Review of Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners

Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners Second Edition by Barbara C. Cruz and Stephen J. Thornton is a book that all teachers who teach ESL social studies should read. It has a lot of good practical examples. Many education books can be heavy on the theory with not as much concrete examples. If concrete examples are provided, the reader may not be able to smoothly implement the examples in his/her classroom. With this book, on the other hand, it is narrowly focused on applying ESL best practices to social studies classes, so teachers can readily see how the examples can be applied to their own classes. The first part of the book discusses how ESL best practices can be applied to social studies classes overall, and then the second half of the book provides effective ESL activities for specific social studies classes like world history and government.

The book’s format is an effective way to communicate ESL best practices to social studies teachers.  It’s also good for co-teachers to read and discuss so that they can both be on the same page of what a good ESL social studies class looks like.

One big theme brought up throughout the book, especially in the first half of the book, is an argument against teacher-centered-classrooms. This kind of teaching is very common in all kinds of education, especially high school and college. Much of the current educational literature advocates for a different kind of classroom that doesn’t just involve students passively absorbing information from the teacher but instead they are actively engaged – engaged in activities, projects, critical thinking, and creation. This is especially important for ESL classrooms. The modeling has not been great for teachers since college is very much dominated by teacher-centered-classrooms. However, there is a better method, especially for ELs. Current ESL literature advocates activities/projects and differentiation, which allows all students to be engaged in the lesson. This book is based around that approach. Overall, I was underlining a lot. Ideas and activities from one social studies subject, like US history, could be applied to another subject, like world history.

A good book to pair with this book is Co-Teaching for English Learners: A Guide to Collaborative Planning, Instruction, Assessment, and Reflection by Maria G. Dove and Andrea Honigsfeld. That book provides different formats/systems for co-teaching, like stations, parallel teaching, and teaching to the whole class (a possible model but with plenty of warning accompanying this model).