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Creating a Database: to
Incorporate Social Studies into
English Language Arts for
Educators
Inspiration Phase

By
Jose Rico, Graciela Gil Ventura , and Matthew Benavides
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Statement of Purpose

One real life problem in today’s education system is students lacking knowledge of the

history of the United States of America. Social studies has been pushed to the side in order to

focus on subjects that will raise standardized test scores. In Fresno Unified the current social

studies curriculum is very old. It is about ten years out of date. Social Studies in order to be

relevant needs to be current. As such, the curriculum should be a dynamic digital curriculum that

is updated constantly. We propose then that conventional textbook approaches are not sufficient.

The district places a lot of emphasis on Wonders and GoMath their curriculums for English

Language Arts and math respectively. Wonders is supposed to incorporate Social Studies and

Science into the curriculum. These incorporations are of varying quality. Further no current

events are present within the curriculum. This has forced many teachers to formulate their own

lessons about current events. These same teachers are the marketplace for some of the resources

we propose as being useful to shore up the issues created by a lack of a strong social studies

curriculum.

It is important to solve this problem because it will create critical thinkers capable of

analyzing US history and current events. The working class history of the United States is not

often told. These issues impact the daily life of students and educators. They have to do with

workers power, women’s rights, and racial liberation. We will focus on immigration issues as a

way to elucidate a path forward towards raising consciousness. These issues can be taught if

radical educators come together to pool resources. Further this will engage students with

culturally responsive pedagogy.

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We believe a website is the best way to move forward on this issue. We would like to see

a dynamic repository of radical teaching resources. The nature of this project is to be one that is

crafted democratically. We will provide resources, such as lesson plans, activities, writing

prompts for teaching immigration specifically in order to focus our project. We will incorporate

Social Sciences in english language arts in order to satisfy common core standards and

management that wants test scores raised.

The ultimate impact we strive to achieve is students having access to the history of

immigration learn from different point of views and incorporate into their everyday life and

become socially aware of their surroundings. Immingration going on right now it can be a

gateway for the students to know that they are not alone and can learn from history and influence

change while incorporating into their writing.

Children can learn almost anything on YouTube. We as educators have to contend with

the fact that students can learn at any time using these digital devices. What then is the role of the

educator? We argue that it is to help students learn to navigate this technological landscape using

critical thinking and learning how to utilize resources to gain a deep understanding of a given

topic. This understanding then will be communicated through engagement with various social

studies texts while developing student’s ELA abilities.

Literature Review

Introduction to our Resources

The literature surrounding this issue is largely technology based data sets. I will review
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several sources including NewELA, The Zinn Education Project, and Rethinking Schools. These

tools provide resources for the social studies minded educator to engage with their students while

fulfilling English Language Arts Standards. NewsELA is a website that allows for educators to

assign grade level news stories to their students. The Zinn Education Project aims to equip

educators to teach the working class history of the United States. Rethinking Schools is a

magazine that promotes social justice education. I will construct this review by giving a brief

overview of the various resources we are looking at. The sources will be discussed in the

following order NewsELA,, Zinn Education Project, and Rethinking our Schools.

NewsELA:

​NewsELA is a website that produces leveled news stories for students. These

assignments can be used to formulate lessons to incorporate social studies into ELA. There are

also text sets created and shared by teachers which can help in crafting lessons for students. The

site then is an excellent resource to engage students with current events. This helps teachers be

able to ameliorate the lack of current events curriculum in the school district. NewsELA shys

away from some controversial topics such as police violence. Further there is not a deep analysis

of issues in their texts. This is a detractor compared to other more socially conscious sites.

However, the social conscious teacher could easily provide the missing analysis of given texts.

Zinn Education Project

The Zinn Education Project is an attempt to continue the legacy of the socialist historian

Howard Zinn. The website provides resources to teachers so they can teach the working class

history of the United States. An example of this is a teacher who shared a lesson she did with
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students. This lesson titled: “Our Grandparents’ Civil Rights Era: Family Letters Bring History

to Life.” The lesson was inspired by a story about a seven year old girl who participated in the

Montgomery bus boycott. The teacher had students write letters to their grandparents to ask them

what they were doing during the civil rights era.

These letters were able to incorporate ELA and social studies. Students, who were only

seven, were able to practice their letter writing skills. The teacher remarked that they were able

to understand that 1955 was not that long ago. People are still alive who were agents in the civil

rights struggle. This lesson is one of many. Many different teachers contribute to the site. The

database can only grow as more radical teachers share their lessons and expand the database.

Rethinking Schools

Rethinking Schools is a magazine that was started in 1986 and is influenced by Critical

Pedagogy. The outlook of the magazine, the website relates, has not changed “Most importantly,

it remains firmly committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the

creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy.” Further the website focuses on racial

injustice. This critical pedagogical approach which treats students as agents is highly compatible

with our mission in this project. The website treats various topics. Their most recent magazine

discusses the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is a perfect social studies topic to teach

during ELA time. It can integrate various topics showing how government, climate change, and

activism are connected.

The Zinn Education Project does a lot of work with Rethinking Schools. These sources

combined with NewELA can help formulate the start of an integrated social studies and ELA
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curriculum. One of the most important parts of education is showing students how various

disciplines are connected. Injustice can only be understood through education. Further, defeating

injustice can only be accomplished through solidarity across struggles. This is all linked with

giving students agency and empowering them to be critical thinking change makers. This comes

first through educating them about social realities. This is the aim of our project.

Project Description

Our project audience are K-12 teachers, parents, and students that would like to learn

more about the social sciences from a multitude of sources that may not always be readily

available in most K-12 curriculum. Our audience consists of people that want to learn more

about the social sciences, specifically those events that allow them to think critically. This

program allows students to learn critical ideas while also being able to incorporate their English

language arts curriculum. Our program will provide sources that are in languages that are in

different languages (i.e. records, pamphlets, texts). Our program will allow students to select

texts and sources that can be adapted to their grade level or ease of reading, so that they may

comprehend the texts. Sources will also include images, charts, and graphs to better support

visual learners. We will each contribute a lesson plan showcasing our own radical ideas and

make them available for sympathetic educators. We will further create a platform for others to

contribute to. Our project will focus on utilizing the social sciences in English language arts

works. We would like to use a website database in which our audience can access the resources

needed for their ELA projects, possibly we could incorporate this program into an application.

Smartphones are a tool that are becoming increasingly powerful and easily accessible, creating
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an ease of access at the tap of a screen would allow us to reach a broader audience. This would

allow our audience to access our program not only at school but also in the home and on the go.

Our project is unique in the sense that it incorporates social sciences within the English language

arts curriculum and supports this through the use of sources that allow them to think critically

and about issues that may affect them directly.

Questions/Concerns

A concern we have is how to distribute this resource to teachers and how many of them are

willing to use it for their language art lesson plan.

About you 2

As future educators, it is important to address history to the students so they can become

competent citizens. The personal connection of this topic is addressing the issue of immigation.

Students' parents may have been affected in the low income area in Fresno Unified School

District. Making the students not feel alone in a situation like mine.

Settings

We are operating our project in the Fresno Unified School District. The setting is focused

in high percentage of minority groups in the schools, which is the majority of the schools in

FUSD. ​FUSD Schools

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References

McCormick, Willow. Our Grandparents’ Civil Rights Era: Family Letters Bring History to Life.

Accessed on: Zinnedproject.org.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/our-grandparents-civil-rights-era/

NewELA. NewsELA.com

Rethinking our Schools. RethinkingSchools.org