# data[].attributes.body
Social Science education is not simply memorizing dates and facts. To truly become a scholar of Social Science, teachers must guide students to think critically, create meaning to the content, develop compassion, and celebrate the diversity that each student brings to the classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
Cultural Literacy: An Essential Skill to Achieving Content Literacy

# data[].attributes.subject
Cultural Literacy: An Essential Skill to Achieving Content Literacy

# data[].attributes.body
There are many types of literacy in the world of education. Content literacy, or the ability to understand content specific language is often times the literacy that is focused on the most in a classroom. Cultural literacy is equally as important as content literacy in the classroom. Without cultural literacy, teachers and students alike will most likely fail to create meaning to the material. Through cultural literacy, teachers are able to create lessons that present the content in a way that each student can comprehend and create meaning to. In other words, if a teacher with a diverse student body population cannot teach her material to include various perspectives to that all of her students can create meaning to, the students who fail to create meaning of the content may not reach the level of content literacy that they are required to. Social Studies content tends to be culture specific (Sparza pg. 3). ELL students in particular are learning about the history, politics, economics, and cultural of their newly adopted country. Teachers must help them incorporate their individual histories to access meaning to the new material they are introduced to. The most difficult component of second language acquisition is verbal fluency. Teenagers naturally are self-conscious, constantly worrying about the judgement they face from their peers. ELL students in high school tend to withdraw as they are worried about their perception. Feedback and reinforcement is key in second language acquisition (Oxford Learning). Lessons that utilize group pair-sharing that is rich with positive reinforcement and feedback are essential for teachers who have ELL students as well as a diverse student population. Through the feedback and reinforcement, students will be more likely to feel safe to share and receive feedback from the teacher and peers, allowing more opportunity for them to create meaning and achieve content literacy.  (DuTart USC MAT Video Archive)

# data[].attributes.headline
Mrs. DuTart's Melting Pot: A Class that Blends All Backgrounds Into One Enriching Experience

# data[].attributes.subject
Mrs. DuTart's Melting Pot: A Class that Blends All Backgrounds Into One Enriching Experience

# data[].attributes.body
America is often referred to as a melting pot. This metaphor simply highlights the fact that people from all over the world at one point made a courageous decision to leave their native cultures and pursue a new life. Like the United States, classrooms too are a "melting pot" for students of different cultural, socio-economic, backgrounds to come together. In a Social Science classroom, this diversity is what can make a classroom excel or greatly hinder student learning experience. Learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them (Lantolf, pg. 8) According to the MAT USC Learning Theory Matrix, Sociocultural Theory uses both formal and informal avenues for students to use their individual backgrounds to interpret the content taught in the classroom. Teachers must understand how students' subjective realities may impact their comprehension and internalization of content. At an International School, it is imperative that students use their prior knowledge of their lives, but also learn about their peers' perspectives. In the video below, during a 10th grade Socratic Seminar, students were asked to explore the two sides of energy consumption. Half of the room were in charge of discussing the importance of conscious decision making, whereas the other half were assigned to discuss how it did not matter. Students engaged in a discussion hearing each other out and learning from different cultural, ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds resulting in a positive learning experience. (DuTart USC MAT Video Archive)

# data[].attributes.body
Grade 10 students utilized the Padlet platform during a lesson that explored the concept of wants vs needs. Students saw that what some considered wants others considered needs and vice versa. This allowed us to transition to the Socratic Seminar Essential Question in the corresponding video featured above.

# data[].attributes.headline
Putting the "Interaction" into Interactive Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
Putting the "Interaction" into Interactive Learning

# data[].attributes.body
Learning is an interactive process. Gone are the days where students sit silently in rows of seats writing down the words that teachers say. Students must challenge, investigate, and interact with the content going on in the classroom. Technology is one of the many avenues to create interaction with the content. Padlet has proven an effective platform for my ninth and tenth grade students as it is similar to what they use with Instagram. Physical Activity is another avenue that creates involvement and interaction with the students. Students physically interact with content which creates more opportunity for each individual student to formulate their own meaning in the classroom. Increasing physical activity in the classroom has been linked to higher test scores and better performance on tasks that involved memorization (Physical Activity and Learning). In a lesson like the one featured in the attached video, memorizing differences between theories of motivation could prove difficult without students connecting to the content. In order to introduce several theories, I picked different interactive platforms. In this instance, I introduced the lesson by doing an interactive activity that displayed the main idea of Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning. The students enjoyed the activity and created a memorable experience that was later discussed during one of the stations. In the discussion, students were asked to reflect on a time where they may have experienced a similar situation and also to think about where in the real world they may see this take place. By incorporating physical movement into the content, students were able to effectively comprehend and reflect on the differences, similarities, and key ideas of the content. (DuTart MAT USC Video Archive)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Interactive Activity: Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning

# data[].attributes.headline
Reflective Teaching and Reflective Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
Reflective Teaching and Reflective Learning

# data[].attributes.body
Constant reflection is as important to teaching as it is to learning. Having students reflect on the content increases the likelihood that they will achieve content specific literacy. Psychology is full of content-specific language. For my ELL students pair-sharing in small group settings allows them to verbalize their ideas in a reflective context and demonstrate their ability to comprehend as well as allow the teacher to formatively assess what material needs further coverage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mini Unit Plan Lesson 2 Page 2 Non-ELL.HEIC

# data[].attributes.body
MAT USC Learning Theory Matrix

“#OeL - Helping You to Fulfil Your Professional Development Bit.ly/VBQMFb.” OeL Journals, www.oxforde-learning.com/journals/.

Szpara, Michelle Yvonne. “Making Social Studies Meaningful for ELL Students: Content and Pedagogy in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms.” Long Island University.

“Physical Activity.” Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, 2012, pp. 2627–2627., doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_5259.

(Moerk, E.L. (1994) "Corrections in first language acquisition: Theoretical controversies and factual evidence". International Journal of Psycholinguistics. 10: 33–58.).