Over at the Teacher Leaders Network Blog, a question and a discussion that seems obvious to Core Knowledge teachers, but causes endless head scratching elsewhere: Why don’t more teachers incorporate Social Studies into Language Arts? “Now that science will be tested annually at our elementary level, social studies has officially taken the lowest spot on the totem pole,” complains a district coordinating teacher for S.S.
One teacher replies with common sense: “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.”
This simple idea could do more to improve reading scores than any other measure: stop sacrificing content on the altar of language arts. The connection between content knowledge and comprehension is established enough that the idea should start to gain some traction. There’s a law of diminishing returns in abandoning content instruction in favor of yet more reading strategy lessons.
We need a snappy way to get this idea to stick. How about “Domain Understanding Helps”…DUH!
As a high-school English teacher in a middle-class Catholic school, I must incorporate “domain knowledge” into reading, even of American literature. Simple facts can throw students who otherwise would understand the readings. For example, in their reading “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” it became clear that students did not know what a “camp meeting” was. In reading a selection from Giants in the Earth, they learned that some homesteaders were Norwegian immigrants and that Norway is part of Scandinavia (and where Scandinavia is). I could provide examples ad nauseam. Trust me–I support any teaching of Core Knowledge in the earlier grades!