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KnowledgeBases > The Adolescent Literacy KnowledgeBase > Element 4 > Activity 2 > Task 6: Integrate with Social Sciences

Guideline:

Literacy plays an important part in social sciences. Middle and high school teachers can improve adolescent literacy through incorporating vocabulary instruction and comprehension strategy instruction in their lesson planning. Possessing such an awareness enables middle and high school teachers to enhance instruction to facilitate student comprehension of social science concepts and build background knowledge for future learning.

Tools Adolescent Literacy Toolkit _EXTERNAL_LINK

This link to the Council of Chief State School Officers' Adolescent Literacy Toolkit provides resources for states and high school content area teachers.

Tools Comprehension Strategies _EXTERNAL_LINK

This page at AdLit.org contains a library of comprehension strategies teachers can use in the classroom before, during, and after reading a text. 

Tools Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People _EXTERNAL_LINK

As noted at its website, "Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People is a reading list of exceptional books for use in social studies classrooms, selected by twelve social studies educators. This is an annual project of the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children's Book Council."

Practical Tips Reading Strategies _EXTERNAL_LINK

This link to the Ohio Resource Center for Mathematics, Science and Reading offers a compilation of reading strategies aimed at the adolescent student. Though focused on the Ohio Academic Content Standards, the basic strategies may be useful to all middle and high school teachers.

References Bringing Literacy Strategies into Content Instruction _EXTERNAL_LINK

As noted in its introduction, this Center on Instruction document "provides research-based guidance on academic literacy instruction in the content areas." The vignettes offered provide examples of how literacy instruction can be integrated into content area instruction. 

References From State Policy to Classroom Practice: Improving Literacy Instruction for All Students _EXTERNAL_LINK

This National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) document addresses moving state-level literacy instruction policy to classroom practice.

References Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas _EXTERNAL_LINK

This link is to the Alliance for Excellent Education's report Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement. It discusses multiple aspects of adolescent literacy development from achieving basic reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills to more advanced literacy skills that will enable middle and high school students succeed in academic content areas.

References Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy _EXTERNAL_LINK

This link is to the Carnegie Corporation of New York's report addressing adolescent literacy in the content areas. The report discusses the following content areas: science, mathematics, literature, and history.

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Next: Task 7: Integrate Culturally Responsive Teaching Methodologies Previous: Task 5: Integrate with Science


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