Literacy and Social Studies Part 2, Chunking

 In my recent post on literacy and social studies I reviewed why teaching social studies improves literacy and talked about the "Write Your Way In/Out" strategy. I also promised to share some other strategies for imbedding literacy activities into your social studies units.  

Chunking

According to Edutopia, "Chunking information—breaking it down into manageable units and scaffolding it with activities—makes learning more accessible." Station activities are a great way to implement this strategy. In one of the lessons in Montana: A History of Our Home, students to "write their way in": "Would you have wanted to be a cowboy/girl on the open range?" Then they visit six different stations. Each station has a photograph or a short chunk of text for students to read and answer questions about. They use the information they've gathered at the stations to write a short essay about why they would, or would not, want to have been a cowhand.

You can easily set up a similar station activity using short excerpts of primary and secondary sources for any topic you are studying.

Chunking, another definition

According to Facing History & Ourselves, "the chunking reading strategy involves breaking down a difficult text into more manageable pieces and having students rewrite these “chunks” in their own words. You can use this strategy with challenging texts of any length. Chunking helps students identify key words and ideas, develops their ability to paraphrase, and makes it easier for them to organize and synthesize information."

This is a great strategy to use with legal documents, like treaties or constitutions. 

Here's one lesson that Salish Kootenai College Professor Tammy Elser created that uses chunking with treaties. In this lesson, students:

1. read the treaty by themselves highlighting words and phrases they don't know or understand.

2. read in small groups, defining words they don't know. 

3. read a third time, paraphrasing the treaty, article by article, in everyday language. 

4. Read the treaty (and their paraphrases) again, stopping at each article to answer the following questions: 

• What's in it for the Tribe? 
• What's in it for the non-Indian settlers? 
• What's in it for the US government.

At a workshop I attended with Tammy, we did an even easier version of this exercise: Each group only analyzed and summarized *one* article. After she checked to make sure our summaries accurately reflected the article, we shared our summaries to one another. 

Stay tuned for future posts featuring additional ways to imbed literacy and social studies. 

Free Series of Online Book Club Meetings with Native Authors

 We've missed the first two sessions, but these free California IEFA online book club series looks fabulous. The meetings are live online from 3:30-5 Pacific (so 4:30-6 Mountain). 

Find more information at American Indians in Children's Literature.

Or you can sign up here.

Below is a preview of the schedule. If you attend a session and email me a brief summary, I'll send you a form for 1 renewal credit. 

 

Oct 24 - Christine Day, We Still Belong, The Sea in Winter, and I Can Make This Promise

 

Oct 31 - Debbie Reese, Children's Books about Native Youth and their Hair

Nov 7 - Laurel Goodluck, Forever Cousins, Rock Your Mocs and She Persisted: Deb Haaland

 

Dec 19 - Cynthia Leitich Smith, Hearts Unbroken, Jingle Dancer, and Sisters of the Neversea

 

Jan 16 - Michaela Goade, Berry Song, Remember, We Are Water Protectors, and Being Home

 

Jan 23 - Deborah Miranda, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

 

Feb 13 - Cutcha Risling-Baldy, We are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

 

Feb 20 - William Bauer, California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History

 

Feb 27 - William Bauer, We Are the Land: A History of Native California

 

Mar 13 - Debbie Reese, Children's Books about Native People in the Sciences

Mar 20 - Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Understanding Stereotypes and Native Americans, Part One: Master Narratives and Root Myths

 

Mar 27 - Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Understanding Stereotypes about Native Americans, Part Two: Modern Myths

 

Apr 17 - Carole Lindstrom, We Are Water Protectors, My Powerful Hair, and Autumn Peletier: Water Warrior

 

April 24 - Monique Gray Smith, My Heart Fills with Happiness, When We are Kind, and You Hold Me Up

 

May 8 - Laurel Goodluck, Fierce Aunties and Too Much: My Great Big Native Family

 

June 5 - Debbie Reese, Learn about New Children's Books by Native People

See you at MFPE

 Are you coming to Bozeman to MFPE? If so, make sure to stop by the Montana Historical Society booth and say hi!

There are an abundance of great-looking sessions this year. Check them out!

Special Events

If you get into town on Wednesday, head over to the Gallatin History Museum, 317 W Main, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. for light appetizers, a tour of the museum at 5:30, and a talk by The Extreme History Project founder Crystal Alegria at 6:30. (Earn two renewal units). If you are attending, Sandra would appreciate an RSVP so she knows how much food to order: sandra.oldendorf@montana.edu.  

Montana Council on Social Studies Featured Speakers 

Thursday

• 11-12 p.m. Mark Johnson, Montana's Historic Chinese Communities (room A377)
• 12-1 p.m. Issues in Social Studies and MCSS Business Meeting: join for lunch (rooms A330-31)
• Bring your own lunch or enjoy pizza/salad and drinks from MCSS
• 1-2 p.m. Dr. Dale Martin, The Monstrous Anger of Guns, (room A382)

Friday

• 10-11 a.m. Dr. Walter Fleming, The Seven Most Important Indian Battles in Montana History: (room A377)
• 11-12 p.m. Megan Torgerson, Changing Perspectives on Rural (room A377)

Montana Historical Society Staff and Teacher Leader-led Sessions

Thursday

• 8-9 a.m. Centering Indigenous Voices in Historical Narratives, Dylan Huisken
• 8-10 a.m. Exploring Indian Education for All through Primary Sources from the Library of Congress, Melissa Hibbard
• 1-2 p.m. Western Displacement "Done Wrong by 'The Man'?" Gallery Walk, Mary Zuchowski

Friday

• 9-10 a.m. MTHS Resources Scavenger Hunt, Laurie Enebo
• 10-12 p.m. National History Day 101, Melissa Hibbard
• 1-2 p.m. Montana History Projects Make-It-And-Take It, Laurie Enebo

Other Sessions of Interest

Thursday

• 9-10 a.m. Tsistsistas & Suhtaio: Expressions of the Northern Cheyenne People, Ancient Times - 1875, Heather Torrence
• 9-10 a.m. 1972 Montana Constitution - History & Threats, Mae Nan Ellingson and Evan Barrett
• 10-11 a.m. 1776-2026: A Semiquincentennial Roundtable, Senator Shannon O'Brien and Marietta Croft
• 10-11 a.m. Art & Adaptation: Transforming Art among the Apsáalooke (Crow Nation), Heather Torrence
• 11-12 a.m. To Bleed or Not to Bleed (about Lewis and Clark medicine), Cortney Reedy
• 12-1 p.m. Educator Resources from the Western Heritage Center, Heather Torrence
• 1-2 p.m. Forts and Trading Posts, Matthew Schertz
• 1-2 p.m. Mann Gulch Curriculum, Mari Carroll
• 2-3 p.m. Montanan PBS Presents: The American Buffalo, Nikki Vradenburg
• 2-3 p.m. MT STOY Keynote: Kevin KickingWoman
• 2-5 p.m. Teaching Federal Indian Policy Periods, Jacie Jeffers
• 2-4 p.m. Women in the Heart of Battle - Female Participation at the Little Bighorn, Cheyenne Aldrich
• 3-4 p.m. Montana League of Women Voters Suffrage Timeline and Nitty Gritty of Voting Presentations, Rebecca Johnson
• 3-4 p.m. Beadwork in the Classroom, Sunny Gardner
• 4-5 p.m. Indian Education for All resources for Music, Mike Jetty

Friday

• 8 a.m-5 p.m. Butte's Superfund: Place-Based Scientific Literacy, Chris Pavlovich, Rayelynn Brandl et al
• 9-10 a.m. Speakers in the Schools (A free program from Humanities Montana), John Knight
• 9-10 a.m. Introducing Native Art: Winter Count Workshop, Jennifer Woodcock Medicine-horse and Autumn Elliot
• 10-11 a.m. Introducing Native Art: Winter Count Workshop II, Jennifer Woodcock Medicine-horse and Autumn Elliot  
• 11-12 p.m. Game On: Montana Athletes Who Changed History, Heather Torrence
• 9-10 a.m. Traditional Games and Fire Starting, Cortney Reedy and Dusty Rixford
• 1-2 p.m. Indian Education for All Resources for ELA and Social Studies, Mike Jetty
• 2-3 p.m. Pandemonium on the Prairie: Crime and Conflict on the Montana Plains, 1831 - 1899, Heather Torrence
• 2-3 p.m. The State of Social Studies in 2024, Lawrence Paska
• 2-5 p.m. “It Opened my Mind and my Heart”: Applying the Rs Framework to Indigenize Professional Development, Christine Stanton, Jordann Lankford et al

Literacy and Social Studies

 

Social Studies Improves Reading Comprehension

I've been reading about how kids learn to read and it's fascinating! It turns out reading requires two things: 

1. Understanding how letters come together to form words (phonics)
2. Understanding how words come together to create meaning (comprehension).

Traditional literacy instruction is great for #1, but it turns out that social studies is better for #2. It's true! A longitudinal study of K-5 students found that "Social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement."

I was curious why that might be, so I started reading articles by literacy experts and educational psychologists. It turns out that comprehension requires that you know words (vocabulary) and that you have enough background knowledge in a subject to fill in the blanks that every piece of writing leaves. 

There is lots of data that background knowledge (including domain-specific vocabulary) is essential for comprehension. For example, a couple of elegantly designed studies demonstrated that poorer readers who know more about baseball do better at comprehending a reading passage about baseball than students with higher reading scores.

There's probably no subject that can do more for students' general background knowledge (and for the development of vocabulary) than social studies. I suspect that's why spending more time on studying social studies improved reading scores.

Embedding Literacy Strategies into Social Studies Improves Literacy Even More

There's something even better than simply adding more time for social studies (which is tremendously short-changed in elementary school). That's embedding literacy activities/strategies into your social studies instruction. That's what we did with the Montana: A History of Our Home, so if you are teaching Montana history in grades 4-6, you are in luck! The work is done for you. If you teach other topics, there are some simple strategies you can use. I'll feature one below and others in future posts.

Write Your Way In and Write Your Way Out  

Salish Kootenai College education professor Tammy Elser introduced me to this simple but powerful technique, and we use it over and over in our lesson plans.

When you are about to study a new topic:

• Ask students to take out a pencil and their writing journals, or a sheet of paper, and date it.  
• Tell students: You will be thinking hard and writing for the next five minutes. I will run a timer and you will keep writing the whole time, not lifting your pencils until the timer stops. If you get stuck, just write “I’m thinking, I’m thinking” until you get a new idea. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. The goal is to just keep thinking and pouring your thoughts onto the paper. (Let them know they can use their imaginations. Create a sense of excitement/urgency.)
• Read the prompt and start the timer. Here are some sample prompts: 
  • What do you think it would be like to live [Insert Era]? 
  • "Do you think you would have liked to ... [worked as a cowboy/girl on the open range? come to Montana to prospect gold?]
• Have students write for the full five minutes, and then draw a line where they stop writing.
• Study the topic.
• Return the initial "Write Your Way Ins" to your students.
• Under the line they drew on their initial quick rights, have them repeat the process with a new prompt asking, "now what do you know/think?"

Why Write Your Way In/Out?

• It activates background knowledge (important for reading comprehension).
• It provides a reason for reading (also important for reading comprehension).
• It gives you a quick sense of what your students do and don’t know about a topic. 
• It helps students cement what they learned by reflecting on it in writing (in a very low stakes way) at the end of the unit. 
• It provides students an opportunity to use new vocabulary in their "Write You Way Outs." (Again, low stakes practice is good!) 
• It gets students writing. (I've had one teacher tell me she got a page out of a student who had never written more than a sentence previously.)

I'll be featuring some of the other literacy strategies we've integrated into Montana: A History of Our Home and other lesson plans in future posts. If you have a favorite you use, drop me a line.

 

National History Day

 

What is National History Day? National History Day is a project-based learning experience that aligns with numerous state standards for social studies and ELA. Students grades 6-12 research topics related to an annual theme, then present their findings as documentaries, exhibit boards, papers, performances, or websites. NEW this year, students grades 4-5 research Montana history topics related to the annual theme and create posters to show their research. The 2024-2025 theme is Rights & Responsibilities in History.     Students grades 4-5 can share projects with their school and community. Students grades 6-12 can also compete with their projects in regional, state, or even national competitions. This year, regional competitions take place in Kalispell (February 8), Miles City (February 8), and Helena (February 15, tent.) and the state competition takes place in Bozeman (April 12). How can I get involved? Teachers grades 4-12 can get started by filling out the teacher interest form and signing up for professional development. Twice a month, NHD-MT co-coordinator, MTHS historian, and former classroom teacher Dr. Melissa Hibbard guides teachers through the steps of the History Day process with ready-to-use classroom resources. Anyone who likes history and supporting students can sign up to judge at one of the regional or state competitions. Librarians & research specialists can sign up to help Montana students conduct research (email Melissa directly at nationalhistorydaymt@gmail.com) Ready to Dive Deeper? Thanks to a grant from the Library of Congress, teachers grades 6-12 can apply to become an NHD Teacher Fellow. Selected teachers will receive training in historical research, primary source analysis, Library of Congress resources, Indian Education for All, as well as a $500 stipend, up to 48 renewal units, and travel support to in-person events. Apply by October 14.   Thanks to support from the Montana 250th Commission, teachers grades 4-5 can apply to join a cohort of elementary educators doing the History Day Poster Contest. Selected teachers will receive training in historical research, primary source analysis, and poster construction, as well as a $250 stipend and 3 renewal units.  Apply by November 1.

 

To learn more, visit www.nationalhistorydaymt.org or follow NHD MT on Facebook.

Favorite Elementary Lessons

 Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history or IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. Here are the responses from elementary school teachers with some notes from me in brackets. Read middle school teacher responses and high school teachers' responses.

Cedar Martin, who teaches 2-3 in Lavina, wrote: "I think it was my IEFA lesson about Stereotypes. The kids loved the engagement of the lesson. They loved learning about stereotypes and how to realize what we watch or say can be stereotyping others. This was a valuable lesson to the students at such a young age." [I'm not sure what resource she used but it might be one of this lesson posted on OPI's website: Stereotypes, Grade 3. OPI also has Identifying Stereotypes and Countering Them, Grade 4.]  

Clifford Thorsen, who taught 4th grade in Evergreen for many years, loves the 4th grade winter count lesson.

Jodi Delaney, who teaches grades 4-5 in Helena, wrote:

I love using the lesson on Rosebud Battle or Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. This one lesson addresses multiple standards in social studies and IEFA, ELA, and art.  It’s a powerhouse lesson on points of view and there are so many topics you could connect with, like learning more about ledger art, journalism, writing summaries, and more. The lesson includes multiple kinds of activities to address all sorts of learners and can be adapted for differing ability levels to include the whole class. She also notes that the logistics of the lesson can be intimidating at first glance and so she'd be happy to walk folks through it if they want. [Just email me and I'll put you in touch.] This lesson is part of Montana: A History of Our Home, the curriculum MTHS put together for grades 4-6. Find it in Unit 5 of the curriculum (Part 3, Lesson 3). 

Hali Richmond, of Sunburst, wrote:

I never miss the opportunity to teach Mapping Montana, A to Z. The students love spreading out across the classroom with their maps and starting their "field trip" across the state! Once the students have their routes mapped out, we learn about the 7 reservations and 12 tribal nations and discuss which reservations they travelled through on their journey! 

It's never too late! If you have a great lesson or resource you think other teachers should know about, let me know!

P.S. Don't forget to register for Teaching Current Events (Tuesday, Oct. 8, 4:30-5:30 p.m.) Learn more and find registration link.

Best of, Middle School Lessons

Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history or IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. Here are the responses from middle school teachers with some notes from me in brackets. Read high school teachers' responses.

Jody Richards, who teaches 7th grade Montana history in Wolf Point, has her students compare and contrast Charles M. Russell and Evelyn Cameron images. [I love this idea. Montana History Portal has an Evelyn Cameron online exhibit. Find a PowerPoint of Russell images on our Teaching Charlie Russell page.] 

Another teacher from the Flathead wrote: "This winter we made snow snakes in our classroom. The students used rasps and sandpaper to shape their individual snow snake before painting/decorating it with personal symbols that represent their lives and culture. We then constructed a track out of snow and held a competition in each class to see whose could glide across the snow the farthest."

Sarah Rosenbaum, who teaches in Columbia Falls, wrote: "I taught about Ghost Towns in Montana. I had students choose the project they felt drawn to the most to create this. The students were able to choose between a digital platform, poster presentation, or a model of a building in their ghost town." 

Michelle Moccasin, who teaches Crow language and culture, 7-12 in Lodge Grass, does a lesson on the seven buffalos who become the seven stars or Big Dipper. 

Ron Buck, who teaches 6-12 in Shelby, wrote: "I am a broken record, but I will never skip the Art of Storytelling. I also will use the Montana Stories of the Land textbook in my classroom as the main teaching resource."

Charlie Brown, who teaches 7th grade Montana history in Fairfield, wrote: "I really like doing the atlatl project." 

Denise Rutledge, at Montana School for the Deaf and Blind, highly recommends  The American Buffalo, from PBS. [Explore accompanying educational resources from Montana PBS.]  

Another teacher recommends the footlocker To Learn A New Way, which includes information on Indian boarding schools. [Find out more about ordering hands-on history footlockers.]

It's not too late! If you have resources, lessons, or strategies other teachers should know about, send them to me!