"In Your Mind and On the Paper": Teaching Students to Transform (and Own) Texts

Social Studies Review, Fall 2004 by Fisher, Douglas, Schell, Emily, Frey, Nancy

How can we empower students to comprehend and use the various texts they are exposed to in social studies? How can students master the skills to appropriately evaluate and manage the vast body of information about the world that confronts them? The complexities of social studies texts makes this an almost overwhelming task. Students must learn to read for information from contemporary sources as well as historical documents. Beyond that, they must write summaries, persuasive arguments, and reports. Further, they must listen to teachers, guest speakers, and authentic recordings. Students must also answer questions orally, talk with partners about the content, and give public speeches. And finally, they must interpret complex visual information. In other words, the learning of social studies is language-based. Students process information by reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. Entire papers could be written on each of these subjects, so we are going to limit our present discussion to the realm of reading. More specifically, we will explore the various ways in which we, as teachers, can facilitate text comprehension. We will focus our discussion on the range of texts that students typically encounter in the social studies classroom, including the core textbook, associated literature selections, primary source documents, and Internet sites. Our goal is to ensure that students engage with the various texts they are exposed to and learn from these texts (Alvermann, 2002).

TRANSFORMING TEXT-WHAT DO WE MEAN?

The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary indicates that the word transform means "to change in composition or structure." This dictionary also indicates that the word "implies a major change in form, nature, or function as in transformed a small company into a corporate giant." We think that this word and its definition fit just right. Our work with students learning history and social studies content from texts suggests that they must transform the text in some way. This transformation allows students to learn with and through the texts. In other words, just reading the text is not sufficient, they must do something with it - they must transform the text so that it becomes part of them and their memory (e.g., Fisher & Frey, 2004).

The interesting question, then, is how can we get students to transform texts? We have organized our thinking about this question into two areas: 1) strategies that require students to transform the text in their mind; and 2) strategies that require students to transform the text on paper. We'll explore each of these as they relate to social studies texts.

"IN YOUR MIND" STRATEGIES FOR TRANSFORMING THE TEXT

There are a number of ways that students can transform the text in their minds including making connections, engaging in partner conversations, and visualizing.

Making connections: One of the ways that students can transform the text in their minds is by making connections with the text. Harvey and Goudvis (2000) suggest that there are at least three kinds of connections that students can make: text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. Of course students must be taught how to make these connections with their reading materials and must focus on connections that help them understand, remember, and apply the reading.

In terms of teaching these connections, our experience suggests that teachers should select specific passages and invite students to make connections across the three categories. The teacher should model the type of connection that is useful. For example, a teacher might select the following passage from the social studies text to read aloud and then model making connections:

Under Shihuangdi's leadership, unified China grew bigger and stronger. The empire also became increasingly rich as taxes flowed into the capital. As time went by, the government began making ever greater demands on its people. (Ancient World, 1999, p. 244)

Text-to-self:

I remember playing field hockey in high school. When we had good leadership, our team was big and strong. Everyone worked hard to be apart of our team. We took our games seriously and listened to the team captain. When she wanted us to work harder, we did. I have also participated on teams that had poor leadership. We did not want to work hard and as a result, we performed poorly.

Text-to-text:

So far in this chapter about China, no one has been mentioned as a great leader. I have only read about the changes and turmoil in early Chinese history. Leadership must be important to the success of a nation.

This reminds me of someone we read about earlier in the year. His name was Hammurabi and he was a strong leader, too. Shihuangdi also reminds me of some of the Egyptian pharaohs that we read about.

I read a book about Ancient China last year. I was fascinated by this terra cotta army that the emperor had built. I think Shihuangdi was that emperor!

Text-to-world:

My parents are always talking about taxes and how it's the fault of the governor and the president. I guess taxing workers is not a new concept. Have empires, or governments, always tried to become rich by taxing the people? I wonder if there is another way to become rich.