Standard Four: Multiple Instructional Strategies

Personal Focus: Integrating Literature into Social Studies Instruction

In their short journal article called, “Promoting Social Studies Understanding

Through Literature-based Instruction”, Tom McGowan and Barbara Guzzetti promote the concept of learning social studies by linking quality literature-based tradebooks to social studies concepts. This literature-connection assists students in the social studies field today, since many of them have problems with text structure. A lack of literature- reading in the home has caused some students to have little to no knowledge basis of social studies. Multi-cultural students (especially immigrant students) also may have an inadequate background of knowledge for many of our American-based social studies concepts. To help overcome these obstacles, McGowan and Guzzetti recommend combining tradebooks (narrative and expository), with the social studies curriculum.

Whereas textbooks typically flood readers with densely packed concepts, literature allows students to focus and reflect upon a few concepts at a time (McGowan & Guzzetti

1991, 17).

I am in agreement with the authors, and I contend that using tradebooks alongside students' assigned textbooks will help improve both comprehension and multicultural understandings of the social studies content. Furthermore, with a literature-based approach, each discipline can supplement and reinforce the other and students can then begin to see that both disciplines have relevance to each other. Sociology 101: Social Control in Literary Work

Objective: Students will examine the correlation between society and collective behavior. Students will learn theories that attempt to explain collective behavior, particularly the impact of social control, and will understand the positives and negatives associated with collective behavior. Students will be able to link the concept of social control to literature by studying several literary works.

Indiana State Objectives:

P. 8.8.8.3 Students Discuss willboth discuss the benefits theories and socialthat attempt costs ofto collectiveexplain collective behavior in society.behavior.

Group the students into groups based on their previous reading of the following literary works: Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Scarlet Letter, 1984, and a final group that has no prior reading of any of the novels. Get copies of these books from the media center and the English department. Have students browse through the books again to review the material. Have them locate and document 5 quotes or instances in the book that specifically show social control.

Check out “Animal Farm” and “Scarlet Letter” from local library, and watch 5 minute video clips of each.

Have the students research a literary novel that they have not read (so it cannot be the novel they discussed in activity above). Pair students up to research the new novel on the internet, and answer these questions:

1. Locate a synopsis of your novel. Write a one to two paragraph summary of it. Be sure to use your own thoughts and words, and be careful to not plagiarize! 2. Find out when the book was written. What historical factors occurred at the time of the book’s publish date that may have contributed to the author writing about social control? 3. Select one passage from the book that best highlights social control. 4. How is social order connected to politics in your book? What is socialism? Is there a correlation between political power and social order? How is social order different from socialism? 5. What theory does this book best align with in explaining social control? Explain why.

Write each book’s name high on the chalk board, and have a student from each group give a short summary of their book and write the passage from each book that best highlights social control on the board, so the students will get a synopsis of every literary book researched.