Teaching Social Studies to Multilingual Learners in Middle School
Teaching Social Studies to Multilingual Learners in Middle School: Connecting Inquiry and Visual Literacy to Promote Progressive Learning explores effective strategies for teaching social studies to multilingual learners. The centerpiece is a visual literacy framework that integrates inquiry, primary source analysis, and visual literacy to provide a progressive learning sequence to meet the varied needs of learners. The visual literacy framework brings together related aspects of progressive, sequential learning into a cohesive, coherent whole. It has an adaptable structure that allows teachers to customize learning activities to meet individual student needs. The progressive learning sequence has varied modes of learning that help teachers move students from basic to proficient to advanced levels of support.
This book is organized into two related parts. The first three chapters provide important content and context on social studies, multilingual learner education, and the visual literacy framework. The remaining chapters discuss U.S. history, world history, geography, and civics/government. Each chapter defines the subject area, briefly traces its development as a middle school subject over time, and offers classroom exercises on using the visual literacy framework in these disciplines. The exercises are plotted so that differing levels of the visual literacy framework are explored throughout the book.
Xiaoning Chen is assistant professor of ESL/bilingual education at National College of Education, National Louis University. She has published articles and book chapters on multimodal analysis of visuals in science textbooks, translation issues in dual language children’s literature, and visual literacy and English language learners. Her research focuses on leveraging visuals and visual literacy to provide equitable access to content for multilingual learners. She has directed the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Regional Grant to enhance multilingual students’ engagement in STEM.
Mark Newman is professor of social science education at National College of Education, National Louis University. He has published books and articles on primary sources, visual culture, geography, and visual literacy. He has directed the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources and National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Newman won the National Louis Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016.