For most of my teaching career I have been seeking to strike a balance between literacy and content. I taught Social Studies for 7 years, and I was never the ¨chalk and talk¨ type. I have always wanted to kids to experience the same joy I did when opened up a book and read about places, people, and events of the past. Only then will they be inspired to talk about how to preserve excellence and prevent atrocities-and put their ideas and thoughts into action. This means every social studies (any content, for that matter) teacher must be a teacher of reading and writing. And I don´t mean reading the blue words, and I don´t mean a cookie cutter five-paragraph essay.

In the Name of Keeping Things Real, I confess that 13 years in…I´m still in the middle of a mess. It can be really hard and frustrating when I see talented teachers, professionals, and researchers all on the cutting edge of their work…and   I´m still here, meekly figuring it out. In the middle of a mess.

I recently went to the Teachers College 94th Saturday Reunion (see the previous blog post!) where I had the awesome privilege of attending a session entitled ¨Authoring Different Genres to Engage Student in Social Studies Content¨. The session was inspiring and downright helpful, but one phrase especially has changed my approach.

The writing process is the same in all content areas.

Duh, right? Sheepish lightbulb moment if there ever was one.

TC Staff Developer Tim Steffan was the workshop presenter, and I believe he was quoting The Lovely and Talented Mary Ehrenworth. My notes are scraggly from the fast and furious scrawling. Anyway-this statement makes total sense, and it has alleviated a lot of my struggle.

I tried a Social Studies unit in December with a 5th grade class where the classroom teacher and I took an If/Then Writing Unit of Study and paired it with our 5th grade social studies curriculum. TOUGH STUFF. It was not perfect, and there are a lot of things I would do differently. So…I´m trying again. We are now using our US Government unit, and thinking about the Information writing type, with the writing process really guiding our instruction. We will be using the same teaching points from both Information Reading and Writing Units of Study, and echoing the note-taking ways students already know from Reading Units of Study. US Government content is guiding us and anchoring the lessons. The writing process is truly my north star. Each time I doctor up the curriculum map or lesson plan I am keeping in mind that students during the beginning of the unit are researching and collecting information, and as they progress they will be drafting and revising those seed entries. By the end of the unit, hopefully, they will be publishing ¨Presidential Papers¨, where they will explain the branches of government and foundation for The Constitution. I have no idea if this will work. Fingers crossed, salt over the left shoulder, and prayers prayed. I´ll be steadily updating progress here on the blog.

On the back burner, I´m cooking up a ¨Research Clubs inspired¨ 4th Grade Social Studies unit on Explorers. Stay tuned. Lots of mess in the works. This is just the beginning; the middle will come shortly, and in the end, we will be smarter about our craft of blending content and literacy. And honestly, I´ll be lucky if it is that clear-cut. I think the middle will extend for quite a while! One could say I´ve been in the middle for a long time already, and this is just the beginning of the unit.

But arguably, I´m a step closer.