My First Disciplinary Literacy Blog

After reading, listening, and studying about Disciplinary Literacy, I believe it is a great way to authentically enhance our students' Social Studies content. Since literature is an integral part of how history is recorded, we must be able to integrate historical literature into our lesson plans and get it to our students in a way that is easy enough for the students to comprehend, but does not interfere with the historical validity of the document. I vaguely remember any time throughout my pre-college experience ever seeing historical literature used in my history classes outside of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In addition to the integration of literature into the content, the theory of schema is an interesting concept to education. While the organized chunks of knowledge and experiences can lead to feeling and emotions that can be used to be active learners, we as educators must learn how to activate this schema and get our students to understand and attain a higher level of thinking. It is my goal upon completion of this course, I am able to successfully integrate historical literature into my curriculum and activate the schema that will allow for a greater increase in the active learning and achievement of my students.

1. What does it mean to read like a historian?
   
   Reading like a historian means to take any document and examine it for its historical context, validity, and meaning. One example of how to read like an historian is when I had to read first-hand accounts of the Crusades (which was a painful experience) I had to take into account the context of the document, who wrote it and how does that affect the meaning, and how does it connect to what I am trying to understand. I try to never take first-hand accounts as absolute truth because of bias that may be used in the document. Addressing the need to read like a historian to your students and successfully showing them how to do so will allow them to have authentic learning experiences and hopefully make any history class more interesting that it was before.
   
   
2. Why do readers struggle with history text and how can teachers help?
   
   In the article my group had in class, "Tampering with History: Adapting Primary Sources for Struggling Readers", the authors addressed three key factors that causes readers to struggle with history text. The first was the excessive length in which historical accounts can be. When give the task of reading a massive selection, many students will not focus on what they need to get out of the article and simply scan over it without gaining any knowledge from it. The author suggests limiting the text to 200-300 words to not overwhelm students. The second is the complex sentences and syntax which is used in many forms of historical literature. The simple act of copying and pasting the document into a computer text editor (i.e. Microsoft Word) and simplifying the words to allow for better understanding will suffice for this problem. One must be careful not to sacrifice the validity of the document in order to simplify it for their students. Finally, the authors say when the document is densely packed into a page, students will 'shut down'. I can remember being one of those students. Leave ample space to give the illusion that there is less to read that the student perceives.
   
   
3. How can teachers engage students in significant ideas in their subject?
   
   I have learned throughout my M.A.T. experience to teach authentically to keep students engaged in the content I want them to understand. To do this, I always try to relate any content I teach to real-life situations through different strategies. My favorite way to keep students engaged is to use analogies. I am always quick to use analogies in daily life. Sometimes when studying history I always have the thought, "that's kind of like...", and it allows me to understand it better. While I know this is not how every student will stay engaged, it is on that is easiest for me to use. In order to reach all of my students, I must vary the techniques I use to engage students to try and reach as many different learners as possible. We learned ways in our Learning and the Learner class in the fall to differentiate how we teach through different learning strategies to reach many different kinds of learners, not just the way you learn.