Adding literacy to your current curriculum might not be as daunting as you think! You are likely already teaching literacy without even realizing it.

To be really effective, though, we have plan carefully. We have to really think through where we are intentionally adding literacy throughout our curriculum. This planning will make sure that you add different opportunities throughout the year.

This will help you to integrate literacy during small chunks of time.

Infuse different types of literacy

“Literacy in Social Studies” does not always have to equal a long novel study. Literacy includes reading, writing, spelling, and grammar. You can sprinkle these in along the way, without having to dedicate a lot of time. 

You can add an extra prompt to your bell-ringer or your ticket-out-the-door that asks students to correct a grammar or spelling error in a sentence that is relevant to your topic of study. This can help to reinforce that those “skills” or “rules” apply even when they are outside their ELA classroom - proper spelling and grammar should follow them everywhere.

Of course, you can always add in non-fiction reading to your lessons. This will help with literacy skills, but it will also help students build their stamina.

Reading Comprehension

Nonfiction reading is a great way to practice academic literacy in social studies. This can be done during any point of the unit: introduction, review, or any time in the middle.

The key here is to be strategic, especially since reading is not your "key focus". We want to make sure we can maximize this reading time to hit both ELA and SS skills. If you’re pulling reading comprehension packets from online sources, they will likely be ELA-focused. So, preview the prompts to make sure you are maximizing your social studies content. Make sure the prompts are hitting the standards you need to cover, if you’re short on time. They’ll be getting the reading practice, but the main focus is still your social studies content. You may have to create your own prompts in these cases. 

Georgia has reading standards for Social Studies, too. These standards go hand-in-hand with the ELA standards. They are located at the end of your grade level standards document. I have created an easy-to-read chart that aligns these standards to our ELA standards. 

Weekly Writing

In my 7th grade classroom, we used to have a Weekly Writing day on Friday. For some classes, this took up a substantial amount of class time. However, it got shorter the more we practiced. This, actually, reinforces the need for weekly practice!

Give students a short, constructed-response prompt. They can even turn a graphic organizer they've already done into a paragraph! In either case, some classes will need to practice before they can just be left on their own. 

I recommend really guiding students through your first few writing prompts. I liked to model my thinking as we did the first few weeks together. This will help you understand where your students are in their writing skills, but it will also your students understand your expectations. 

I had background in teaching ELA, so I understand that this might be more challenging for teachers who have not taught ELA before. If you’re not confident in walking students through this process, maybe you can speak with an ELA teacher for guidance, you can observe an ELA teacher, or you could even have an ELA teacher come to your classroom and guide them through the first one - like a “guest speaker”. 

@SarahMillerTech