Introduce notebooks and journals. Students can use their notebooks to analyze and question material learned in class. Notebooks encourage students to express themselves and develop writing skills which make them more confident and fluent when it comes to writing essays. For example, someone studying history could use a notebook to express his thoughts about material learned in class and voice his opinion about books such as biographies of historical characters relevant to the period being studied.
Encourage creative writing. Ask children to invent a character and write a biographical sketch about their gender, socio-economic status, family life, and living conditions. For example, children studying economics could create a fictional portrait of a child who lived during the Second World War, with information about how they bartered for sweets, and ways in which their parents might have saved money by growing their own vegetables and recycling old clothes. This writing could take the form of a newspaper article, journal or letter to a real or imaginary person.
Read aloud. Teachers can read texts selectively to emphasize particular points or thought processes. For example, the teacher slows down her reading during key passages that make important connections and summarize key points. Reading aloud can particularly help younger children to become familiar with social science subjects and helps them to pick up on the reading skills necessary for independent study.
Introduce literature. Including books into the social sciences curriculum gives a philosophical background to the subjects being studied and makes them more accessible to children. For example, Margy Burns Knight's book, Africa is not a Country, helps advanced elementary children understand geography and cultural anthropology, because it is about children and their daily life in a different African country.