Reading History: Improving Literacy

Having trouble interesting your students in history or the history textbook? Concerned about the ability of your students to actually read the textbook? Learn ways to tie reading strategies to the learning of history and sources that will help history come alive for your students.

Nationally known literacy advocate Janet Allen discusses strategies for teaching nonfiction reading using Joy Hakim's award winning A History of US series as the center of a blossoming campaign among educators to integrate literacy and history. Classroom tested at a variety of grade levels, real student samples are interspersed throughout the book providing clearer understanding of the strategies in action.

Having trouble interesting your students in history or the history textbook? Concerned about the ability of your students to actually read the textbook? Learn ways to tie reading strategies to the learning of history and sources that will help history come alive for your students.

Nationally known literacy advocate Janet Allen discusses strategies for teaching nonfiction reading using Joy Hakim's award winning A History of US series as the center of a blossoming campaign among educators to integrate literacy and history. Classroom tested at a variety of grade levels, real student samples are interspersed throughout the book providing clearer understanding of the strategies in action.

Library Journal

Well-known literacy advocate Allen (Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12) has written what he calls a "practical guide [for] improving literacy" to be used in conjunction with Joy Hakim's 11-volume A History of U.S., a source book for middle schools. She focuses not on the content of American history but instead on strategies to seduce students into an interest in learning about American history. The book includes a somewhat hortatory introduction, 96 pages of methods, 18 pages of "graphic organizers" (various blank forms or checklists students can use to chart and clarify their progress), many copies of student work, and nearly 40 pages of bibliographical resources. The sections cover such general areas as building foundations, prereading strategies, providing ongoing support, and making learning meaningful. Like most such books (e.g., Maryann Manning's The Theme Immersion Compendium for Social Studies Teaching and Jean B. Schumaker's Adapting Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science Materials for the Inclusive Classroom), this one is chock-full of real-world methodologies designed to overcome resistance and apathy from students who, at least as presented in the introduction, are generally ignorant and unmotivated. Suitable for textbook collections, particularly in those middle schools that use Hakim's A History of U.S.-Peter Dollard, Mt. Pleasant, MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Janet Allen is one of the most prominent and outspoken literacy advocates in the country. A former elementary school teacher and university instructor, hundreds of teachers attend her seminars each year. Her books Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12 and Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading have been praised by elementary and secondary school teachers, education professors, adult literacy advocates, and ESL instructors. Dr. Allen lives in Orlando, Florida.

Christine Landaker has been teaching for the last ten years; her first nine were in urban and suburban schools in Orlando, Florida. Her first love is history and the social studies, followed closely by her love of reading and English. She has seemlessly combined the two in her classroom. Christine is currently an 8th grade English teacher at Pierce Middle School in Milton, Massachusetts.