Taming the Text: Engaging and Supporting Students in Social Studies Readings
or scores of students, schoolF assigned reading is the bane of their academic careers-especially in content areas such as social studies. As university professors, we repeatedly see teachers at both the professional and preservice levels dutifully trudging through social studies textbooks with their classes. Although the chapters are “covered,” students’ lack of interest is palpable, and their comprehension of important concepts is, at best, questionable. One acquaintance of ours, an enthusiastic but exasperated fifth-grade social studies teacher, recently acknowledged that she had exhausted her reserve of ideas for guiding students through their textbooks: