"Patience is a virtue, a virtue is a grace, you add them all together you get a happy face."

When I was looking up a song to teach my math lesson, I came across this quote a teacher said on YouTube and I fell in love with the quote.  It made me remember the teachers I had who would always put a smile on their face re-teaching the lesson until the class have learned the material, even when they were tired of having to reteach the lesson.  As teachers, we have to remember just because we have been on the same lesson for two or three weeks, we need to find ways to help our students learn, even if it is pulling the student to side to help them learn.

Improving Reading Skills in the Social Studies Classroom

In order to understand social studies you have to be capable of reading.  This article talks about students difficulties in reading social studies materials.  Students have difficulties reading social studies materials.  Even I had trouble reading social studies material when I was in middle school.  The article discusses three reasons why students struggle reading social studies materials.  Three reasons are expository text, subject-specific vocabulary, and densely factual material.  This is true because when I was in middle school, I was familiar with narrative text than expository text.  When I was giving outside resources on a topic with a narrative format, I understood the topic more than I did with resources that had an expository format.  I was also not able to grasp terms in social studies because familiar words that are used in normally are also used in unfamiliar ways.  However, the article also provides strategies in helping students improve their reading skills in social studies.  If I were taught these strategies in middle school, then maybe I would have not struggled so much.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/subject/improving_reading.phtml

Helping English Language Students in a Social Studies Classroom

Often, Ell or ESL students are often forgotten about in the classroom.  When I was in the sixth grade, there was this one student who did not struggle in math, but struggled in social studies, reading, and language.  He struggled because English was his second language.  Many of my teachers did not try to find ways to help him succeed in those areas.  They would let him sleep in class or not explain the material to him at all.  Having a student in the classroom who does not speak English seems horrifying, but there are ways to help the student be successful.  In one of my education classes, I learned that as teachers we can read the information out a loud to the student, provide vocabulary, use visuals, and more. Below are links to help an ell or ESL student in the classroom.

http://suite101.com/article/teaching-social-studies-to-esl-students-a129303

http://escort.org/?q=node/163

http://www.eslpartyland.com/teaching-esl-student