Critical Literacy

Literacy in Social Studies poses not an issue, but rather a responsibility that many teachers are facing without the necessary tools to provide students with a stimulating environment that can be both engaging, and that can provide students the knowledge necessary to understand the content beyond what it’s written on the text (ability to think critically). These tools are not only the resources required to facilitate the students’ learning experience, but also the issue that comes with the generalization of applying literacy to other subjects other than ELA. Meaning there is an issue with teachers now being required to nourish the development of literacy in their respective content area, and them not being prepared to tackle this in an effective …show more content…
They are argue that these changes require a great deal of professional development, especially for teachers who might not know what it takes to teach literacy skills through their content area, and that teachers should ask themselves, how their lessons will look after implementing these changes? Asking this question is imperative, in order to understand how much this will impact their lessons, which in turn they will have to teach to the students, and if applied adequately will lead to discussions not only about the past (in regards to learning about history, civics, geography etc.), but will lead the students to connect the dots, between past and present, see how things work now compared to then, and be able to reflect and deviate from the mistakes that other people made over the course of …show more content…
they argue that providing students with the ability to become part of the readings, rather than just follow along with the usual ‘complete questions 1-10’ allows them to immerse themselves into real life situations and rather than just read history, they get to make history, which goes beyond ‘just trying to understand it.’ Meaning, students who were able to let’s say to role play, and pretend to be a historic key figure requires them to be more invested, in order bring that character to life, and while doing so they learn more about the events that took place during that time period, as well as it helps them retain the knowledge gained. This however, was not something that teachers who were part of research learned from other literacy experts or packaged instructional materials. Rather, it came from the teachers’ willingness to push, and read more about social study material, resulting in the teacher’s ability to confidently provide, and create contents for students that will make them ask more than one question about the