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History Literacy in the Classroom

Daniella Armendariz

Arizona State University

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Introduction: The importance of adolescent literacy.

Literacy is a thing some may take for granted, while for others it might be the thing

separating them from their goals or better opportunities. Adolescent literacy is so important for

not just nations but the world to consider a top priority due positive effects from economic

prosperity to even mortality rates. For the purpose of this paper the focus is on American history

classrooms and how teaching students developmental social, communication, and learning skills

lead to better literacy and mastery in the historical discipline. Literacy among adolescents is

important as they learn the fundamental skills to learn in any discipline. Students are able to

create deeper understandings and better independence while reading texts, all the while

improving their ideas and knowledge (NCTE, 2018). How must one write and research a history

paper without learning how to do the basics in English class, or actively read and understand

word problems in math class? These questions and more prove that literacy prior to entering a

different subject classroom is key to begin to learn and succeed in any class. In this paper I will

continue the discussion for how the importance of literacy development connects to historical

literacy in the classroom. In addition I identify 3 problems students have in history classrooms

that make it hard to master historical literacy such as making sense of historical language in

sources, connecting with past events in history to a bigger picture, and finally using sources to

support their claims in historical writing.

Historical Literacy in the classroom

Students in secondary education build on the building blocks learned in elementary

school such as reading, writing, and listening to begin to decipher the world and develop more

skills. This expectation for our students is not foreign, however the same logic can be applied in

each discipline, because we as teachers must know what our students bring to work with.
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Literacy is described as the ability to read, write, speak, and listen that allows us to communicate

better and understand the world, according to Literacy Trust UK (2017). Therefore, knowing

what educational backgrounds students come from better informs the teacher to take what is

given and grows it into skills within the discipline that allows the student to master and

understand the discipline. In other words, developing student’s historical literacy in history

classrooms.

Historical Literacy in the classroom occurs when students are able to comprehend,

analyze, and interpret historical texts of all types (Shreiner & Zwart, p. 443, 2020). Students

when given primary or secondary source documents are supposed to do more than read them for

class discussion the next day. Historical Literacy allows students to have the tools and skills to

be able to “do as historians would do”. What this means is take sources and close read the text or

actively read the text while learning the meaning of words, passages, images, and other content

sources in aim to connecting each with other background knowledge or historical theories, while

interpreting it in their own unique ways (Shreiner & Zwart, p. 443, 2020). This has posed a

challenge to both teachers and students in history classrooms, as both have lacked the knowledge

on how to actively read and interpret text as experts in the field.

The way students can be equipped to decode the primary or secondary source their

teacher has shared with them, they must have a basic sense of how to active read, a skill learned

in the early stages of literacy in the American public schools systems. Therefore, being able to

make sense of historical language students must know how to both actively read texts and have a

clear narrative framework (Shreiner & Zwart, p. 448, 2020). In other words, create a conceptual

layout for the history discussed in class so students know what the time period tells us today

about its turn of events. The right mindset when studying history is key and is best when
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introduced to students at the introduction of class to begin to build into their routine and better

develop their historical literacy. The disconnect students may feel when trying to connect with

historical language is reduced when students are skilled in active or close reading and have the

historical mindset prepared to interpret texts when reading in history classrooms.

Students Learning Historical Literacy Skills

Students in history classrooms are expected to learn of people and places from all over

the globe and to try to relate in multiple ways to their feelings and experiences through analyzing

and interpreting content. However, what about the background, people, and places of what they

see every day? This question has been posed to history teachers for years, in aims to get students

to be informed of their communities, or the idea of local history. For educators in Pittsburg from

Dunbar Academy, they set out to promote local history for their students in order to improve

their historical literacy by supporting their literacy skills and connect culturally to history

especially in an area they are familiar with, their own communities.

A challenge students in history classes face is understanding history in a historical

context in time, in other words, the bigger picture in history. Getting them to critically think of

historical events, people, places and ideologies by creating connections with them. Dunbar

Academy educators found that the promotion and incorporation of local history or culturally

relevant pedagogy, allows students to improve literacy skills while learning of their cultures and

others. In addition, they found that providing the correct cognitive resources help more students

complete tasks and assignments when interpreting history. This is done by building on top of

literacy basics such as active and close reading a variety of texts and sources, scaffolding

information, and having a sense of historical empathy (Kucan, et al., 2018). Furthermore,

learning local history enables students to closely relate and interpret content and develop a sense
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of cultural pride while instilling understanding when learning about others. In the end of Dunbar

Academy’s finding they discovered that when considering student’s background while learning

local history and general history they create connections and understand history better while

improving literary skills and overall historical literacy.

Using Historical Writing to Understand History

The final challenge students face when in history classrooms is how to use historical texts

to understand and interpret content when having to demonstrate findings and support claims in

student’s own historical writing. Authors Brian Girard and Lauren McArthur Harris set out to

discover ways to improve historical thinking and learning by studying Ms. Stark’s history class.

In their findings they discovered that emphasizing that learning, reading, and writing historically

are evidence-based interpretations that support student’s own historical writing (Girard and

Harris, 2012). Using these evidence-based interpretation students decipher the historical context

while connecting to the text and doing historical analysis. In addition, they found that providing

students with the right cognitive tools like disciplinary history skills like organizing information

in ways that make sense to students and using scaffolding tools to increase task and assignment

completion (Girard and Harris, 2012). These tools support student historical thinking which

makes historical writing easier and achievable in historical classrooms.

Other supporter of evidence-based arguments in historical texts are Daniel R. Wissinger

and Susan De La Paz, both with PhD’s looking at how historical writing is possible and how

students effectively create arguments supported by texts in education. They discovered that

through evidence-based instruction and presentation of historical content, students are able to

write their historical arguments after understanding their sources while providing their

interpretation and still address counterevidence to strengthen their argument in historical writing
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(Wissinger & De La Paz, 2020). The promotion of evidence-based instruction and discipline-

specific strategies in this reading come from research in improving reading and writing

comprehension among struggling students. The authors found it key that instructors that

scaffolded historical reading, modeled and then gave students more independence, and gave clear

expectations through rubrics saw positive changes in students historical writing skills and overall

improved historical literacy.

Conclusion

Adolescent literacy in students prior to walking into any history class is crucial for

teachers to begin to know and create understanding relationships with their students. The

importance in adolescent literacy is demonstrated in each subject, in history is the fundamental

core to historical literacy, as students develop their skills in reading, writing, critical, thinking,

and interpreting sources. Challenges that history students face in the classroom such as

connecting with historical text through active reading, understanding the bigger picture in

history, and developing historical writing skills are challenged and won by literacy development

strategies that are student centered and rely on student comprehension of content stemming from

basic literacy skills. All in all, adolescent literacy is vital for student’s ability to succeed in other

content courses where the teacher prompts students to think like historians by providing the

strategies and skills necessary to understand and decipher historical texts while improving

reading, critical thinking, and writing skills for historical literacy mastery.

References

Girard, B. & McArthur Harris, L. (2012). Striving for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction:

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Cognitive Tools in a World History Course. Theory & Research in Social

Education. 40:3. Pages 230-25. DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2012.705183

Kucan, L., Rainey, E., Cho, B.Y. (2018). Engaging Middle School Students in Disciplinary

Literacy Through Culturally Relevant Historical Inquiry. International Literary

Association. Accessed September 05, 2020.  

https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1002/jaal.940

National Council of Teachers of English. (2018). A Call to Action: What We Know About

Adolescent Literacy Instruction. Retrieved September 05, 2020, from

https://ncte.org/statement/adolescentliteracy/

National Literacy Trust. (2017). What is Literacy? Retrieved August 27, 2020, from

https://literacytrust.org.uk/information/what-is-literacy/

Shreiner, T. L., & Zwart, D. E. (2020). It’s Just Different: Identifying features of Disciplinary

Literacy Unique to World History. Volume 53. Accessed September 05, 2020.

https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=eft&AN=145299665&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Wissinger, D. R., & De La Paz, S. (2020). Effects of Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction on

Historical Writing Growth of Students with Writing Difficulties. Journal of Learning

Disabilities, 53(3), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420904343