The
Integration of Social Studies and Language Arts is Long Overdue
Copyright © Adam Waxler
www.teaching-teacher.com
In order for
students to truly become readers who “read for understanding”,
teaching reading must not be the sole responsibility of the
language arts department. Teaching reading must be incorporated
into every subject area. This is true whether you teach
elementary, middle, or even high school. In fact, the days of
teaching language arts as a separate subject area need to come
to an end.
Social studies can and should be integrated with
language arts. As a social studies teacher I teach everything
that is required by the New York State Social Studies
Standards. However, as a social studies teacher, I also
teach everything that is required by the New York State Language
Arts Standards. In my social studies class my students write
formal essays, creative stories, poetry, songs, and dialogues.
My student’s present skits that apply public speaking skills,
and they read primary sources, secondary sources, historical
fiction, and historical non-fiction. One would be hard pressed
to find anything that a language arts teacher does in their
class that I do not do in my social studies class. The only
difference is that I teach those skills around the historical
content we are studying. It is easy and fun to incorporate the
language arts skills into the social studies curriculum.
What I
don’t have, and desperately need, is more time. The answer,
however, is simple: integrate the social studies and language
arts curriculums. By totally integrating social studies and
language arts, all the required language arts skills will be
taught and social studies teachers will have all the time they
need. More importantly, though, student’s comprehension will
increase. Life is not departmentalized; we do not learn things
in a vacuum. Departmentalizing our content areas is in direct
conflict with how people learn.
The same
holds true at the elementary level. Personally, I have seen a
scary shift within our own school. Due to low ELA scores, the
focus at the elementary level over the past year or so has been
on increasing reading and writing time. This would be great
except for the fact that it is coming at the expense of the
social studies and science curriculums. I have actually heard
parents complain that their 4th grade child is barely
learning social studies or science at all. This goes beyond
irresponsible to flat out stupid.
I understand that we need to
increase reading and writing time for students, but in no way
does that mean we must sacrifice entire subject areas (can’t
they see the pendulum swinging). Instead, we must integrate
reading and writing with social studies and even
science. This would solve both problems. Unfortunately, it
doesn’t appear that anyone will notice until there is a drop in
social studies and science test scores. What’s worse, when that
does happen (and it will) the powers that be will probably do
away with reading and writing and replace it with an increase in
social studies and science.
Look out! Here comes the pendulum again.
Adam
Waxler is a middle school social studies teacher, teacher mentor,
and the author of eTeach: A Teacher Resource for Learning the
Strategies of Master Teachers. Adam is also the
editor and publisher of The Teaching Teacher’s Newsletter.
For more information about his ebook or to sign up for your free
monthly newsletter log onto:
http://www.teaching-teacher.com
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