History

What is literacy in history?

Learning how to read and write in the content areas is critical to overall student literacy development. Indeed, it is the particular kind of reading and writing involved in history–social sciences that will be most relevant to students’ daily lives as they mature and learn to:

• Craft argumentative essays
• Become proficient in making meaning from informational text,
• Negotiate difficult vocabulary, reading, writing, and discourse patterns,
• Identify purpose, bias, context and agenda
• Consider the thinking of others—their knowledge, questions, and passions—and to share, ponder, and pursue their own.
• Bring in multiple voices representing diverse perspectives
• Interpret sources in their original context rather than applying present day norms and values

Adapted from the California History/Social Science Framework Chapter 1. "Literacy." Curriculum Frameworks. California Department of Education (2018).

History texts that students create, read, listen to, or view include but are not limited to:

Primary Sources (e.g. government and workplace documents, images, artifacts, speeches, letters, diaries, and other first-hand testimony) and Secondary Sources (e.g. research reports, arguments, textbooks, podcasts, and analytical magazine and news articles from print and online sources)

It is important that students who experience difficulty with reading are supported as they learn from texts; teachers should not avoid texts as sources of knowledge with students who find them challenging and rely exclusively on nontext media and experiences. Replacing texts with other sources of information or rewriting them in simpler language—in spite of the intention to ensure access to the curricula—limits students’ skill to independently learn with texts in the future. In other words, instruction should be provided to enable all students to learn with texts alongside other learning experiences. (The California History/Social Science Framework Chapter 13, page 284)

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