tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20993778.post8150351663156646208..comments2024-03-16T14:54:12.445-04:00Comments on History Is Elementary: The New Catch-22: The Social Studies VersionEHThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17964668210604436937noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20993778.post-65552502540115725402008-06-12T13:22:00.000-04:002008-06-12T13:22:00.000-04:00Great post, I agree.1. "Literacy" is a MEGO word,...Great post, I agree.<BR/><BR/>1. "Literacy" is a MEGO word, for teachers, I think. It must be especially so for parents and teachers. When we say "literacy," we usually see an image of someone who knows how to read. What we mean, of course, is someone who can read and comprehend the material, and put it to use. Especially for science and social studies, we need to strive for E. D. Hirsch-like cultural literacy. <BR/><BR/>For example, tutoring kids who failed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in social studies, I found kids who seemed to know the material, but who kept failing rather badly on practice exams. It took a long time to tease out the problems. One student knew the Civil War, conversationally. Talking over his most recent practice failure, with both of us frustrated, I asked him to read through questions and flag anything that he didn't know, or that confused him. It took a lot of questions before he started pointing to words in the questions, words that had nothing at all to do with social studies <I>per se</I> -- this one stuck with me: He didn't know the meaning of the word "oppose." So in a question about who opposed who in the war, none of the potential answers could be distinguished from any others. At my current school, we had dozens of kids miss a question that used the word "quartering" related to the Third Amendment. They didn't know it meant "provide a place to stay," and all their other guesses led to wrong answers.<BR/><BR/>I've been disappointed with glossaries in the history texts especially that provide definitions that miss key things. The <I>sans-coulottes</I> who played a big role in the French Revolution should not be defined as a political group in Paris, only -- who can remember that? But when you tell kids that <I>sans-coulottes</I> means "no pants," their natural curiosity about such a bizarre phrase will drive them to remember the group.<BR/><BR/>Of the four texts I've checked, however, only one notes that the phrase means "no pants," and it barely described how the group got its name.<BR/><BR/>There's just a lot of work to be done in the entire area of vocabulary acquisition. Most households of my students subscribe to no periodical publications -- no newspapers, no magazines. The natural vocabulary expansion of reading the news is something they miss entirely. <BR/><BR/>2. Marking up the readings? Which markup process do you recommend? Elementary schools here teach methods of marking passages that have our kids spending more time marking than thinking, and often produce test books full of yellow, and wrong answers. How do you teach kids to do it? Dumb question, I know, but I'll wager your method works better than what my students do.Ed Darrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10056539160596825210noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20993778.post-18009123620504667332008-06-04T21:48:00.000-04:002008-06-04T21:48:00.000-04:00Preachin' to the choir, hon'. :)I think that in my...Preachin' to the choir, hon'. :)<BR/><BR/>I think that in my elementary, teachers are scared of not doing their 120 minutes of reading instruction using only Open Court.<BR/><BR/>And primary teachers are so concerned with the mechanics of how to read (phonemic awareness, decoding...) that they don't feel they have the freedom for comprehension strategies.<BR/><BR/>It's so sad. With 85% of our kids living below the poverty line, they deserve more than Open Court.The Science Goddesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20993778.post-77287738127165988822008-06-04T21:24:00.000-04:002008-06-04T21:24:00.000-04:00Super Post! With the high percentage of ELL studen...Super Post! With the high percentage of ELL students I get, teaching literacy skills is a must. Again, GREAT POST !Dan Edwardshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13397636504405471939noreply@blogger.com