Historical Fiction in English and Social Studies Classrooms: Is It a Natural Marriage?

Summarize the article:

This article is detailing the process and the findings that were made from a gathering of ELA and Social Studies teachers. These teachers gathered to determine whether ELA and Social Studies learning could happen togethers as a collaborative type learning for students rather than being separated and treated as though each subject had no meaningful connection to one another. As they talked about how to facilitate students learning, the teachers of each content area realized that they were aiding their students in similar ways; they were just calling it different things. As the teachers kept discussing what this looked like in the classroom, they began to realize that because of many different realities of the high school classroom, collaboration between ELA teachers and Social Studies teachers would be relatively impossible using their original ideas. That then led them to the conclusion that literacy is something that is needed in all classrooms even without directly including ELA teachers in collaboration. They make a final point saying literacy is important for every classroom and for every content area teacher.

Make connections:

When reading this article, I noticed a lot of connections that I could make to texts that I have read and classes that I have been in. Of course, I believe this article most closely relates to the content we have been discussing in this course all semester long, but pulling from experiences prior to this class, I believe my experience in social studies classroom has been able to connect to the content of this article very well. I have done assignments in my classes that do closely relate to the content this article has discussed, and I have seen it grow my own literacy in the classroom.

Critique the article:

I think my concern with this article was in line with something the authors even mentioned at the end of the article. Collaboration across classrooms can be so difficult and there are any logistical problems to consider. These problems concern covering a certain amount of material and time constraints that make collaboration very difficult across subject areas.

Explain why the article is important:

This article is important because it walks us through the process of figuring out that each content area can focus on and build students’ literacy even without being in collaboration with ELA teachers. This article basically walks us through the process and rationale for even this course. We are learning how to realize literate students are needed to learn in our classrooms, and we are also learning how to help students who are not yet math literate, for instance, grow in their literacy of a specific content area and grow in their confidence overall.

(Word Count: 450)