Engaging middle school students in disciplinary literacy through culturally relevant historical inquiry

Abstract

The authors share design principles from a middle school social studies unit that explored questions of local history and engaged students in extended work with complex texts. The unit involved constructing a problem space for students to explore multiple historical texts. Within that problem space, students had opportunities to develop focal literacy practices of history, consider cultural connections to the subject under study, and evaluate current local policy through a justice lens that was informed by their deepened understandings of historical events.