How to Support Multilingual Learners in Elementary Social Studies
As the number of multilingual learners, or English learners, attending U.S. schools continues to climb — as well as the rich diversity of the languages they speak — educators are tasked with providing these students with rigorous, engaging, and accessible instruction in every subject, including social studies.
Why is social studies important for multilingual learners?
For classrooms that follow the C3 Framework, social studies is all about inquiry, or learning through asking questions. By analyzing information, critiquing arguments, and making connections through reading, writing, speaking, and listening in response to a problem, a need, or a question, students build an understanding of the world around them, their place in it, and their ability to use their voices to shape it. It’s vital that multilingual learners have equitable access to those skills, particularly because their place in the world is all too often littered with obstacles, biases, and even threats to their rights. Multilingual learners deserve every opportunity to learn to think historically, civically, spatially, and economically, so that they decide their own future and influence their communities.
How can teachers support multilingual learners in social studies?
Fortunately, as every elementary teacher knows, integration opportunities between ELA and social studies blocks abound. The shared skills between the subjects provide ample opportunities to empower multilingual learners to practice language development through social studies content. However, ensuring that students have equitable access to academic texts and primary sources while considering the impacts of culture and dedicating time for discussion, analysis, and critical thinking in more than one language is no easy task.
Our K-5 social studies academic design team has gathered some of the most important practices to support multilingual learners in your elementary social studies lessons:
Approach instruction with an asset view of language learning.
You may have noticed that we are using the term “multilingual learners” in this blog post. While English Learners and English Language Learners are still commonly used by practitioners and researchers, many have adopted “multilingual learners” in an effort to acknowledge and celebrate that these students are bilingual or even speak a long list of languages. It’s a simple mindset shift that focuses on the incredible language abilities students already possess rather than only on the English they are still working to acquire. Knowledge development is a dynamic process, and your multilingual learners should be able to draw upon all their linguistic resources to thrive.
Promote multiliteracy by empowering students to build on academic language and acquire social studies concepts in English and their first language(s), with opportunities to transfer knowledge between languages. Celebrate moments when students make connections between languages as they read and write.
Strive to differentiate instruction and provide scaffolding.
Scaffolding and differentiation are critical to ensure students have equitable access to content. Scaffolding strategies should help students as they encounter complex texts, challenging vocabulary, and new text structures, including passive voice and archaic language. Drawing from your asset view of language, consider how you can help students benefit from language and literacy skills in their other languages.
Of course, scaffolds will look different for every learner. Whether they need support with vocabulary words, smaller chunks of text, or additional visual aids (which, fortunately, are important elements of any social studies class, regardless of language) it’s important to target each student’s zone of proximal development, challenging them just enough to stretch their language skills without creating a barrier to the rigor of the social studies content.
Ideally, as a foundation from which to scaffold, students will have access to authentically translated resources and texts for truly equitable learning opportunities. Our K-5 core social studies program, IMPACT Social Studies, can be paired with IMPACTO Estudios Sociales, a parallel, equitable program in Spanish that supports social studies instruction and Spanish language development for students who are bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural in Spanish and English. IMPACTO Estudios Sociales focuses on the same themes as IMPACT Social Studies in all units and all grades, in both print and digital formats, with fully equitable program resources and scaffolding supports for educators.
Create opportunities to explore language in context.
While social studies will challenge multilingual learners with historic prose, unfamiliar vocabulary, and sometimes dense subject matter, it will also provide them with unique opportunities to explore language in different contexts. Use primary sources to have students consider how language is used for different purposes — such as to persuade, to document, to converse, and more. Primary sources and secondary sources model academic language and give students practice with formal texts.
Use effective language development strategies.
Break out every tool in your multilingual learner literacy toolbox for your social studies block. Strategies like Total Physical Response (TPR) can be leveraged within a social studies lesson, perhaps to aid in the comprehension of a historical event, a primary source, or a geography concept. Word sorts can be useful to tackle new vocabulary, and graphic organizers can help students deconstruct a sentence or passage. Just as in the ELA block, explicit instruction is key for multilingual learners in social studies.
For a deep dive into research-driven literacy instruction for multilingual learners, read:
Build oral language practice into social studies lessons.
Multilingual learners need plenty of opportunities to practice oral language skills. Social studies naturally lends itself to class discussions and presents unique opportunities for students to use both academic language and informal language together in speech. However, keep in mind how intimidating it may be for your multilingual learners to engage in classroom discussion in a language they are still learning. Fostering a welcoming, safe, and inclusive classroom culture is vital if you expect your multilingual learners to speak up in front of their peers. Scaffolding can be useful here, too — start with a think-pair-share, then move to larger groups as your class gets to know each other better throughout the year.
Practice culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy.
Language and culture are inextricably linked. Just as your multilingual learners bring a wealth of linguistic diversity to your classroom, they also have a unique cultural experience and perspective. Culturally relevant and sustaining teaching is of course important in every subject and for every learner. But social studies requires a special degree of awareness on the part of the educator, particularly as multilingual learners interact with and consume content. Be sure to consider how your students’ culture is represented in texts, if it’s represented at all, and how you can celebrate your students’ cultures through lessons, perhaps with supplemental material if needed. For more on culturally responsive and sustaining practices in social studies, see:
To learn more about IMPACT Social Studies and IMPACTO Estudios Sociales, see:
