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Science Perspective on “Teachers and content area reading: Attitudes, beliefs and change”             This journal presents information as to why reading should be taught in content area classes, current attitudes of in-service and pre-service teachers, what is currently being done to form attitudes on teaching reading, and finally what can be done to improve attitudes on teaching reading. To examine the beliefs that pre-service and in-service teachers hold, the author established three guiding questions and searched the ERIC database and found 19 peer-reviewed journals from the last 33 years (1970-2003) that fit the criteria. The author then created a database from the information found in the journals and began to identify patterns to determine if there were specific beliefs held only by pre-service or in-service teachers. The author also identified the methods that the researchers used to address the issue of teaching r...

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Zoom In  is a free resource that focuses on literacy in the social studies classroom. This website has free, ready-to-go lessons that are suitable for getting students to think argumentatively and create papers on multiple US History lessons. There is an information section for teachers to learn how to best implement this resource in their classroom. There is even a testimony from a teacher who says that their student was eager to use this resource to write another paper. This resource is an easy and interactive way to get students to engage in higher order, text-based discussions and to read primary sources for closely and accurately. This source doesn't seem usable in a science or math class, but it can be used in an English class to practice literary skills than will be used apart from the social studies curriculum. There is even a tab for administrators to learn how to implement this resource for the entire school. It appears that Zoom In can be used for a variety of grade leve...

I never would have thought to implement a book club lesson in my future classroom. As a science and social studies content area teacher, it seemed that there aren’t really any narrative type books that would be beneficial for my students to learn the curriculum. I’ve only ever seen book clubs being used in my literature classes when I was in school. However, this chapter gives great insight as to why book clubs can be beneficial for every classroom, no matter what content area.  Book clubs can be very fun and exciting because students get the choice to choose their own book, their own involvement, and determine their own discussion in the book clubs. As a teacher, I would help them learn how to lead literacy discussions about a book in order for my students to become independent literary commentators. Maybe before having individual book clubs, a class-wide book club could be beneficial to model what the group-led book clubs will look like. I like that students get to determi...

Environmental Literacy and Inquiry  is a resource for science content area teachers to use for curriculum that involves the environment. There are five different sections of curriculum materials on this website: energy, tectonics, climate change, land use change, and socio-environmental science investigations. Each of these curriculum sections have and overview, resources, lesson layout, and assessments that can be used for each unit. These units don’t perfectly line up with the Georgia Standards of Excellence, but I think these topics have great social value to students and can get students to think about how science can be used to combat climate change and come up with renewable energy sources.              Each of these units has instructional resources and support materials that include a wide variety of videos and literature that students can read about regarding each of the environmental science topics...

Summary: I read the article titled, “Historical Fiction in English and Social Studies Classrooms: Is It a Natural Marriage?” One discussion is about collaboration between ELA teachers and social studies teachers. It mentions historical empathy and thinking as if you were the person in a historical source or narrative. Another discussion is about fiction vs nonfiction and when to use each and the benefits of each type. The article finishes with the distinction of what literacy means among different content areas (English and social studies). Connections: When I read Night by Wiesel, my 7th grade teacher also made sure to remind us of the historical context of the book and we did a short activity where we placed the events in the book along the timeline of history events that led up to and during them. Also, when we used a newspaper in social studies, it was identified as a primary source and we view the historical context. We never viewed “primary sources” in English class.  ...