Beyond the Textbook: Strengthening Core Literacy Skills in Social Studies

Last week I gave a Literacy Skills entry assessment. I used AI to analyze the results…

The literacy skills analysis reveals that 8th grade students need to improve in several key areas. Finding the Main Idea remains a challenge, with students struggling to consistently identify central themes across texts. Understanding Vocabulary in Context shows fair performance, but there’s room for improvement in deriving word meanings from context. Students demonstrate moderate ability in Recognizing Important Details, but often miss key information or focus on less relevant points. While Comparing Perspectives is fair to good, students could benefit from more practice in contrasting viewpoints. Making Inferences needs significant improvement, as students struggle to draw conclusions beyond explicitly stated information. Lastly, Making a Claim with Evidence is identified as the weakest area, with students failing to make clear claims or support ideas with specific textual evidence. These findings suggest a need for targeted instruction and practice in these critical literacy skills to enhance students’ overall comprehension and analytical abilities in social studies.

Next, I asked AI to develop some themed days that we could devote to working on these skills. I also had it correlate the skills and themes with EduProtocols. Here is the outcome….

Main Idea Monday (Addressing: Finding the Main Idea)

• Thin Slides: Students create one slide with a key image and one word to represent the main idea of a historical event or concept. Present and discuss why each represents the main idea.
• Cyber Sandwich: Students read a historical text, discuss with a partner, and write a one-sentence summary focusing on the main idea. Expand to a paragraph summary. Use “What is this passage mostly about?” as a guiding question.

Text Detective Tuesday (Addressing: Understanding Vocabulary in Context & Recognizing Important Details)

• Frayer Model: Students complete a Frayer model for key historical terms, focusing on contextual usage and decoding strategies.
• ParaFLY: Students paraphrase complex historical quotes or paragraphs, underlining key points and writing margin notes. Use “5 W’s and H” questions to identify important information.

What’s Important Wednesday (Addressing: Recognizing Important Details)

• 8pARTS: Students analyze a historical image using the 8pARTS protocol, focusing on identifying crucial details and their significance.
• Number Mania: Students create infographics highlighting key statistics and facts from a historical period or event. Present and explain why these details are important.

Thinking Thursday (Addressing: Making Inferences)

• Sketch and Tell: Students create visual representations of historical events or concepts, including inferred information not explicitly stated. Explain their drawings using “Based on… I can infer that…” statements.
• Hero’s Journey: Students map a historical figure’s journey, making and explaining inferences about motivations and challenges not explicitly stated in texts.

Multiple Viewpoints Friday (Addressing: Comparing Perspectives & Making a Claim with Evidence)

• 3xPOV (Three Times Point of View): Students examine a historical event from three different perspectives:
  1. A direct participant in the event
  2. A contemporary observer not directly involved
  3. A modern historian looking back on the event Students use T-charts or Venn diagrams to compare and contrast these viewpoints.
• 3xCER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning): Students engage with a historical topic or event using the following structure:
  1. Make three different claims about the topic
  2. Provide specific evidence from historical sources to support each claim
  3. Explain the reasoning that connects the evidence to each claim Students present and discuss their CERs, focusing on the strength of their claims, the relevance of their evidence, and the logic of their reasoning.