Book and Blog Post 1

Ahh…here we go! The book that I chose for this course is entitled “Writing Strategies for Social Studies” written by Sarah Kartchner Clark. So you may ask yourself, why must we learn writing strategies in social studies? The answer is quite simple…or is it? The reason one needs to use writing strategies in social studies is, the extensive vocabulary that needs to be examined in order to achieve success and comprehend of the text. Because social studies uses terminology that might be confusing to students, Clark explains in detail how to use writing strategies that will allow a teacher to obtain successful learning in the classroom and make learning said terminology interesting for inspiring learners.

Clark introduces the “Frayer Model” which “is a strategy designed to help students understand relationships and similarities between concepts” (Clark, 25). This model allows the student to write down relevant information that will be needed to learn the concepts and in turn promote mastery of the definition of the terms. By using a graphic organizer, students will be able to understand the concept and use this knowledge to recognize the similarities and differences of the concept and any other concepts in which are discussed in order gain a better understanding. The student starts off by locating a word of interest and places it in the middle of the page and draws lines that will cut the page in four sections. One section will be used for the “definition” of the word, the other for “facts/characteristics,” “examples” and finally “non-examples.” By separating these ideas this allows the student to visualize the meaning of the word in order to define it and in turn eliminate any confusion that could arise.

The next lesson that a teacher can utilize is “The Concept of Definition Map” and this will key in on the definition of the word itself. Clark states, “There are many different ways to learn the definition of a term other than simply looking up the dictionary definition. The concept map of Definition Map outlines a variety of ways for students to learn the meaning of the word” (28). In other words, the map promotes the ability to make valuable connections of the words and allows the students to use his/her prior knowledge that will help he/she learn new word meanings. So, can we agree that writing strategies can help students learn social studies? The answer is yes, because a teacher can take writing strategies and use them in order to let the students expand their vocabulary along with promoting mastery of the terms associated with social studies. The major take-away from Clarks’ ideas is, no matter what the subject may be, if there is a term that a student cannot understand by using these strategies a teacher can make it more understandable for that student/s.