Creative Writing in the Social Studies Classroom

As a social studies teacher we sometimes do not get the most respect from our administration, parents, or in general from the educational community.  As most of us are not teaching tested subjects, with the exception of high school U.S. history, it seems that we are relegated to minor importance while ELA and math are placed on a high pedestal.  However, there is a reason why so much emphasis is placed on reading, writing, and math.  Read the "High Performance in High Poverty Schools" attachment for more information on why placing an emphasis on reading, writing, and math are crucial to successful schools in high poverty school districts.

When teaching we should require our students to do a whole lot of reading and writing (and even math) to grasp essential understandings and answer essential questions about our world.  It is important that we do not merely teach our kids to memorize facts and have them take guided notes in class.  Classroom discussions, debates, and Q & A sessions are important, but actually having my kids read and write in the classroom is as important if not more.  My kids and I enjoy a good discussion about politics or about ancient Egyptians, but the reality is that my kids need to read and write about these subjects.

My students desperately need independent and guided practice with their reading strategies and especially their writing skills.  We need our kids to be reading and writing every day.  We need to help out our ELA teachers by providing our students supplementary instruction that aligns to their objectives.  It is definitely possible to teach your social studies objectives while also covering ELA objectives.  It is also possible to get your kids excited about writing and reading.

I  did one writing project in my classroom that my kids felt invested in, covered social studies objectives, and touched on skills/concepts taught in ELA.  The first example is a free writing exercise that I turned into a five paragraph essay.

Step 1.  Students do a free-write bell-ringer, where they write about a topic related to the day's objective.  In this example the objective was, "Students will be able to identify symbols on a map key and apply this knowledge on any real world map."



Step 2:

• Option A: have students take one or two days to create a map of their theme park using their map key
• Option B: have students share their map keys in class for five minutes and move on to instruction.
• Option C: have students write an essay about the free write.

For most my classes, I choose option B as I decided having my kids draw a map or do an essay about this free writing exercise did not warrant the time.  However, during my intervention hour, I had my kids write an essay about their free writes.  If you want your kids to write a good five paragraph essay then you'll need to provide plenty of scaffolding.  For example, teach your kids the structure of a 5 paragraph essay using Bing, Bang, and Bongo. See powerpoint attachment. Spend a day teaching your kids the structure of an essay

 Second, have your kids do a brainstorming graphic organizer  to organize their thoughts. Use an instructional day to have kids practice brainstorming.

Third, have your kids use their brainstorming graphic organizer to organize their ideas into sentence structure using another graphic organizer.  Make this a hw assignment.

Fourth, have your kids use this graphic organizer to write their first rough draft.

Fifth, have your kids peer edit and review each other rough drafts using a rubric.  This is the most difficult step in my opinion as you will have to norm yourself and your kids to the rubric.  It took my students and I about three days to understand what the difference is between a 5 and a 3 on the writing rubric.

Sixth, have students write their final drafts and turn them in.  Grade them using your rubric.

Tips: Be patient with your students as the writing process takes longer to teach than a week.  Give students continual practice writing, perhaps have your students write a series or shorter 1 to 2 paragraph responses before having them write a five paragraph essay.

Click the attachments for downloads are available at this link. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7TluIw2uWYFdGhwNEdIcmlPQWs&usp=sharing