Check out these strategies for effectively using CommonLit in social studies classrooms!
Literacy is an essential component of social studies classes, but it can be really hard to find relevant, high-quality texts to use with students. At CommonLit, we aim to ensure that all teachers can access a wide range of engaging and authentic texts. From our high-quality primary sources, news articles, and informational texts, the content available to social studies teachers on CommonLit is sure to engage students.
This blogpost will highlight three easy ways social studies teachers can use CommonLit in their classrooms.
Strategy 1: Debate Day
CommonLit has over 2,000 texts that are perfect for conducting a Debate Day in your classroom. You can quickly search the CommonLit lesson library for themes, topics, and events that are related to your curriculum and access a wide selection of relevant texts. For example, let’s say that you want to explore lawmakers and legislation with your Civics class.
First, filter the CommonLit library for 9th grade texts. You'll notice that there are still over 300 texts to choose from, so you can narrow the search even further by also filtering by CommonLit’s “Justice, Freedom, and Equality” theme, which seems to fit the focus of this debate. Next, you can scan through these results looking for a text that will be engaging to students. You notice a text called “Electric Scooters On Collision Course With Pedestrians And Lawmakers.” After reading it over, you see that the text lends itself perfectly to a debate.
As students read this text, they’ll form opinions on the use of electric scooters. As a final activity, students will participate in a class-wide debate or discussion on whether they think scooters should be banned.
Strategy 2: On this day…
Another strategy that teachers can use in their classrooms is “On this day…” where students are transported back in time to the date/time period of a major historical event. Over 50% of the texts in CommonLit’s library are informational. We offer articles from The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
To find relevant texts, you filter the CommonLit library by the “News” or “Primary Source Document” genre. If you're currently working on the 9/11 attack with students, you can use the “U.S. Attacked; Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers And Hit Pentagon In Day Of Terror,” or if you’re studying the Boston Tea Party, you can use “A Participant’s First-Hand Account Of The Boston Tea Party.”
Each lesson in the CommonLit library has resources that can help make this lesson come alive for students. The “Related Media” tab has many multimedia resources that can help boost engagement. You can also use the Discussion Questions to engage students in a class conversation about the event that's being analyzed.
Strategy 3: Research Project
You can use the resources available on CommonLit to craft a research unit about the Civil War, World War II, or any major historical event. CommonLit has created dozens of easy-to-use text sets that are related to topics, events, and historical eras.
Suppose students are researching the question, “Why was the Civil War inevitable? Why did both sides opt for war?” To support your students, you can help identify texts that they can use in their research. To start the search, you can filter the CommonLit library by “Text Set” to access the 44 (and growing!) texts related to the American Civil War.
Within this text set, you'll find primary documents and speeches from the Civil War, in addition to texts about the surrounding events and actors. As you scan through these texts, you’ll want to make sure to select a text that is on an appropriate grade level for your students and is aligned to the research question. “The Missouri Compromise,” “Bloody Kansas,” and “The Election of 1860” seem to be a great fit for students who are working on that research question!
Next Steps
Browse the CommonLit library to find more great texts that you can incorporate into your classroom!
If you’re interested in learning all about CommonLit’s free digital literacy program, join one of our upcoming webinars.
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