Enhancing Social Studies Instruction through Disciplinary Literacy Practices Aligned to the Science of Reading

Enhancing Social Studies Instruction through Disciplinary Literacy Practices Aligned to the Science of Reading

by Dean Bacigalupo

The New York State Portrait of a Graduate, finalized in July 2025, emphasizes preparing students who are academically skilled, literate across disciplines, and capable of critical thinking, independent learning, and effective communication (New York State Education Department, 2025). Central to this vision is culturally responsive-sustaining (CR-S) education, which ensures that students build respectful relationships, value diverse perspectives, and engage meaningfully in inclusive learning communities. Graduates who demonstrate both cultural responsiveness and academic readiness are well-positioned to thrive in a diverse and rapidly changing world.

These planned types of creative engagement open the door to new ideas in students. It also empowers students to take intellectual risks that challenge assumptions and spark curiosity. These behaviors form the basis for sustained and meaningful critical inquiry.  Critical inquiry then enables them to analyze information, evaluate evidence, and understand complex issues from multiple angles. In addition, building strong communication skills support students in articulating their thinking with clarity, and intentional lessons designed to build students self-reflection nurtures metacognition.  These are essential to helping them recognize strengths and identify areas for growth. When coupled with a developing sense of global awareness, these competencies equip students to become “lifelong learners” and contribute meaningfully to an interconnected world.

To realize this vision, literacy instruction must extend beyond English Language Arts (ELA) to encompass all content areas, including social studies. The NYS Science of Reading (SoR) literacy initiative, woven into the finalized NYS Portrait of a Graduate, offers research-based strategies for building foundational skills such as decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (Lesaux & Carr, 2023). SoR is not a single curriculum or program. Instead, it reflects decades of interdisciplinary research on how children acquire reading and writing skills and provides guidelines for effective instruction. In this context, SoR represents the “how” of literacy development, while the Portrait of a Graduate articulates the “why.” Instruction should empower students to transfer literacy skills across disciplines and engage critically with academic content.

Social studies provides an especially strong context for building disciplinary literacy through engagement with academic texts and primary sources. Unlike fictional narratives, which often feature familiar vocabulary and predictable plots, these texts pose unique challenges. They introduce abstract concepts beyond students’ everyday experiences and typically employ complex sentence structures and specialized organizational patterns. Additionally, they integrate both academic and discipline-specific vocabulary (Cervetti & Hiebert, 2011; Shanahan, 2021; Lesaux, 2020; McKeown et al., 2021). As students move from reading narrative fiction to academic and historical texts, they must navigate dense information, interpret primary and secondary sources, analyze cause-and-effect relationships, track chronological sequences, and consider multiple perspectives (Lee, 2022; Fisher & Frey, 2021).

Writing in social studies reflects a similar shift. Students are asked to construct coherent explanations, synthesize information across sources, and present reasoned arguments that reflect historical thinking (Fisher & Frey, 2021; Moje et al., 2022).  Disciplinary literacy instruction supports students in meeting the academic demands of each discipline. By explicitly teaching subject specific vocabulary, sentence structures, discourse conventions, and organizational strategies, teachers help students build the knowledge and skills necessary for deep understanding and clear communication (Lesaux, Kieffer, & Kelley, 2021; McKeown et al., 2021). By embedding such instruction, teachers create classrooms in which students move beyond memorizing facts to reasoning and producing knowledge in ways that mirror historians and social scientists (Shanahan, 2021; Moje et al., 2022).

Disciplinary Literacy in Social Studies

At its core, disciplinary literacy involves developing the specialized ways of reading, writing, and reasoning that characterize experts in each academic field.  Each content area demands specific cognitive skills, including attention, working memory, and reasoning strategies. Students also need to master the linguistic features unique to the discipline, such as specialized vocabulary, complex syntax, and distinctive discourse structures, to engage successfully with academic content (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2020; Moje et al., 2020; Lesaux et al., 2021). Focusing on disciplinary literacy helps students move beyond relying solely on personal experience or background knowledge. It enables students to engage meaningfully with historical work. Through this process they analyze primary and secondary sources, evaluate evidence, consider multiple perspectives, and construct arguments grounded in evidence (Wineburg, 2001; Lee, 2022; Moje et al., 2022).

Providing explicit instruction in how historians read, write, and reason gives students the strategies they need to create meaning from complex texts and make historically grounded inferences.  The principles of disciplinary literacy align closely with the Science of Reading, as both highlight vocabulary, syntax, and comprehension as foundations for deep understanding.  (Castles et al., 2018; Seidenberg, 2017; McKeown et al., 2021). By integrating these approaches, teachers help students develop strong word-level decoding, higher-order comprehension and the reasoning skills necessary to think, read, and write like experts in history and the social sciences.

In social studies, disciplinary literacy requires students to develop several core language skills. These include mastering both academic and subject-specific vocabulary.  Academic vocabulary encompasses words that appear across multiple subjects. This allows students to engage in higher-order thinking and cross-disciplinary reasoning (August & Shanahan, 2022; Lesaux et al., 2021). Content-specific vocabulary, in contrast, is unique to social studies and supports students in analyzing and interpreting historical texts.

Disciplinary literacy expands to include instruction in language functions within an academic discipline.  Language function refers to how students use language to think, reason, and interact with content. These skills are integrated into learning objectives and reflected in classroom activities. By applying these skills consistently, students deepen their understanding and mirror the work of historians—comparing events, analyzing causes and effects, interpreting sources, and synthesizing information across texts (Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone, & Ortega, 2020; Lee, 2022).

Syntax is another critical component of disciplinary literacy. Historical and academic writing often features complex sentences with multiple clauses, embedded phrases, and relational markers such as because, although, and therefore.  These are used in writing to signal logical relationships like cause and effect, contrast, or comparison. Understanding syntax allows students to follow intricate reasoning, interpret nuanced arguments, and construct their own ideas with clarity (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2021; McKeown et al., 2021).

Discourse is the final part of disciplinary literacy.  Discourse refers to the larger structures of communication that guide how knowledge is shared. In social studies, discourse encompasses how historians organize evidence, sequence ideas, and construct arguments. Recognizing these patterns enables students to produce organized, purposeful writing and strengthen their ability to reason critically and communicate effectively (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2023; Moje et al., 2022).

By explicitly teaching both academic and content vocabulary, language function, syntax, and discourse, educators create learning environments where students move beyond superficial understanding and engage in authentic historical inquiry. These skills not only support disciplinary thinking within social studies classes, but also foster transferable literacy skills across other subjects and multiple grade levels (Moje et al., 2020; McKeown et al., 2021).

Strengthening Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary instruction in social studies must address the layered nature of the words students encounter.  According to the Science of Reading framework, vocabulary can be grouped into three tiers. Everyday conversational terms form the first tier, while the second includes academic words that recur across disciplines.  Research by Averil Coxhead (2000) provides a widely used Academic Word List, which can be used to map high-frequency academic words across subjects and grade levels. The list is available online through Victoria University of Wellington (Victoria University of Wellington, n.d.) at https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist. Examples of Tier 2 words include analyze, influence, and structure.  Effective instruction in academic vocabulary requires more than providing definitions.  Students need opportunities to explore how these words function within texts and discussions.  Planned alignment and instruction in academic vocabulary helps students notice subtle differences in meaning and recognize common word pairings.  These strategies support students in applying academic language confidently in reading, discussion, and writing tasks across different contexts. (August & Shanahan, 2022; Lesaux et al., 2021).

Tier 3 words are discipline-specific and central to historical reasoning.  These include terms like reform, diplomacy, and industrialization. These are most effectively learned through carefully chosen primary sources, historical narratives, contemporary accounts and other authentic text. Exploring these words in context helps students develop a precise understanding of their meaning and significance. Seeing how words function in authentic reading, discussion, and writing tasks helps students to deepen their comprehension and learn to use language accurately and confidently (McKeown et al., 2021; Moje et al., 2022).

Teachers can scaffold discipline-specific vocabulary using a variety of strategies aligned with the Science of Reading.  Frayer Models, word maps, and charts that incorporate synonyms, antonyms, text-based examples, and opportunities for students to create original sentences are all effective tools.  Sentence frames provide students with language support that guides the use of both academic and content vocabulary. For example, “I can analyze ___ by ___” or “This structure helps ___ because ___” give students a clear structure for expressing their ideas. Teachers can also leverage morphology and word families to help students predict the meanings of new words. For instance, influence can become influential or influencer, and structure can become structural or restructure. Understanding the suffix -ism, which denotes a system, ideology, or practice allows students to analyze and apply terms such as feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, communism, and socialism.

Visual supports, such as anchor charts, offer reference points for key terms across lessons. Vocabulary journals encourage learners to record new words, include text examples, write original sentences, and reflect on how each word connects to the topic. These personalized exercises reinforce both literacy growth and historical reasoning (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2021).

Teaching Academic Language Functions in Social Studies

The New York State K–12 Social Studies Framework (NYSSED, 2023) outlines a range of academic functions that students should develop to think, communicate, and reason like historians and social scientists. These functions are embedded in the framework’s disciplinary practices and include gathering and using evidence, analyzing and interpreting information, reasoning and argumentation, communication and expression, and problem solving or decision making. Within these practices, students learn to formulate questions, design inquiries, and evaluate sources as part of historical investigations (New York State Education Department, 2023; https://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/social-studies). These functions are central to disciplinary thinking and must be aligned from instruction through assessment. Doing so connects comprehension to expression and deepens understanding (Wineburg, Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2020; Langer & Applebee, 2020).

Teachers can support language function through a variety of strategies informed by the Science of Reading. Graphic organizers help students compare perspectives or categorize causes and effects. Timelines clarify chronological relationships. Structured prompts encourage evidence-based argumentation. For example, in a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, students might hypothesize causes, examine primary sources, and revise interpretations based on evidence. These tasks mirror historians’ methods and promote critical thinking over memorization (Singer, 2021).

Additional Science of Reading strategies include analyzing contemporary political speeches to identify rhetorical techniques and historical parallels. Peer debates provide opportunities for learners to justify their positions using evidence. Historical simulations, such as mock congressional hearings or town hall meetings, immerse students in applying analytical and inferential skills in authentic contexts. Connecting history instruction to current social issues further enhances relevance and fosters civic engagement (Singer, 2019).

Targeted prompts make language functions explicit. Examples include:

“Compare the motivations of these two historical figures using evidence from primary sources.”

“Sequence these events and explain how one led to another.”

“Based on this speech, what inferences can you make about public opinion at the time?”

“Evaluate the credibility of these sources and justify your reasoning.”

By integrating these strategies, students will move beyond surface-level recall and engage deeply in evidence-based reasoning. They learn to interrogate sources, construct coherent arguments, and articulate well-supported claims. Developing these skills is critical for cultivating historical literacy and preparing students to participate as informed, active citizens (Reisman, 2020; Singer 2021).

Teaching Syntax for Disciplinary Literacy in Social Studies

Syntax instruction plays a vital role in helping students navigate complex texts and articulate sophisticated ideas. When students understand how different sentence structures function, they become more confident readers and writers. Subordinate clauses, cause and effect constructions, and embedded modifiers each offer ways to convey nuance and complexity. As students learn to recognize and use these structures, they strengthen both comprehension and written expression. These skills also enable them to read more analytically and construct clearer arguments (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2019).

Consider the sentence: “Although governments have pledged to reduce emissions, many countries continue to rely on fossil fuels, which has delayed progress on climate goals.”

Subordinate clauses and modifiers help students make sense of contrasts, causal relationships, and the sequence of events. These skills are fundamental to the ways students engage in historical and civic thinking. In the classroom, teachers can build this understanding through brief focused mini-lessons. These lessons might guide students through the role of dependent clauses, transitions, and modifiers as they appear in authentic texts. By slowing down and examining these structures together, teachers help students see how syntax shapes meaning in ways that support deeper reading and writing.

Close reading and annotation provide valuable opportunities for students to analyze how authors construct meaning through syntax.  As students mark up a text, they begin to notice how authors signal causality, highlight contradictions, and add meaningful layers of detail. These insights help students read more intentionally and understand how structure supports meaning.

When teachers model these strategies in their own writing, students gain a clear example of how syntax works in practice. They can observe how deliberate sentence structures clarify ideas and reinforce arguments. Seeing these techniques in action helps students apply them in their own writing with greater confidence and skill.

Modeling logical connections in writing reinforces syntax. For example: “Young activists are organizing global climate strikes. Therefore, governments are facing increased pressure to act.”

Classroom applications can be interactive. Students might collaboratively build sentences combining ideas from multiple sources. Peer syntax review encourages attention to clarity and logical flow. Analyzing historical documents or political speeches helps learners notice argumentative structures and rhetorical strategies (Singer, 2019).

Explicit instruction in syntax gives students the skills they need to read critically and think analytically. As they learn how sentence structures work, students begin to make sense of complex texts and strengthen their ability to craft evidence-based arguments. Intentional instruction in this area also helps them to build disciplinary literacy aligned to the Science of Reading. This will support meaningful engagement with content and ideas across subjects. By weaving these practices into daily teaching, educators can empower students to approach learning with confidence and build a deeper understanding of the material.

Promoting Academic Discourse in Social Studies

When academic discourse is deliberately structured, students articulate their reasoning and engage in evidence-based dialogue with classmates (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2023; Singer, 2021). They engage with texts, data, and visual sources to make sense of complex information together.  Carefully designed discussion protocols elevate classroom talk from simple recall to deeper, concept-driven conversations. Students strengthen their understanding of content and develop habits of disciplinary thinking. By creating space for purposeful dialogue, educators help students to communicate more clearly and connect ideas meaningfully (Singer, 2021).

Academic discourse supports higher-order cognitive processes, including critical thinking, perspective-taking, and evaluative reasoning. For example, when students analyze the causes of the American Revolution in a Socratic seminar, they have opportunities to articulate and defend their interpretations. They can also question and evaluate the reasoning of their peers. In addition, multimedia debates that draw on oral, written, and visual sources require students to synthesize evidence from a variety of sources. These activities help to further develop understanding and strengthen students’ ability to communicate complex ideas.

Classroom extensions bring these practices to life. Students work together to analyze primary sources and build arguments collaboratively, learning from each other’s reasoning in the process. Structured peer feedback encourages reflection on their own thinking and rhetorical choices, which strengthens metacognitive skills. When teachers connect discourse to contemporary social and civic issues, students see the relevance of their learning and understand themselves as active participants in society (Singer, 2021).

Teachers can scaffold academic discourse through a range of Science of Reading informed practices that strengthen students’ reasoning and communication skills. Strategies such as think-pair-share, small-group discussions, Socratic seminars, and debates create structured opportunities for students to verbalize their thinking. Discourse prompts help learners express complex ideas clearly while maintaining academic rigor. For example, posting sentence frames for students to refer to during a lesson like, “A historical event that connects to this is ___ because ___” helps to guide learners in articulating more nuanced interpretations. Through these approaches, classroom talk becomes a space where students communicate more effectively by using the reasoning and language of historians and social scientists (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2020; Reisman, 2012).

By integrating structured dialogue with Science of Reading principles and CR-S practices, teachers create environments where students develop both disciplinary literacy and cultural awareness. Students practice reasoning like historians by examining evidence and constructing claims in both discussion and writing. Students grow more confident in analyzing complex ideas as they collaborate, question, and explain their thinking.  These experiences make learning interactive, meaningful, and relevant.  With this students are able to connect their historical thinking to the broader world. 

Conclusion

Integrating the Science of Reading, disciplinary literacy, and CR-S pedagogy gives teachers a clear framework for preparing students to think and work like historians and social scientists. When students receive explicit instruction in academic vocabulary, syntax, language functions, and structured discourse across K–12 social studies, they build the skills to reason critically, communicate evidence-based ideas, and engage deeply with complex content (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2019; Wineburg, Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2020).

High-impact instructional practices enable teachers to support students in working with information presented in text, visuals, and spoken language. When we guide students in reading and annotating complex texts, we help them analyze sources and deepen their comprehension. Structured group discussions provide opportunities for students to practice oral reasoning and consider multiple perspectives. Writing essays encourages them to synthesize ideas and develop well-supported arguments, while presentations that blend visual and spoken components strengthen their ability to communicate effectively. Together, these practices mirror how professional historians and other social scientists think and work to help to prepare students to interpret and construct knowledge independently (Reisman, 2020; Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2023).

CR-S pedagogy helps students engage meaningfully with diverse perspectives while building the skills they need to succeed across content areas (Singer, 2021). By integrating literacy supports with culturally responsive teaching, classrooms become inclusive environments where all learners can access rigorous content and participate in evidence-based discourse. This approach not only deepens historical reasoning and literacy but also fosters civic competence.

Equally as important, this approach aligns with the recently adopted NYS Portrait of a Graduate, which emphasizes critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and civic engagement (New York State Education Department, 2025). By weaving together explicit literacy instruction, disciplinary literacy strategies, and CR-S practices, teachers prepare students to become academically confident and socially conscious graduates that are ready to contribute thoughtfully to contemporary society.

Addendum: Applications Across Elementary, Middle, and High School

Elementary School: Instruction emphasizes foundational content knowledge, vocabulary development, and comprehension strategies. Graphic organizers, role-playing, and guided discussions support learning (Lesaux, Crosson, & Kieffer, 2020). Activities such as historical story mapping, primary source observation, and age-appropriate explorations of current events help students begin engaging in historical thinking. Cause-and-effect relationships, sequencing events, and identifying multiple perspectives are introduced in developmentally appropriate ways. Linking content to students’ lived experiences fosters engagement and civic understanding (Singer, 2019).

Middle School: Students encounter more complex texts, historical arguments, and analytical tasks. Instruction emphasizes annotation, sentence frames, and graphic organizers that support higher-order thinking, analysis, and synthesis (Moje et al., 2020). Structured debates, document-based journals, and comparative analyses connecting contemporary issues to historical contexts encourage evidence-based argumentation. Culturally responsive strategies ensure students critically engage with diverse narratives and social issues (Singer, 2021).

High School: Instruction centers on authentic historical inquiry, requiring analysis of multiple primary and secondary sources, evaluation of evidence, and synthesis of findings in written, oral, and multimedia formats (Wineburg, Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2020). Explicit instruction in syntax, transitions, and argumentation supports coherent and persuasive expression. Thematic writing, multimedia presentations, reflective oral history projects, and civic engagement initiatives allow students to practice the habits of historians. Civic engagement projects link historical analysis to contemporary democratic participation (Singer, 2021).

By scaffolding disciplinary literacy practices across developmental levels, educators ensure students build the cognitive, linguistic, and analytical skills needed for rigorous historical reasoning and civic engagement. This continuum supports a trajectory from content comprehension in elementary school to authentic historical inquiry and civic participation in high school.

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