"But, but...I went to college to be a history teacher, not an English teacher. I don't know HOW to teach ELA!"
That was me. Seriously. I was ready to fight teaching reading and writing skills as long as I could.
Until I learned some simple strategies to help me. This list is meant to help those who are struggling to add reading and writing skills into their classrooms and possibly give some new ideas to others.
#1: Go talk to you ELA Teachers. NOW!
Think about it. If another subject area wanted to start adding in pieces of Civic Engagement into their classroom and needed ideas, you would want them to come to you right (get ready...cause that's coming)?? You are the "social studies" expert. Why wouldn't you be running down the hall to see the "reading and writing expert" in your building? Go.
Tell them you want to start including some more writing skills in your room. Ask them what language they use? How do they teach the kids to structure a paragraph? What grammar skills are they focusing on this year? Trust me...depending on the year it could be different. Last year our 7th grade ELA teacher really focused on capitalization of proper nouns. I was able to help support that. The kids knew it.
Piggy back off of what they are doing...Have they taught supporting evidence with quotes from sources? How do they want students to cite their sources? What are some simple strategies for locating evidence within text? Anything that you can say that reinforces what your ELA teacher is doing will make it easier on both of you
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| The amazing ELA teachers at Cheney Middle School! |
#2: Start with what you know.
This is the first thing I did. I started requiring the kids to write in complete sentences. I know that one. I don't know exactly what year the kids are taught how to capitalize the first letter, subject, verb, and end with punctuation. But they know it before 7th grade. Unless it was specified on an IEP I started counting off for those simple errors.
You see, kids came to my class thinking "it's not English so I don't have to do things correctly." Once they knew I was taking points off for not writing correct complete sentences, they magically started doing it correctly.
#3: T. A. G.
I love using acronyms for the classroom. Especially when it's short and easy to remember. TAG is --great because it gets kids writing MORE than just the basic "it happened on 7-4-76"
T: Turn the question into a statement
A: Answer the question. (sentence one)
G: Give more detail. (sentence two)
This is automatically a two sentence response, but it's more than just having the kids respond with two sentences. It forces them to give more detail. TAG requires students to go back into the text and find something else to say about the topic.
I would be lying if I said the students cheered when I told them TAG had to be used to answer questions, but 100% of the time, their answers are better. So I like it and we use it!
#4: Poetry is where it's at!
If there's one thing about incorporating ELA strategies that I love, its using various forms of poetry for students to express their understanding of a topic. We use acrostic poems in our "bell work," haikus to summarize a topics, "I AM" poems to understand perspective, and this year I hope to add "Blackout Poetry" because it is awesome!
#5: Step up your vocabulary game!
Still having kids just match up vocabulary words on quizzes and tests. That's JV ball right there. Let's step it up a notch. Try some of these strategies, which still require that kids know the vocabulary, but apply the word to the correct context.
As you start trying to add more writing into your social studies classroom, give these 5 things a try. As always with everything on my blog, if you need any copies of anything or want to talk ideas don't hesitate to contact me @JillWebs on Twitter.
Want more writing ideas? This post is a shorter version of a previous post with more examples found here.
