Although the Common Core and C3 Framework highlight literacy and inquiry as central goals for social studies, they do not offer guidelines, assessments, or curriculum resources. This practical guide presents six research-tested historical investigations along with all corresponding teaching materials and tools that have improved the historical thinking and argumentative writing of academically diverse students. Each investigation integrates reading, analysis, planning, composing, and reflection into a writing process that results in an argumentative history essay. Primary sources have been modified to allow struggling readers access to the material. Web links to original unmodified primary sources are also provided, along with other sources to extend investigations. The authors include sample student essays from each investigation to illustrate the progress of two different learners and explain how to support students’ development. Each chapter includes these helpful sections: Historical Background, Literacy Practices Students Will Learn, How to Teach This Investigation, How Might Students Respond?, Student Writing and Teacher Feedback, Lesson Plans and Materials. Book Features: Integrates literacy and inquiry with core U.S. history topics. Emphasizes argumentative writing, a key requirement of the Common Core. Offers explicit guidance for instruction with classroom-ready materials. Provides primary sources for differentiated instruction. Explains a curriculum appropriate for students who struggle with reading, as well as more advanced readers. Models how to transition over time from more explicit instruction to teacher coaching and greater student independence. “The tools this book provides—from graphic organizers, to lesson plans, to the accompanying documents—demystify the writing process and offer a sequenced path toward attaining proficiency.” —From the Foreword by Sam Wineburg, co-author of Reading Like a Historian “Assuming literate practice to be at the core of history learning and historical practice, the authors provide actual units of history instruction that can be immediately applied to classroom teaching. These units make visible how a cognitive apprenticeship approach enhances history and historical literacy learning and ensure a supported transition to teaching history in accordance with Common Core State Standards.” —Elizabeth Moje, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan “The C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards and the Common Core State Standards challenge students to investigate complex ideas, think critically, and apply knowledge in real world settings. This extraordinary book provides tried-and-true practical tools and step-by-step directions for social studies to meet these goals and prepare students for college, career, and civic life in the 21st century.” —Michelle M. Herczog, president, National Council for the Social Studies

We live in a data-driven world, much of it processed and served up by increasingly complex algorithms, and evaluating its quality requires its own skillset. As a component of information literacy, it's crucial that students learn how to think critically about statistics, data, and related visualizations. Here, Bauder and her fellow contributors show how librarians are helping students to access, interpret, critically assess, manage, handle, and ethically use data. Offering readers a roadmap for effectively teaching data literacy at the undergraduate level, this volume explores such topics as the potential for large-scale library/faculty partnerships to incorporate data literacy instruction across the undergraduate curriculum; how the principles of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education can help to situate data literacy within a broader information literacy context; a report on the expectations of classroom faculty concerning their students’ data literacy skills; various ways that librarians can partner with faculty; case studies of two initiatives spearheaded by Purdue University Libraries and University of Houston Libraries that support faculty as they integrate more work with data into their courses; Barnard College’s Empirical Reasoning Center, which provides workshops and walk-in consultations to more than a thousand students annually; how a one-shot session using the PolicyMap data mapping tool can be used to teach students from many different disciplines; diving into quantitative data to determine the truth or falsity of potential “fake news” claims; and a for-credit, librarian-taught course on information dissemination and the ethical use of information.

Help students meet today’s literacy demands with this new book from Terry Roberts and Laura Billings. The authors show how a seminar approach can lead students deeper into a text and improve their speaking, listening, and writing skills, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Roberts and Billings provide easy-to-follow information on implementing Paideia Seminars, in which students discuss a text and ask open-ended questions about it. When teachers use this lesson format, students are exposed to a wide range of increasingly complex texts. They also learn how to collaborate, talk about, and reflect on what they’re reading, to make meaning independently and together. Seminars can be done in English class and across the curriculum, using social studies documents or math problems as the texts under discussion. Teaching Critical Thinking also offers an array of practical resources: teacher lesson plans student samples a list of possible ideas and values for discussion a guide to asking good questions during a seminar six full seminar plans (including the texts), covering literature, social studies, and science topics

A collection of nine essays that describes strategies for teaching visual literacy by using graphic novels, comics, anime, political cartoons, and picture books.

Visual Literacy examines how teachers can use visuals to improve learning for all students. It provides teachers with a foundation in visual literacy, defined as the ability to read, think, and communicate with visually presented information. Results of studies of students’ using visual information indicate that most students are clearly lacking in the tools needed to use visuals effectively. The book orients teachers to visual literacy and the world of visuals. It discusses various classroom tested strategies and activities for all students, including second language learners, and students with special needs. Stressing visual literacy skills helps students understand a visual more deeply so they can master the content they are learning. Teachers will learn to employ a literacy triad of reading, thinking, and communicating to aid students in their study of visuals. First, they inquire into the visual, reading it for content and context, including assessing the authenticity of the document. Second, they think about the document by analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating it to come up with answers to their inquiry. Graphic organizers help students decipher the content and understand the meaning of the visual document, connecting it to prior and future instruction. Third, they communicate their findings using visuals.

Preparing students to be active, informed, literate citizens is one of the primary functions of public schools. But how can students become engaged citizens if they can't read, let alone understand, their social studies texts? What can educators—and social studies teachers in particular—do to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and motivation to become engaged in civic life? Building Literacy in Social Studies addresses this question by presenting both the underlying concepts and the research-based techniques that teachers can use to engage students and build the skills they need to become successful readers, critical thinkers, and active citizens. The authors provide targeted strategies—including teaching models, graphic organizers, and step-by-step instructions—for activities such as * Building vocabulary, * Developing textbook literacy skills, * Interpreting primary and secondary sources, * Applying critical thinking skills to newspapers and magazines, and * Evaluating Internet sources. Readers will also learn how to organize classrooms into models of democracy by creating learning communities that support literacy instruction, distribute authority, encourage cooperation, and increase accountability among students. Realistic scenarios depict a typical social studies teacher's experience before and after implementing the strategies in the classroom, showing their potential to make a significant difference in how students respond to instruction. By making literacy strategies a vital part of content-area instruction, teachers not only help students better understand their schoolwork but also open students' eyes to the power that informed and engaged people have to change the world.

Media literacy educator Nick Pernisco's new book, Practical Media Literacy: An essential guide to the critical thinking skills for our digital world, is the perfect introduction to media literacy for young adults, teachers, and parents. Pernisco has distilled his years of teaching experience into a practical guide for learning the most crucial skills needed to be a digital citizen in the 21st century. This is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how to interpret the enormous amounts of information we are exposed to everyday, both in traditional media and online. The book includes an introduction to media and media literacy, explaining what media is, how it affects us, and why we should pay close attention to it. The reader is then presented with a framework that can be used to analyze any type of media. Once the basics are thoroughly explained, the bookfocuses on individual types of media and specific methods for analyzing each type. Readers will learn to analyze and think critically about movies, television, music, social media, advertising, news, video games,and more. Each section contains relevant exercises to help readers better understand the impact each type of media has on their lives. These exercises can be completed alone, or may be used as lesson plans in a classroom setting. This 2nd edition builds on the strengths of the previous version. * A stronger focus on the learner. The book explains media literacy from its most basic elements to some sophisticated topics of interest for all ages. This makes the book a perfect textbook for any K-12 classroom. * Expanded information on more types of media. Movies, TV, advertising, photography, social media, music, news, and video games each get their own chapter, each illustrating details about how to analyze each type of media and numerous activities that may be used as lesson plans. This book is perfect as a textbook for a course on media literacy, an introductory course about media, any class that uses media (tv, movies, music, the web) to convey information, forat home use by parents, and for curious minds trying to better understand their world.