine, pretend, go back in a time machine and try to use all five senses, if possible, feel, smell, taste, hear, and see what it may have been like to be in a different place during a different time period. Empathy, sympathy and appreciation has been expressed in oral reports and writing compositions. Having primary sources of information has certainly been a challenge. Whenever we get a direct quote, letter, words of a document, we are thrilled. There have been many more secondary sources and stories that are historical fiction.  This takes many hours of pre-planning, rearranging and evaluating our pedagogy. It is a work in progress and continues to grow and change. After reading about Matthew Reif's fifth grade class, we are still under construction.  We have not arrived, but we are enjoying learning together and we are in the process of discovering new information in Social Studies in Second Grade!