Emotional and Personal Connections Increase Literacy in High School Social Studies

By: Frankie Jawidzik

Reforming History Instruction?

• Help students challenge information in textbooks

• History is not just content-based, it is also intellectually and culturally based

• Don’t just use one textbook—use various texts to promote critical thinking

Emotional Connections to History

• Find texts that will get students “fired up” to learn

• Use detailed texts that portray the information in an interesting way

• Select texts that students can relate to emotionally

Examples

• Poem about the sufferings of the slave trade• Videos of the sufferings of Holocaust survivors• Real newspaper articles from a time of war

Personal Connections to History

• Helps students realize that they have the same issues as those in past decades and centuries

• Have students use people and events in their own lives to improve understanding

• Connecting own life to events in history brings history to life

Examples

• Draw history vocabulary terms by using pictures from your own life to help remember the meaning

• Write a letter pretending you live during a certain time period and what your life is like

• Role-play reenacting a person in history• Personal essays

Connections to History Tests

• Review everyday• Make review fast-paced, asking

test-like questions and calling on students for short responses

• Make review on-going, making every lesson connect along the way

• Use all modes of learning—talking, writing, practicing, connecting to self

SourceHansen, Jane. “Multiple Literacies in the Content Classroom: High School Students’ Connections

to US History.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 52.7 (2009): 597-606. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. http://0-web.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=1b8d2dc6-c7d2-4be7-aaa5-f8c58cd1e19f%40sessionmgr115&vid=4&hid=110.