History+Through+Literature

Your Name: Hannah Doty #6

Strategy name: History through Literature

Student appropriate grade levels: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Tags: fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, elementary school, middle school, high school, social studies, history, literature, language arts, historical fiction, during reading, general students, gifted students

Content areas: Social Studies and Language Arts

Type of Strategy: During Reading

Types of Students: General, Gifted

Strategy Description: The premise of this strategy is that teachers often feel trapped and students become bored by many social studies texts. Most social studies texts are filled with names, dates, and events that mean little to students and what they did learn quickly disappears after the test. Using historical fiction to teach historical events, however, helps the students’ connect to the facts in a personal way. Using historical fiction in the classroom as a supplement to traditional methods helps reminds students that the figures they study were actually people, complete with bad habits, favorite foods, and best friends. Historical fiction can also provide a window into what it was like to live during a particular time period.

Strategy implementation example: Either complete novels, or selections from novels, could be used to supplement any social studies lesson. A unit on the Great Depression in an seventh grade classroom could utilize Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust ( a book of poetry about a young girl’s experiences growing up in the Dust Bowl), Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bud, Not Buddy (a humorous novel about an orphaned African-American boy’s search for his long-lost family ), and Richard Peck’s Year Down Yonder (the story of a boy sent to live with his grandmother while his parents searched for work in the city.) Students could be divided into groups and assigned a novel to read and discuss. Students could then present their novel to their classmates, which each represent a different experience during the same time period. After each novel had been presented, the teacher could lead the class in a discussion comparing and contrasting the novels discussed.